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"We need the tonic of wildness -- to wade sometimes
in marshes where the bittern and meadow-hen
lurk.... We can never have enough
of nature."
-- Henry David Thoreau --
Aldo Leopold, founder of the The Wilderness Society said, "I am glad I shall never be young without wild places to be young in. Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map?" This quotation was emblazoned on an attractive poster I had bought and put up on the wall of my English classroom. For a dozen or more years, I had stared at that quotation without understanding what a "blank spot on the map" referred to. How could a map be blank?
Then in 1987, while on a fifteen mile day hike on the Continental Divide
Trail in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness while vacationing
in Steamboat Springs, Colorado,
a light bulb finally illuminated within my head and I comprehended what
the phrase "blank spot on the map" referred to. The experience
also changed the way I spend my long summers off (there are 3 main reasons
for being a teacher, you know: June, July, and August!) and I became an
avid, addicted backpacker.
On that fortuitous Colorado day hike, I spotted campsites situated on the
shores of pristine mountain lakes, meadows ablaze with wildflowers like
I had never seen before (what with growing up in Chicago, Illinois,) and vistas which went on
forever. A peace and longing settled within me which still exist today.
It was obvious that to reach these campsites, one had to walk in with everything
one needed to survive, and somehow that appealed to me, so I began researching
this thing called backpacking. I had done some in the Boy
Scouts, of course, using Dad's old army duffel bag and a sleeping bag
made of wool army blankets sewn together by Mom. In the intervening years,
equipment had improved greatly, but there were many necessities to purchase
and much knowledge to acquire. I spent that fall, winter, and spring reading
and watching for sales, and although outfitting a family of four proved
costly, the benefits have proven priceless.
To those yet uncomprehending of the meaning of that phrase "blank spot
on the map," look at a map of southwestern Colorado, at the area between
the towns of Durango, north
to Montrose, east to Gunnison, south to South Fork, and back to Durango.
You found an immense "blank spot" which encompasses the Weminuche and Big Blue/Uncompahgre
Wilderness areas (click for info on these areas.) This roadless playground
is accessible only by foot or horseback. Over 100,000,000 such acres are
now set aside as designated wilderness area in our country. We all owe a
debt of gratitude and thanks to the foresight of the many people who over
the course of more than a century have fought to set aside land in the form
of national parks, national forests, state preserves, etc.
But these wilderness holdings are now under attack. There are those today
who wish to reclaim these precious, pristine wilderness acres for development
-- to bulldoze for roads, to clear-cut for timber, to mine for minerals
or oil, or to build expensive, expansive resorts or subdivisions. They do
not care about the degredation of the land, the destruction of the flora,
or the homelessness forced upon the fauna. Nor do they care about the farther-reaching
damage wreaked upon the contiguous eco-systems dependent upon these wilderness
areas. Greed, or power, or lack of vision, or whatever compelling reasons
are at the root of these selfish, short-sighted actions, the result is the
same. Land is forever lost. And as my Dad always said, "There ain't
nobody printing any more of it." We must save what we can now or our
children's children, and their children, will "never be young with
wild places to be young in." We cannot, we must not allow that to occur.
The complete text of the 1964 Wilderness Act is available here.
"We abuse the land because we regard it as a community belonging
to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong,
we may begin to use it with love and respect." --Aldo Leopold --
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