Investing Yourself in Wilderness Futures

Beginner's Guide to Backpacking

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"A man and what he loves and builds have but a day and then disappear; nature cares not – and renews the annual round untired. It is the old law, sad but not bitter. Only when man destroys the life and beauty of nature, there is the outrage."
George Macaulay Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon, 1937

The scheme was so outrageous that I couldn't believe anyone had seriously suggested it – yet someone had. A gravel company had proposed a tenfold expansion of a small but already troublesome quarry on Eldorado Mountain, near Boulder, Colorado. The operation would have devoured the entire northeastern flank of the mountain and left a scar 2,000 feet high – as big as the face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, 500 feet taller than Chicago's Sears Tower, the nation's tallest building. Granted, we all use gravel every day, whether we see it or not – it's a necessity for roads, runways and concrete structures of every kind. Still, the company had chosen the most offensive possible site for a quarry of that magnitude. Eldorado Mountain rises in the center of a broad complex of recreational land visited by half a million people every year. To the north lies Eldorado Canyon, a spectacular state park that is also one of the nation's finest rock-climbing areas. The wide swath of land to the east is part of Boulder's Mountain Parks. Eldorado Mountain is also a prominent part of the western skyline for tens of thousands of nearby residents. Boulder, the closest city, began buying and protecting its mountain backdrop in 1898. Now that far-sighted program faced its most serious threat ever.

The gravel company was operating its existing quarry on land leased from the State Land Board. The board's mandate to earn money from its land to support public schools gave the company a strong public-relations lever. The state organization responsible for approving the company's application was notoriously friendly toward mining companies. Even in environmentally savvy Boulder County, defeating the proposal would not be easy.

For 10 years, I had enjoyed the steep climbs that abound on Eldorado Canyon's walls. Eldorado Mountain graced the southwestern skyline every time I went running in Boulder's Mountain Parks. I immediately joined the newborn organization fighting the expansion. Together we wrote flyers and raised the money to print and mail them. We assembled a slide show and spoke to civic organizations large and small. We took our message to planning boards, city councils and county commissioners. In the end, we won a unanimous verdict of opposition to the expanded quarry from every government body with jurisdiction. After months of negotiations, Boulder bought the company's lease. The quarry shut down, and Eldorado Mountain seemed safe.

Safe, that is, until some California company unearthed an obscure Federal law and began an attempt to build a water-power project on Eldorado Mountain's southern flanks. The city immediately mobilized to fight this inane project, which would consume more energy than it produced and only make money because the power generated could be sold during daylight hours, when electricity rates are at their peak. Fortunately, the company cancelled the project when the strength of the opposition became apparent.

Organized, aroused citizens can make a difference. Our efforts helped preserve wildlife habitat, healthy watershed and recreational opportunities that will grow more valuable with each passing year. Sadly enough, however, most environmental victories require constant vigilance to remain secure. Conservationists need more than powerful lungs. They need stamina, too.

The United States is the fourth largest country on Earth. Its boundaries encompass 3.6 million square miles, an area almost as big as Europe. Today less than five percent – 162,500 square miles – has been protected as wilderness under the terms of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Even that number is deceptive, since nearly two-thirds of America's wilderness is concentrated in Alaska. In the Lower 48, only two percent of the land has been preserved in its pristine form. Many states have no wilderness whatsoever. The vast majority of America has already been plowed and paved and put to human use in a thousand ways. Surely we owe it to the other creatures great and small who inhabit this land with us to leave a little undisturbed for their benefit. Surely we owe it to ourselves to save some scraps of land where we can escape the din of machinery and the oppressive crush of the crowd.

Proof of how much people value wilderness can be found in the long lead times required to reserve a wilderness campsite in many of our national parks. The number of visitors to national parks and Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management recreation areas rises almost every year. America's ongoing love affair with the wilderness is also one of the chief threats to wilderness. This book has spent much time detailing these internal threats and what you can do to reduce the impact of your presence. Equally important, however, are the external threats. All national parks and wilderness areas will suffer if development is allowed just outside the wilderness boundaries. Few parks and wilderness areas preserve complete ecosystems. They depend for their biological health on a buffer zone of undeveloped or lightly developed land around them. Logging, mining, oil and gas production, off-road vehicles, excessive grazing and urban sprawl all threaten these buffer zones.

It's time to draw boundaries around civilization instead of around wilderness. The number of human beings that the planet can sustain at our present levels of consumption is limited. We must find a way to construct a sustainable economy based on the resources we have already diverted to human use. In the long run, pillaging what little wilderness remains will do nothing to help.

If you love the wilderness and the opportunities it provides to hike and camp, if you value its role as a reservoir of biological diversity, if the thought of its silent beauty cheers you even when you're a thousand miles away, speak up. Start by becoming informed. Scan your local newspaper for items on environmental controversies. If you live in the West, subscribe to High Country News, one of the best sources of information on environmental issues affecting the region. The address is in the appendix. Join one or more of the major conservation organizations and read their magazines and newsletters. Environmentalists will never have the clout of major corporations unless they band together. Seek out the small, local organizations that often do the most to solve local problems, or found an organization of your own. Write letters to your local newspaper and your local, state and federal representatives. The literature from conservation organizations will tell you which issues are hot and which officials should feel public pressure. It's easy to be complacent, to think that the present wilderness system is secure and sufficient for all time. In fact, the battle to preserve wilderness in the United States is not over. Another 312,500 square miles of wild land is at risk, according to the Wilderness Society. Add your voice to those who are demanding that more land be preserved. Your duties to the land do not end when you pick up a last bit of litter as you stride back into the parking lot. In fact, they have just begun.

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