Wilderness Forever 

            Section 3-F

by Howard Zahniser

It is a bold thing for a human being who lives on the earth but a few score years at the most to presume upon the Eternal and covet perpetuity for any of his undertakings.

             Yet we who concern ourselves with wilderness preservation are compelled to assume this boldness and with the courage of this particular undertaking so to order our enterprise as to direct our efforts toward the perpetual--to project into the eternity of the future some of that precious unspoiled ecological inheritance that has come to us out of the eternity of the past.

             This is a requisite of our undertaking, and there is yet another of primary importance also: We must deal with actual areas. Only as we Preserve areas of wilderness does there exist the basis for a vital interest in all the many aspects of wilderness that it meaning....

             We who are concerned with wilderness preservation must accordingly have these two clear purposes: We must relate all our effective concerns and efforts to the preservation of actual areas, and we must work for their preservation in perpetuity.

             When we address ourselves to wilderness preservation, we are dealing with those still remaining areas of the earth where the landscape is not dominated by man and his works, areas where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a member of the natural community, a wanderer who visits but does not remain, whose travels leave only trails.

             These are areas that retain their primeval environment and influence, that remain free from routes that can be used for mechanized transportation, where the freedom of the wilderness still lives on unfettered by the restrictions of the urban industrial life to which mankind has become increasingly confined, primeval areas where a human being can still face natural conditions directly without the mediating conveniences and instruments of domination fashioned in his inventive and technological civilization.

             These are areas that are still as God has been making them without man’s aid, but for the protection of which the Almighty now seems to be relying on this His remarkable creature, man – this free-willed, so often intractable participant in the eternal purposes of the whole boundless universe. ...

             We not only value the wilderness because of its own superlative values, but because our experience in the wilderness meets fundamental human needs. These needs are not only recreational and spiritual, but also educational and scientific, not only personal, but cultural. They are profound. For the wilderness is essential to us, as human beings, for a true understanding of ourselves, our culture, our own natures, our place in all nature. ...

             One of our most startling realizations [when we began examining wilderness] was the almost sudden awareness that already [in the 1940s and 1950s] there are no areas available for preservation as wilderness which are not already devoted to some other purpose. In other words, not only is it expedient to join wilderness preservation to other purposes, compatible purposes of course, it is actually necessary. This realization gives an urgency and a self-awareness in our efforts to establish policies and programs. ...

             The pioneer spirit that stirs in youth is the spirit of the wilderness. Through wilderness experience it can be reborn. We can stir again the youthful energy which has made America strong. We can show that there are yet new frontiers, including our own frontier in fashioning a wilderness program that will endure.

             Primeval wilderness, once gone, is gone forever; but it can be preserved forever. The vision of generation after generation, through an enduring future perpetuating a soundly established human purpose, is as glorious as a man’s view of sons and daughters when he himself senses the period of his own time ending and cherishes more and more the Eternal.

             The practical [challenge] of wilderness preservation... leads us into the inspiring contemplation of something that endures. That is the nature of wilderness, and we can hardly fail to realize it. What we must also recognize is that there is still the drive of the self-interest that exploits the wilderness for profit. There still are mining and lumbering interests who seek to confound, frustrate and defeat every effort to secure wilderness as wilderness. We must use our inspirations to deal patiently, persistently, but practically with these contending forces.

          “We are not fighting progress. We are making it. We are not dealing with a vanishing wilderness. We are working for a wilderness forever.”

            Our political realities are such that we must continue... to strive to see the nation of which we are citizens espouse this cause to which we have become devoted. In this effort we are compelled to recognize that we must have the concurrence of many who have not yet or have not long shared our purposes. We must recognize that wilderness, as a resource of the people, has not been assured perpetuity until those among the people who would and could destroy it have been enlisted in or reconciled to its preservation....

            We are engaged in an effort that may well be expected to continue until its right consummation, by our successors if need be. Working to preserve in perpetuity is a great inspiration. We are not fighting a rear-guard action, we are facing a frontier. We are not slowing down a force that inevitably will destroy all the wilderness there is. We are generating another force, never to be wholly spent, that, renewed generation after generation, will be always effective in preserving wilderness. We are not fighting progress. We are making it.

We are not dealing with a vanishing wilderness.

We are working for a wilderness forever.