The wilderness has been a...
Illustration
The wilderness has been a defining feature of American character. It really did not take much encouragement from Horace Greeley to "Go west, young man!" The wilderness has held a lure for us from the beginning of early trapping days to Conestoga wagon days to intercontinental railway days to interstate highway days. We want to enter it, explore it, cross it, tame it. And when we think we have reached our limit in claiming the land "from sea to shining sea," we look elsewhere for a wilderness in which to forge our character further -- the space frontier.
Author Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize winner, once wrote a letter to a member of the commission that was responsible for assessing potential uses of America's remaining wilderness area. He was extremely concerned to protect and preserve them as wilderness. "We need wilderness preserved -- as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds -- because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed." He also expressed the view that as Americans we are civilized because we have renewed ourselves in the wild.
Author Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize winner, once wrote a letter to a member of the commission that was responsible for assessing potential uses of America's remaining wilderness area. He was extremely concerned to protect and preserve them as wilderness. "We need wilderness preserved -- as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds -- because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed." He also expressed the view that as Americans we are civilized because we have renewed ourselves in the wild.
