QUOTABLE QUOTES

On occasion, after introducing a news article I will punctuate my introduction by providing what I believe to be an appropriate historical quote. This time, I'll offer the quote as my introduction.

" Economics cannot save the wilderness. The wild may depend on funding from the nations' budgets, but it cannot be quantified or reduced to number crunching. The safeguarding of wild places cannot be financially justified based on cost benefit analyses. But how dare we put a price tag on those wild places that remain in the world, whose value is inestimable?"

-- David Rothenberg

ABBEY: ALWAYS AHEAD OF HIS TIME

Ed Abbey died before the cell phone was invented; yet that does not detract from the relevance of the following passage from a Journey Home to the current 'cell phone in Wilderness' debate.

"A wild place without dangers is an absurdity, although I realize that danger creates administrative problems for park and forest managers. But we must not allow our national parks and national forests to be degraded to the status of mere public playgrounds. Open to all, yes of course. But---enter at your own risk...

Those who prefer, quite reasonably, not to take such chances should stick to Disneyland in all its many forms and guises."

Similarly, perhaps no one more accurately predicted the current insanity that has overtaken National Park and Wilderness Management than Abbey when he wrote in Desert Solitaire....

"Now here comes another clown with a scheme for the utopian national park: Central Park National Park, Disneyland National Park. Look here he says...better yet do away with the campgrounds altogether, they only cause delay and congestion and administrative problems---these people want to see America, they are not going to see it sitting around a goddammned campfire; take their money, give them a show, send them on their way -- that's the way to run a business"

Sadly, one of Abbey's most frequently quoted saying is no longer true. And for that I truly do weep.

Abbey wrote: "The idea of wilderness needs no defense.It only needs more defenders."

Today the idea of wilderness needs defense. Whether wilderness needs more defenders is debatable.

Ed Abbey never got to experience fee-demo, but clearly he would have understood what was at stake/risk. Who else, but Abbey, could have said the following? I weep that so few of today's wilderness defenders are even capable of speaking in these terms.

"But one exception remains to the iron rule of oligarchy. At least in America one relic of our ancient and rightful liberty has survived. And that is--a walk into the Big Woods; a journey on foot into the uninhabited interior; a voyage down the river of no return. Hunters, fishermen, hikers, climbers, white-water boatmen, red-rock explorers know what I mean. In America at least this kind of experience remains open and available to all, democratic. Little or no training is required, very little special equipment, no certification of privilege. All that is needed is normal health, the will to do it, and a modicum of courage.

"It is my fear that if we allow the freedom of the hills and the last of the wilderness to be taken from us, then the very idea of freedom may die with it."

UNFETTERED IN WILDERNESS

Your right to enjoy the wilds unfettered is quickly disappearing as "the wilds" are methodically/systematically tamed/disneyfied and turned into marketable/saleable recreation products.

Do you doubt that someday there will be private concessionaires renting mandatory rescue beacons that will be required to get a Wilderness access permit? Do you doubt that those beacons will be required to be turned on at all times so that you can be continuously tracked and warned if you are entering a special "high use / premium-priced" zone. Do you doubt that your credit card will be automatically billed for the exact "wilderness experience" you enjoyed that day? How better to correctly charge for "solitude" and other wilderness values than to know precisely where every hiker is at all times and to price those wilderness values at their proper market value??? (OK, so perhaps I am stretching the point a TINY BIT or, more likely, I'm just a little bit ahead of my time!)

ANOTHER QUOTABLE QUOTE

(from an appended National Park Service Document):

"We may have no control over the fact that we have many "product lines" (i.e. types of areas, and functions we perform)--this is a 'corporate dilemma' from a 'branding' standpoint. We need to decide if we can continue to support such a broad array of functions. Divesting ourselves of certain programs could result in Congress cutting our budget. ]

MOUNTAIN BIKERS FOR WILDERNESS...IF THEY CAN PEDAL

A recent article in the Washington Post carried this headline: "Mountain Bikers Up Against Calif. Conservationists

Battle Is Sign of Conflict Across the West Over Recreation Rules on Crowded Land."

"SUNLAND, Calif. -- Mike Melton would love to support the latest campaign to save wilderness across California. Preserving open space, he says, is a priority. But so is his mountain bike. And like thousands of other riders in the state, he has a tough new choice to make: either give up some of his favorite back-country trails for nature's sake, or fight a plan that would ban his pastime on vast stretches of wild land from the Oregon border to San Diego.

'I'm all for having pristine wilderness,' Melton, a 35-year-old electrician, said as he set off riding along a narrow, rocky trail here in the Angeles National Forest one recent Sunday morning. 'But why take a poke at mountain biking? We're just like anyone else who loves nature, we just choose to pedal in it. What's wrong with that?'

"Such torment is a sign of a growing conflict across the country, and especially the West, over the rules of recreation on ever more crowded public land. It is pitting conservationists against each other, splintering

outdoor groups into feuding factions, and causing so much tension in some places that professional mediators are being called and summits convened to broker compromises on trail use."

Scott Silver/Wild Wilderness

248 NW Wilmington Ave. Bend, OR 97701

phone: 541-385-5261

e-mail: ssilver@wildwilderness.org

Internet: http://www.wildwilderness.org