Wallace Stegner used the power of the pen to reason with people, with those in wilderness management roles, with politicians who could make a difference in whether or not there would be any more wild places, wildlands, and wild creatures left in North America, or in the whole world for that matter.  

In today's post we conclude Stegner's "The Geography of Hope" letter - which we began this series with to give you some foreground (what has actually happened) 20 years after the "Wilderness Letter" made its way around the world and into the media and into the minds and hearts of its readers.  Tomorrow we'll post a portion of "The Wilderness Letter" and we think the foreground material we've included in the first 3 parts of this series will make reading "The Wilderness Letter" a richer and more involving experience.

Conclusion of "The Geography of Hope" letter:

"In my letter to David Pesonen 20 years ago I spoke with some feeling about the deserts of southern Utah - Capitol Reef, the San Rafael Swell, the Escalante Desert, the Aquarius Plateau.  That whole area has been under threat for nearly a decade, and though the Kaiparowits Complex was defeated and the Intermountain Power Project forced to relocate northward into the Sevier Desert near Lynndyl, the Union Pacific and 13 other companies are still pushing to mine the coal in the Kaiparowits Plateau, surrounded by national parks; and a group of utilities wants to open a big strip mine at Alton, four miles from Bryce, and a 500-megawatt power plant in Warner Valley, 17 miles from Zion, and a 2,000-megawatt plant north of Las Vegas, and two slurry pipelines to serve them.

"The old forest road over the Aquarius is being paved in from both ends, the equally beautiful trail over the Hightop from Salina to Fish Lake is being widened and improved.  Our numbers and our energy demands inexorably press upon this country as beautiful as any on earth, country of an Old Testament harshness and serenity.

"It is in danger of being made - of helping to make itself - into a sacrifice area.  Its air is already less clear, its distances less sharp. its water table, if these mines and plants and pipelines are created, will sink out of sight, its springs will dry up, its streams will shrink and go intermittent.  But there will be more blazing illumination along the Las Vegas Strip, and the little Mormon towns of Wayne and Garfield and Kane Counties will acquire some interesting modern problems.

"What impresses me after 20 years is how far the spoiling of that superb country has already gone, and how few are the local supporters of the federal agencies which are the only protection against it.  They would do well to consider how long the best thing in their lives has been preserved for them by federal management, and how much they will locally lose if the Sagebrush Rebellion wins.  Furthermore, the land that the Sagebrush Rebellion wants transferred, the chickenhouse that it wants to put under the guard of the foxes, belongs as much to me, or to a grocer in Des Moines, or a taxi driver in Newark, as to anyone else.  And I am not willing to see it wrecked just to increase corporate profits and light Las Vegas."

We at Ultralight Wilderness Toilet are aghast at the short-sightedness of those in power - meaning those with money to develop mining areas, or build strip malls, or pave over areas deemed necessary by many prominent psychologists for the very survival of the human spirit.  We're already a country that has little problem poisoning ourselves with some 247 chemicals.  In fact, one scientist has written that she believes MANKIND may end of up poisoning itself into extinction.  You might be left in a state of shock if YOU were to get a deep analysis of your own blood.  You will find a large number of these chemicals in your own blood stream.

Isn't it time to rethink the notion that jobs-for-humans are more important than the survival of thousands of species of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish?  What has happened to our imagination and the creativity it engenders?  Tomorrow we will post the first part of "The Wilderness Letter."  Please leave a comment, however brief.