The Beauty of Wilderness: A Photo Essay from The Wilderness Society
Appreciate the wonder and majesty of our nation’s wild places.
August/September 2009
By Ben Beach
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Paria Canyons, Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, Utah
JAMES W. KAY; WWW.JAMESKAY.COM
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Harvey Broome, co-founder of The Wilderness Society, once said, “If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was and what it might, with understanding and loving husbandry, yet become.”
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Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has worked to protect wilderness and inspire Americans to care for wild places. In 1964, The Wilderness Act became law, creating the National Wilderness Preservation System.
Through the wilderness system, Congress sets aside selected areas within national forests, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other federal lands as areas to be kept permanently unchanged by humans. This means no roads, no structures, no vehicles, no significant impacts of any kind. Of our country’s 623 million public acres, 109 million are permanently protected as wilderness. (Check out this list of wilderness areas.)
Because of the requirements set forth in The Wilderness Act, a visitor to a wilderness area can count on peace and quiet. The air and water are clean. Large, unfragmented and wild landscapes can provide the habitat that species need to adapt to climate change. Places like this are increasingly hard to come by, making the value of wilderness and land preservation more apparent with each passing year.
Want to help The Wilderness Society in its efforts to promote wilderness protection? Become a member by calling 800-843-9453 or signing up at wilderness.org.
We hope you enjoy the striking photographs of wild places in this special photo essay, which you can find in the Image Gallery. If you’d like to see these photos year-round, there’s no better calendar than the one put out by The Wilderness Society each year. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner once said, “We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” The 2010 Wilderness Society calendar costs just $13.95 and is available by calling 800-258-5830 or visiting wilderness.org. — MOTHER
