The Wilderness Blog

“There are some places we just shouldn’t go”

By Hillary Rosner, 8-14-05

I was sitting in a bar in Anchorage the other night, talking to a very interesting man. We'd had several drinks and I'm assuming our conversation was off-the-record, so I'll just call him "Pete" for now. Pete has lived in Alaska for most of his life, spent more than a decade with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, has represented the state in many international treaties and has been a major player in ocean fisheries governance. He's highly sensitive to industry, but he's also deeply concerned with conservation issues. He's worked for Democrats and Republicans, for environmentalists and big business. He's seen most of Alaska's wilderness, several times over, and he can rattle off tantalizing backcountry itineraries faster than you can figure out how to spell them.

So after he'd drained his gin and tonic, I asked Pete if he thought we should drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He took a deep breath and began with a lengthy description of the North Slope, the geography of the area as you travel east, and what it looks like from the air. He described vast areas of tundra and wetlands that appeared pristine, save for the grid of roads that from the air looked like it had simply been overlaid atop the land. "We are everywhere on the planet," he said. Except in ANWR, he said, where the grid ends.

He leaned toward me on his bar stool. "Do I think there's oil there?" he asked. "Absolutely. I've seen it. There are places where it bubbles up out of the ground. Do I think they could get it out with minimal harm to the environment, with minimal disruption to the caribou herd? Yes. I do."

I leaned forward on my stool, too, waiting for the punch line. "Do I think we should drill there?" he asked. "No. Absolutely not." He waited for me to digest his words. "There are some places we just shouldn't go," he said. That was that. There were so few places in the world without these grid overlays, these lattices of human interference, and that made this place, ANWR, ever more critical to preserve. The presence of oil there, the ability, in his opinion, to get it out without excessive ecosystem harm—these were irrelevant. The real point was that some things are sacred, some places should remain wild, and wilderness can be a value that trumps all else—even economics.

It seems this view might be more widely held than the Bush administration and its allies make it appear. The same day Pete, the quintessential pragmatist, told me we shouldn't drill in ANWR, the Anchorage Daily News ran an AP story headlined "ANWR no budget item, GOP reps say." The story told how twenty-four House Republicans had sent a letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert and the chairmen of the Budget and Resources committees asking them not to use the appropriations process as a means to open ANWR to drilling. The Republicans called the budget process "an inappropriate venue to be debating this important environmental issue."

Back in June, a New West reader wrote that there was perhaps no need to seek to understand humans' connection with nature; it's obvious that connection exists, and that's really all we need to know. "So why do we connect with nature?" the reader wrote. "I don't mean to sound trite or rude, but I don't care why I'd rather run on a trail than the paved road, why I'd rather be covered in mud than return clean. I do know what renews me, and that's all that matters."

I'm grateful for this input, but I have to respectfully disagree—if only because many people making the decisions about nature and wilderness don't think along these lines. A few weeks ago I mentioned an interview in which Gale Norton, staunch opponent of federal environmental laws including those that seek to designate wilderness areas or otherwise protect land from development, told how she likes to vacation in the Costa Rican rainforests.

This disconnect runs deep and wide, and means that some of the same representatives who think drilling in ANWR is a black-and-white economic decision that should be decided by an appropriations bill rider are likely spending the August recess sleeping in a tent and watching wildlife. Not all of them, of course. I can't really picture Resource committee chair Richard Pombo in the woods watching bald eagles. But love of wilderness, emotional connection to nature, is a more common value than it might appear given the blatant disregard for the environment currently on display in the White House and Congress. Trying to understand why we're drawn to wild places is one way to help save them.

In a story that ran in the Boulder Daily Camera that same day Pete and I sat in the Anchorage bar, the chief ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park mused on the death of Jeff Christensen, the ranger who fell to his death last month on patrol in the backcountry. "Some say we face risk, an unnecessary risk," Mark Magnuson told an AP reporter. "In our hearts, we know it's nothing compared to the loss of the wilderness. We risk all to protect that which endures beyond our individual selves." I'm sure Pete would understand this urge.

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