The Wilderness Blog

Does Wilderness Exist? Does It Matter?

By Hillary Rosner, 5-30-05

	Caption: Hillary Rosner

I didn't grow up outdoors; I was born and raised in New York City, and though I've lived in Colorado for three years now you might still fairly wonder why I'd be starting this blog on "wilderness." Indeed, a few years ago during an unnerving "conference call" interview for an environmental journalism fellowship, I was attacked on just that basis. "So why does someone from New York care about the environment?" one of the interviewers asked me, in a mildly accusatory tone.

I'm still not sure whether he really wondered or if it was just a leading question. But once I got going, I was unable to stop listing reasons, and I think another interviewer finally cut me off. There are a million ways to answer, of course, but here are two: urbanites are often removed from natural processes and rarely have to think about the chain of events that delivers their electricity, food, clothing, or anything else they consume. And it is also true that residents of large cities, due to income level, education, and potential influence, may have the power to affect key changes in environmental policies.

This is vexing to some people who have a far more intimate relationship to the land and don't want some clueless New Yorker—who thinks, "Wolves are cool!" but has no understanding of the issues—impacting decisions about land they've never seen. Nevertheless, wilderness—whatever that means—is important to city dwellers as much as to those who live in big sky country. Despite the fact that we may be witnessing "the end of nature" as a force entirely independent of humans, nature still inspires awe. People, wherever they live, instinctively sense that it is to be revered, even as they opt to pollute it and pave it over. Why?

"Wilderness" is a simple enough term, conjuring visions of tangled forests, breezy plains, vast landscapes of snow and ice, all teaming with fauna and flora doing their evolutionarily determined thing. But underneath that National Geographic postcard, "wilderness" becomes a big, thorny mess.

What is it? Is it just a synonym for "nature"? Or for "wildness"? Must it be unpeopled? Unaltered by people? How big is it? Can it exist within a city? Do we need it? Does it even still exist?

One thing seems obvious: wild places and creatures are in serious danger. This is true all over the world, and certainly here in the West. What's more, they're under threat at the same time they're publicly revered—and often by the same people who profess to love them. (Need I say more, really, than ?) People proudly wave the wilderness flag with one hand while burning it with the other. How many ads have you seen that feature hulking, fossil-fuel-devouring SUVs lumbering through breathtaking wild scenery with no one in sight but a few soaring hawks and the odd coyote?

There are many possible reasons for this disconnect—and I'll be exploring them here over the coming weeks and months. This space will be a forum to talk about wilderness, in as lofty or lowbrow a way as fits the mood. There are plenty of places—including elsewhere on this site—where you can read the latest news about wilderness: changes to the Roadless Rule, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and so on. What I want to do here is dig deeper, providing context for current events; to delve into the literature of wilderness, its history, how it turns up in pop culture and the media.

Wilderness has long preoccupied naturalists and amateur philosophers—Thoreau, Leopold, Abbey. More recently, it has permeated academia, giving rise to conferences and volumes on the subject (The Great New Wilderness Debate, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, for instance). Historian William Cronon has argued that wilderness is just a cultural construct—and thus inherently unnatural. "Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity," Cronon wrote, "it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in history." The philosopher Holmes Rolston III, meanwhile, maintains that wilderness is something distinct from human culture and possessed of its own "intrinsic wild values."

But in the real world, these ideas aren't discussed nearly often enough. If we care about protecting wilderness, we need to understand what it is we're trying to save. We take for granted that everyone means the same thing when we talk about wilderness—even when we talk about nature—but unless we really nail down what we mean, we won't move very far forward in protecting it.

[End of article]

Hillary (and readers) - I enjoyed your blog on wilderness and in the spirit of starting a community thing, I thought I would just open the forum with one remark. To me the concept of wilderness is very much akin to the concept of nature and big questions in both cases are: can it be a moral concept (or is that just the naturalistic fallacy)? Are appeals to wilderness and nature a renewal of a cosmological or Aristotelian world-view that challenges the dominant environemtnal mind-set of being "scientific"? How can we know nature/wilderness when we see it? Can things be more or less natural (or wild) or is it all or none?

Finally, I think if you buy into the notion that nature and wilderness are twin concepts, then you should open your blog (and thesis?) up to considerations of bioethics, especially the discourse about technologies that may herald the "post-human" era. I think in environmental ethics and bioethics the deepest issue is about the proper sphere of human activity, that is, where is it moral (or noble) to simply say "enough" and embrace our limits? This question is at a deeper level, one that Bill McKibben sees (somewhat at least) in his transition from his book The End of Nature to Enough.

An admission: I was one of Hillary's interviewers for the environmental journalism fellowship she mentions. But having been born in Brooklyn, I do not believe I was the one who asked why she cared about the environment. As I recall, I thought it was an absurd question. Absurd, of course, because some of us who have lived and worked among canyons of concrete, steel and glass are in need of Navajo, Kayenta and Wingate canyons just as much, and perhaps more, than any Westerner.

Whether wilderness exists, of course, depends on how you define it. If wilderness is a place where human impact is small or non-existent, then there is no such place. Even in the most remote canyon in southern Utah, squeezed within sinuous narrows of flood-carved rock, a glance up at the sliver of sky is enough to remind me that Bill McKibben was correct in The End of Nature. "By the end of nature," he writes, "I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say 'nature,' I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it. But the death of those ideas begins with concrete changes in the reality around us — changes that scientists can measure and enumerate. More and more frequently, these changes will clash with our perceptions, until, finally, our sense of nature as eternal and seperate is washed away, and we will see all too clearly what we have done."

What we have done, among other things, is change the chemical composition of the atmosphere to a degree that has not been seen in 25 million years, according to [url="http://arts.envirolink.org/interviews_and_conversations/EOWilson.html/" >William Collins</a>, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research here in Boulder. With our emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, we humans now dominate the carbon cycle. And so when I glance up at the sky from within a notch in 100 million year old sandstone, I cannot avoid the knowledge that the breeze, the cummulus, and the invisible makeup of the air itself all have our fingerprints on them. Indeed, we humans dominate every one of the Earth's life support systems — the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle. There is simply no escaping this fact, anywhere on the planet.

So the idea of wilderness as a place where humans have no impact is quaintly outmoded, if it was ever legitimate to begin with.

But just because humans now dominate nature does not mean that it has ended. If anything, that domination compels us to seek out the relatively wilder places. To restore our connections to nature, of which we have never been apart.

<a ]E.O. Wilson[/url] gets it just right when he speaks of "biophillia," the human need to affiliate with other forms at the life. He believes there are two themes in our relationship with nature, "the expanding-circle theme that gives rights to all species, versus the anthropocentric theme that measures all good in the coin of human welfare." According to Wilson, "The two are resolved in part by noting that for human survival and mental health and fulfillment we need the natural setting in which the human mind almost certainly evolved and in which culture has developed over these millions of years of evolution."

That is certainly no less true of us city slickers than of Western ranchers (who I rarely see hiking in southern Utah canyons).

I think Robinson Jeffers gets at what I'm trying to say better than I can:

". . . know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history . . . for contemplation or in fact . . .
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken."

I personally think that we need to work on removing the boundry between city life and wilderness in order to better connect people to 'nature'. This may not be practical right now in every way, say grizzley bear corridors for example, people and bears probably don't want them going through major human population areas.. but we could do a much better job of bringing wilderness into our city life by having native gardens and creating bird and bug habitat. I'll try to think of some better examples of this, but someone who says it better than me is Kathleen Norris in her book 'Dakota'. She was a writer (journalist I beleive) from NY and she moved out to S. Dakota and she writes very beautifully about her connection with nature in Dakota.
One thing that I like a lot in her book is that she suggests how as a society, we can no longer appreciate the subtle beauties of 'nature'.. (think EXTREME sports). Kathleen argues that people move to places like CO because they need to be hit over the head with Nature, they can't appreciate a flat, wide open prarie and its more subtle beauty. I think there are many complex reasons for this, but one peice of it is this separation between city life and wilderness in my opinion.

A perspective from a 14-year-old: I know alot about the environment and can enjoy it just as much as many adults do simply because my dad is a science journalist and won't shut up about "wilderness" : - ) But many of my friends could care less for the effect humans have on the environment. They're either too obssesed with video games, or their parents don't feel motivated (or are not knowledgable enough) to say anything to their kids about wilderness.
It is becoming more evident that the destruction of our environment is going to have extremely negative effects on the human race. In order to stop this, someone needs to motivate kids to actually give a damn about the environment. How should we do this?

-- Sam Yulsman

A response to Rose's musings about bringing wilderness into the city:

If an essential aspect of wilderness is wonder at nature, then you can find it anywhere — even in the heart of the metropolis — if you are simply open and aware. Although I haven't read that author from Dakota, I suspect this is what she must be getting at.

I don't ordinarily quote poetry so much, but William Blake comes to mind:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

Hilary,
I don't disagree with the notion that it would be helpful to have a useful, modern definition of wilderness. However, generalizations and goofy examples aren't going to help. You were victim of some anti-urban bias in your interview, yet you point out the wolf-lover in the city as an illustration of wrongheaded conservation. It is a mistake to think that all city dwellers are ignorant of nature, just as it is absurd to think that rural inhabitants are more "in tune" with it. Rural development is one of the most destructive forces to land use today. The installation of septic systems, non-sustainable building materials, and a growing need for energy have a devastating impact on the environment. While it may seem like a dumb thing to point out, the danger to nature is (duh) humans, and the most efficient land use for people is in urban areas.
As you explore the meaning of nature, keep in mind that we are far, far beyond the Jeffersonian myth of a farm for every American.
Cute pic of Peso, BTW.

Two quick notes and then my point.

1) I've got to agree with Tim that "generalizations and goofy examples aren't going to help." A dialogue among people who already care about wilderness probably won't yield much beyond what has already been discussed in generalities. Specifics would be more productive I think.

2) Rose asks us to "think EXTREME sports" to envision why "we can no longer appreciate the subtle beauties of 'nature'." I'm willing to put my ass on the line and bet Rose does not participate in 'extreme sports.' And I challenge her, and many wilderness advocates to avoid simplistic prejudice by not alienating other people who also love wilderness however defined. Which brings me to...

MY POINT:

Why is mountain biking banned in wilderness areas? I am both an avid hiker, and an avid (and almost certainly 'extreme') mountain biker. I'd love to see the land I love protected from development and destruction, but whenever wilderness is proposed on land with a trail I can currently bike on, my support for wilderness designation evaporates.

The International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) has made real efforts to find common ground. One example is defining a new wilderness area to exclude a given trail (usually old mining and logging road cuts, old aqueducts, or other effectively permanent human scars on the landscape) so that biking can continue there. And just so we're all on the same page, blanket prejudice against bikes won't work here either. In the very limited published acadmic literature hikers and bikers trade off in greatest impact on wildlife (e.g. bikers startle bears that avoid hikers they hear coming; but big horn sheep flee more often from hikers that spend more time in their vacinity than bikers who pass through quickly); the greatest impact on erosion (e.g. bikers tend to have more impact going uphill because of wheel spinning, hikers more impact downhill as they slide and scrape down trails bikes roll down); etc. The point here is that the typical arguments I hear about destroying nature just don't hold water (ask me if you want references to some if this literature).

So here I am. I love nature. I'd like to see more of it protected. But every time protection is proposed, I'm told I can't enjoy the area any more doing my favorite activity (biking) despite the lack of scientific and common-sensical evidence of my activities being any worse than a hikers. And it's not that I want access to every single trail, I prefer to hike where bikes are not allowed. I am banned from EVERY SINGLE trail in any wilderness area. But what about the future. I want to save wilderness, the Sierra Club wants to preserve wilderness. Why the unyielding, uncompromising position that pits us against one another?

Is this the result of philosophical absolutism? My man made bike doesn't belong in (anti-human) wilderness? But your light weight aluminum alloy backpack and high-tech Leki suspension hiking poles do? If it is an uncompromising philosophical position, is it pragmatic for purposes of designating new wilderness areas to protect undeveloped land?

To Jason,
I guess you owe me your ass. I am very drawn to extreme sports, and I am a major trail and road runner, hiker, and I used to climb alot before I left for 3 months in EXTREME Antarctica this year. But that doesn't mean I won't question why I am drawn to extreme sports and why as a society, there is this trend toward extreme sports, and a trend in people wanting to believe what they do is EXTREME and hard core. My boyfriend is also a really good mountain biker, and would empathize with some of your arguements. I won't continue this discussion here though.
-rose

Jason wonders why mountain biking is banned in wilderness areas. I haven't seen the scientific literature showing that hiking and mountain biking have equivalent impacts, but I will admit my prejudice by saying I have a hard time believing this is so. Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise: Trails I run on that see only foot traffic seem to be less eroded than trails with multiple uses, including mountain biking.

But let's stipulate that Jason's summary of the scientific literature is correct. I would respond by saying that ultimately, science has much less to do with the basic rules that have been established for managing wilderness areas than do social and even spiritual values.

In fact, these values are written into the very legislation authorizing wilderness areas. So if you want to know why mountain biking is not allowed, you only have to go to the text of The Wilderness Act of 1964, which defined wilderness in this way:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

With this definition in mind, and as directed by Congress, land managers have drawn lines around areas and declared that inside, humanity's impact is considerably less than outside. And as a society, we go further by investing these areas with almost spiritual attributes. We use mythological language to describe them — words like "timeless," "unchanged" or even "unchanging," and "primeval," from the Act itself. No place on Earth is really "timeless," "unchanged," "unchanging," or even "primeval." So designating some region as embodying these ideas is really an expression of human hopes and needs — the hope that we can preserve some areas from much of the physical human overlay that now characterizes our planet; and the need, so aptly described by E.O. Wilson, to affiliate with other species in a relatively natural setting.

These were the hopes and needs recognized in the Wilderness Act. And as part of this social construction, we simply declare that to maintain "outstanding opportunities for ***solitude*** or a ***primitive*** and unconfined type of recreation," only foot traffic will be allowed. (Of course, we also allow mining in some wilderness areas. But that's for another discussion.)

If many other areas remain open to mountain biking and other kinds of recreation, is the Wilderness Act really that unfair? If I'm not mistaken, wilderness areas represent a tiny percentage of public lands in this country.

Hillary, would you be willing to come on a radio show and talk about this blog you've started? Contact me at

As one of the two people responsible for the author's urban upbringing, I'm heartened by the subject of the blog. It proves that growing up in New York City didn't do too much damage to her sensibilities.

To me, wilderness is a relative concept. I know people who would think The Ramble area of New York's Central Park is wilderness. Preserving an abandoned elevated rail line is as close as anyone I know comes to environmental activism. Every summer The New York Times sponsors the Fresh Air Fund to help city kids experience the country so they can see that the entire planet isn't paved over. If you took the average New Yorker and stuck him in a real wilderness setting he'd get an instant attack of agoraphobia.
But if you dug down several layers, down through the “sophistication�, the cynicism, the fear of bugs, most people would probably tell you that some
amount of wilderness is necessary for the soul. It's like the great Western National Parks - even though most Easterners have never been to them, it's nice to know they're there.

For some of us an empty beach on a winter's day with the ocean looking black and primeval is as close as we get to wilderness. Yet the longing for it is there, if only in a small way.

First: a message for Sam Yulsman, age 14, who questioned how to get his peers to expand their focus from video games and such, hopefully to get them interested int he environment. My suggestion- literature. There is a wealth of wonderful books out there for people- very exciting down to earth novels in which the protagonist has a very profound relatioship or experience in nature. Your librarian should be able to help, but start with "Legend of the Spirit Bear" by Ben Mikelson from Bozeman, Montana. I'm afraid I don't have the title just right, but you should be able to find it. For those wanting shorter reads, the "Julie of the Wolves" books are great. The list goes on and on.

Your question regarding why we feel this connect to the wild is interesting, but one that will never be answered. Why do I love? Why does nature sooth and calm? I have no idea, but keep in mind that both questions also serve as statements. By asking why there is a connection with nature is jumping what could be an initial question, do humans have a connection with nature. There's no need to ask. We do.

So why do we connect with nature? 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 matter.

Kant once wrote "we find that the more a cultivated reason deliberately devotes itself to the enjoyment of life and happiness, the more the man falls short of true contentment." I couldn't agree more.

thoreauslaughing.blogspot.com

To Rose: My ass is graciously yours if you really want it (my wife tells me it is pretty sweet).

On Mountain Biking 'science': Tom, I never said, nor does the very limited literature support that hiking and biking have "equivalent" impacts. The impact are quite different, but trail design, soil and vegetation type, impact type, climate regimes, and trail management decisions can make either hiking or biking more destructive. We all have anecdotal evidence that supports our point of view (confirmation bias). I could site cutting of trail switchbacks as an anecdotal example of hikers having worse impact (bikes cannot physically cut most switchbacks). But then I'd just be cherry picking the evidence that supports my point of view. Consider this one point re boulder open space: the limited number of trails open to biking concentrate all bikers on a small number of trail miles, effectively magnifying the impact of biking in Boulder open space many times over.

To Tom: I'm less interested in a discussion of the justifications for wilderness being designated "no bike" than with a discussion of the policy implications of such a view. The Wilderness Act was written before mountain bikes were even invented, so it's obvious to be why mountain bikes are banned. Essentially, the last one to the table is the last one to eat.

The important question, in my mind, is whether the exclusion of mountain bikes is a good idea for moving forward on protecting natural places. Let's descend from the generalities where we can so easily take all or nothing ideological positions.

From the iNternational Mountain Biking Association (IMBA):

- In Virginia, mountain biking leaders recently negotiated a compromise on a Wilderness proposal that protects lands and preserves bicycle access in the Jefferson National Forest by using a National Scenic Area designation.

- In northwest California, a Wilderness bill threatens to close more than 170 miles of trails to mountain biking. IMBA is committed to shaping a bill that is better for cycling and will continue negotiations.

- In Oregon, mountain bikers have answered a Wilderness proposal for the Mt. Hood National Forest with an alternative that would maintain access to singletrack while protecting all the areas in the original plan. The alternative specifies some land parcels to be managed like Wilderness, but allow bicycling.

- In Idaho, access to 85 miles of singletrack near Sun Valley is threatened by proposed Wilderness. IMBA and local riders are working with government officials to preserve this important cycling destination.

Would not the time and energy spent infighting among groups that all want to see nature protected be better spent against the 'enemies' of protection such as unreasonable extractive interests and anti-nature executive policies? For example, I am a conservationsist that is anti-*new* wilderness becasue I just can't bring myself to close even more trails to mountian bikes. Does that make me an ally of mining interests or developers? (facetious question)

Absolutist wilderness advocates (moving forward protecting more land, not trying to open up existing wilderness) have successfully alienated a small but growing contingent of activists that also want to see land protected (like me!).

Perhaps some of you have read Shellenberger and Nordhaus' *Death of Environmentalsim.* It basically argues that the environmental movement has backed itself into a corner by alienating previously allied interests (such as the labor movement) by taking absolutist, principled stands that result in less protection for nature than a more pragmatic and inclusive stand would have. In more provocative words, the religion of environmentalism is more concerned with the religion than with actual protetion of nature and people (sierra club vs. nature conservancy?). It's a controversial article, but I think the conclsuions are relevant to this discussion of wilderness.

J

Some responses to Jason:

Your approach to wild areas is clearly different from that intended by Congress in the Wilderness Act, and also from people like myself who believe there is value in preserving relatively wild areas to maintain a psychological and spiritual connection between human beings and nature.

You write: “The Wilderness Act was written before mountain bikes were even invented, so it's obvious to me why mountain bikes are banned. Essentially, the last one to the table is the last one to eat.�

Your use of the metaphor of “eating� crystallizes the terms of the debate. You see wilderness as just another place where people can “consume� nature to satiate their ever-expanding craving for recreation. Preservation of the land for the land’s sake — and for the psychological and spiritual benefit of human beings — which was the noble and visionary intent of Congress when it created the Wilderness Act, is not, apparently, what you have in mind. You want land preserved so you can consume it.

Congress did not establish a hierarchy of uses in wilderness areas. Quite the opposite. It intended specifically to prevent almost all kinds of human activity — and certainly “mechanized� activity. From the very first sentence of the act, Congress stated that it wanted “to assure than an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing ***mechanization***, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions.� Right from the outset, it is clear that Congress was not interested in setting aside areas to enable a plethora of different kinds of recreation. In fact, the Wilderness Act specifically bans motorized vehicles and equipment, and other forms of “mechanical transport.� Mountain bikes certainly are a form of motorized transport.

So what’s left? The act mentions several key characteristics in its definition of wilderness, including “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.� Mountain bikes screaming down wilderness trails do not promote “solitude.� Nor do they count as a “primitive� type of recreation.

You say that you are “not interested in a discussion of the justifications for wilderness being designated ‘no bike.’� So then why are we having any discussion of mountain biking in wilderness areas at all? If your point is that mountain biking should be allowed in wilderness areas, then how can we proceed with a discussion if we cannot talk about the pros and cons of allowing mountain bikes in wilderness areas? I’m not really sure what your point here is.

Was Congress right in setting aside certain wild areas to preserve them for their own sake — not for consumption — and establishing certain definitions that exclude most uses other than foot traffic? Even admitting that the concept of wilderness is problematic, I believe there is great value to identifying areas that are relatively wild and trying to preserve them in that state. As Bernie Rosner, Hillary’s father, pointed out in his comments, for many people, just knowing they are there is of great value. For those of us lucky enough to live near wilderness areas, we get to experience the solitude specifically mentioned by Congress, and to satisfy the biological imperative, described by E.O. Wilson, to step out of our constructed world and interact with other species in a relatively natural environment. I suppose this is a form of consumption too, but it is one specifically recognized by the Wilderness Act — and rightly so.

What psychological and spiritual harm would we suffer if we lost the few remaining areas left where true solitude and connection with nature are still possible?

Lastly, if the question is whether to designate certain areas as wilderness, or as National Scenic Areas or National Recreation Areas, the answer should be dictated by the nature of the land in question. If the land is laced with old logging roads, or trails that have long been used by mountain bikers, perhaps these areas are not wild enough to be designated as wilderness. I don't believe an absolutist approach to wilderness is right, because there is no absolute definition of what a wilderness is.

Tom,

Did my response to you seem as aggressive as your response to me does?

I just want you to know I don't want to eat wilderness areas. I don't expect they taste very good.

On a more constructive note. There are at least two major aspects of this policy worth distinguishing -- what Congress wrote (which you keep citing), and how it has been implemented. I think you may be confounding the two when you keep citing congressional language to justify agency rulemaking. If you really want to understand a policy, the rulemaking procedures, hearings held, interests represented, etc are quite important. This is especially the case if you want to talk about future invocation of the act (as I do). Less so I think if you want to justify past invocation of the act.

Thanks for the interaction on the subject Tom, it's been quite educational. :p

I haven't had time to thoroughly read all of the above since I'm at work and not really supposed to be reading this in the first place, but a few thoughts about mountain bikes and wilderness:

Interesting that you can ski and climb in some wilderness areas, but not mountain bike. My very high-tech ski gear certainly is not "primitive" (just look at the price tag!), and nor is the digital avalanche beacon I wear. (This past spring, I went on a 10-day backcountry ski trip in the Alaskan wilderness and my group probably had far more non-primitive, mechanized things than a group of mountain bikers.) Climbing cams are "mechanized"--squeeze them, stick them in a crack, let them expand. Then there's stoves, water filters, and all that stuff.

Oh, I just realized that we're primarily talking about *transport* through a wilderness area, not how you cook your dinner or locate someone in an avalanche. Still, as far as transport, is there that big of a difference between a mountain bike on the one hand and modern skis/boots and climbing cams on the other? I'm not sure.....

All good points, Nicole. Here are some things to consider:

I think we all agree that we've constructed this concept of wilderness for our own benefit. And in law, and culture, the consensus is that we should preserve areas deemed wilderness because they are relatively unscarred by roads and other modern human constructs.

There are obvious ecological arguments for preserving such areas. Beyond that, wilderness areas have been set aside as places where people can escape the modern, technologically constructed environment and renew their spirit through connection with the land in reasonable solitude. And this is the measure that has traditionally been used to judge which activities are appropriate and which ones are not. What other measure should we should?

In my opinion, backpacking meets this measure whereas mountain biking does not. A hiker on a trail is much less disruptive to solitude and a spiritual connection to the land than a mountain biker screaming down a stretch of rocky singletrack. Lighting a camp stove at night, however advanced the technology may be, also does not seem very disruptive. (In fact, it is much less disruptive than lighting a fire.) Neither does rock climbing seem disruptive. Yes, of course, the technology is advanced. But as a backpacker, I may not even be aware that someone is scaling a cliff nearby. Again, there is little or no impact on others' experience of solitude and spiritual connection to the land.

Back country skiing is an interesting example, because in some respects it is much like mountain biking. But back country skiing is mostly done off trail, where it has no impact on non-skiers, such as snow-shoers. And the number of people in the back country during the winter is much lower than in the summer, so the impact is lower as well.

I hate to come off as a curmudgeon. But I hear all of these arguments for allowing this or that activity in wilderness areas and I wonder where they will stop. It all sounds like special pleading.

There are so many spectacular places where it is possible to have a mind-blowing experience on a mountain bike (and I am quite eager to have these experiences myself) that I am puzzled as to why some people feel so strongly that we have to open wilderness areas to this activity. My goodness, wilderness areas comprise such a tiny part of publicly owned lands. Must every last acre be open to any activity that human beings dream up?

-- Tom Yulsman

I actually agree with you, Tom. Although I like to mountain bike, I don't think bikes are appropriate everywhere and think that in order to experience some places, you should walk or glide silently through snow.

It seems like there's another issue in the background, though. The places that we call wilderness areas (in the Lower 48 at least) don't strike me as all that wild. When you go backpacking in a Colorado wilderness area, there are no wolves or grizzlies. Is it really wilderness when the large predators have been removed? (Or when any major part of the ecosystem has been removed, for that matter.) And the area you are backpacking through is part of a highly managed forest that is scrutinized by a staff of natural resource professionals back in the office. There is even a "management plan," which seems contrary to the whole idea. You're hiking down a trail that's been maintained by wilderness rangers--when a tree falls and blocks the trail, someone in a uniform brings a cross-cut saw and removes it. After you settle into your camp, you might have a wilderness ranger appoach you and hand you a pamphlet on Leave No Trace ethics. In most wilderness areas excluding Alaska, you're never really all that far from a road if you need to bail quickly. If you have a sat phone, you're never out of touch. Not to mention all the other high-tech stuff in your pack. And maybe you're riding a horse.

Then we've decided that mountain bikes aren't OK in these "pristine" areas. Although I agree that we need to draw a line somewhere, I wonder if moderate numbers of responsible, informed mountain bikers would really compromise the spirit of wilderness more than it already is. (As a former wilderness ranger, I can assure you that they would cause less impact than the Boy Scouts I used to have to clean up after. Ever heard of "Charmin blossoms?" Let's just say they don't grow in the wild....) To me, the real problem isn't exactly what we do or don't allow but that unfortunately these places aren't truly wild in the first place and won't be again. I guess we want to keep them as wild as possible, hence no bikes, but at this point are we just doing damage control?

PS On a somewhat related note, many of the trails I walked down and maintained when I worked as a wilderness ranger in Idaho were ancient trails that Native Americans created by centuries of living and traveling in that wilderness. It's definitely a constructed definition for our own benefit, as Tom says.

My goodness Tom, you have misconstrued the mountain biker argument yet again. Here it is in one sentence:

New wilderness area designation threatens to unfairly and unreasonably shut down historical trail access for mountainbikers.

Before you head down this road, I'm not proposing access to every single trail -- I take a pragmatic approach, I don't make absolutist or principled claims that mountain bikes should be allowed everywhere and in all contexts.

You come off as a curmudgeon in my opinion for a very simple reason -- you have not yet looked beyond a very defensive point of view justifying the exclusion of some interests from existing lands.

Mountainbikers like me do not want to take away your precious solitude achieved at the expense of excluding mountainbikers (but notice there are no lands designated biker only). We are conservationsists (I've decided to stop being an 'environmentalist') who oppose sprawl, mineral development and resource exploitation in the beautiful places we love to travel in w/o polluting, noisy, or destructive motorized technology.

This is THE CLASSIC TACTIC for undermining a political movement. Encourage infighting and let various factions (of the conservationist community) bicker, expend resources, and become obsessed with attacking each other. While your opponents are busy attacking each other, quitely continue to undermine their interests (open lands to development, remove protections, etc). Sound familiar? It should if you read High Country News, the New York Times, or probably a slew of other publications I don't read regularly.

Justifying existing mountain bike exclusion from wilderness areas completely misses the point the mountain bike community is making -- we've been on these (not-yet designated) lands for years. If you're going to throw us off our favorite trails, you'd best darn well have a better reason than "we don't like you."

The larger point from my point of view is that the entire discussion/debate/political infighting caused by the above paragraph and all its implications undermines the potential power of a unified conservationist community. Is the damage to your psyche from (partial?) mountain bike access to *newly designated* lands worth the political price in (at the very least) fewer resources to spend on actual conservation of *new* lands. Given the modern anti-conservation climate, I think the curmudgeons of the world would do better to accept:

1) the pragmatic benefits of cooperating with other trail users by compromising on typically very small demands (e.g. leave these 50 miles of trail open to us on this proposed 10,000 acre parcel, all 50 miles in 250 acres)

2) the principled requirements of living in a democracy -- you can't exclude me from public lands to which I currently have access just because you don't like me...there have to be good reasons (e.g. environmental impact, wildlife conflict). Management plans can still address issues like user conflict by designating some trails multi-use and other hiker only (although I still think on principled grounds if there are hiker only trails there should be biker only trails). But I do wince at the idea of separate but equal on public lands...at the very least it will exacerbate the alienation of various user groups and probably their hostility toward each other.

In summary, TOM, you are misconstruing the mountain biker argument by focusing on opening existing wilderness. No mountain biker would be so bold. We just want to keep what access we have while preserving more new lands (unless there is good reason to limit our activities). Don't forget the larger context into which this argument fits -- the future of conservation from a pragmatic policy perspective.

Jason

Pulling back from the appropriate recreational use discussion, I'd submit that the key phrases in the 1964 Wilderness Act are "undeveloped," "where man does not remain," and "without permanent improvements or human habitation."

For me, the concept of wilderness is centrally described by what it is not – namely a place to live or make permanent improvements. Cities have their place, rural and agricultural lands have another, and undeveloped, uninhabited (by humans) places have yet another. The distinguishing characteristic of wilderness, since we are no longer nomadic hunters and gatherers in the majority of the world, is that it remains undeveloped.

From a policy perspective, this is the umbrella the coalition should share. The major threats to the conservation of wilderness are development and permanent extraction interests, not trail runners, backcountry skiers, mountain bikers, or even equestrians.

I believe we have the potential to affiliate, experience, commune and interact with the non-human creation/nature in any of these environments, developed and undeveloped. However, these rapidly dwindling “wild� places offer a unique and important environment where we can experience our earlier, simpler relationship with the creation.

Jeremy

Put me down in general as another hiker willing to share more (bit not all) outdoor areas with bikers because I believe human access to wildness is natural, healthy and good politics.Even though I don't think getting buzzed at high speed by some bikers.

"human access to wildness is natural" isnt the best sentence I've written but I meant it in david brower "man, not apart from that" sense. wilderness is not the opposite of or to the exclusion of man. as hikers evidence.

bikes, to me, arent fundamentally different to boots. they are human attached. same with canoes, horses. mechanized is not really equivalent to motorized and should have a different management regime. I would accomodate ATVs a little more than currently (to try to break past anti-wilderness establishment efforts) but far far less than bikes.

usage damage can in most causes be mitigated and repaired if government provided the budgets i think the public supports.

i know this doesnt cover the full debate but it covers the brief points i wanted to make right now.