quetzalicow: June 20, 2010

Monday, June 21, 2010

This really was Lupe's waterfall, but what made it special is that Marcos followed Lupe and I over slippery boulders and across fallen logs, fording a glacial stream to be with us. Marcos is petrified of water and never likes to cross streams; he is not nearly as adept at climbing up rocks and branches, but nevertheless, he wanted to be with Lupe and I.

Ecotone

An ecotone is a transition area of vegetation between two plant communities, such as forest and grassland. It has some of the characteristics of each bordering community and often contains species not usually found in the overlapping communities. An ecotone may exist along a broad belt or in a small pocket, such as a forest clearing, where two local communities blend together. The influence of the two bordering communities on each other is known as the edge effect. An ecotonal area often has a higher density of organisms of one species and a greater number of species than are found in either flanking community.

What always strikes me in my walks through the Mt. Baker Wilderness and other wilderness areas is the overlapping of human communities on wilderness areas. This huge culvert, pictured in these photos, somewhat randomly implanted among a glacial stream, a nearby waterfall, huge cedar and fir trees and the mountains in the background, typifies this ecotonal relationship between the human and wilderness worlds.

The great West exemplifies a crash course in ecotonal affiliations between man and wilderness, and what we see is a sort of misguided symbiosis, in which one obstructs upon the other. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a lot of failures in this man-wilderness alliance, leaving both parties a little worse for the wear. Nevertheless, this culvert makes it possible for someone to drive over a glacial stream to get into a wilderness area closer to the glaciers and peaks that make this land so beautiful.

In a stroke of wisdom on man's part, the 1964 Wilderness Act preserved places where “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” These places that restore our souls, which we leave intact as a sort of moral obligation to ourselves and the land upon which we live, leave other spaces unprotected and vulnerable, though. As Wallace Stegner asserts, “[l]ike the other forms of land preservation, wilderness areas are doomed to be islands surrounded by what constantly threatens to invade and damage them.”

Stegner notes that if national parks were the best idea that America ever had, then “wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea.” Traveling with the dogs, I have seen how wilderness areas are by far the better option for seeing our great land, as most national parks have turned into Disney lands for those who only appreciate the outdoors but once or twice a year and then return back to their lives in front of television screens.

Teddy Roosevelt, of course, had a lot to do with leading our country to an appreciation of our wilds. His promotion of the Gospel of Wilderness was heavily based in his raw nationalistic optimism, and rightly so. He justified the national parks’ creation by boasting of their “essential democracy,” to be shared among the American people. More than any president before him, he was also aware of the perils that hyper-industrialization, mining, overgrazing, oil drilling and overpopulation presented to the nation.

In an age when environmentalists have been relegated to being scenery sellers in order to promote “eco-tourism,” just think about any debate revolving around the economic benefits of preserving a wild spot or saving a species in danger of extinction. Nevertheless, it is not economics that should motivate our preservation of the wild but rather our very souls. And that is what worries me--the idea that we have forgotten them.

In his essay, “Marshland Elegy,” a sort of call to defend prairies, marshlands, cranes and the other flora and fauna that inhabit these habitats, Aldo Leopold lays out the wilderness paradox: “The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.” This paradox indicates that there will probably never be a time when people will respect wilderness for what it is, because our land ethic is based on the notion of property and holding property. As Leopold points out in his landmark essay, “The Land Ethic,” the “most [valuable] members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbirds are examples.”

So, how can we put a price on wilderness? How can I put a price on being able to walk with my wife and two dogs and share a restorative experience for our 4 souls. No church, no business, no government can "fix" us (and undoubtedly, other human beings) quite like a walk in the woods. Nonetheless, these places continue to slip through our hands as the power of Don Dinero and the hypnotism of flashing screens warp our minds into a sad submission.