Wilderness

I have been on hiatus for....oh since about the day that I got to Wyoming and moved into a truck in the Red Desert.  My truck-inhabiting days are coming to a swift close though, thanks entirely to the Wyoming winter that dropped 8 inches of snow on us over the last 2 days.  So now I feel it is time to share some stories of my wilderness inventorying and of what this has all come to mean to me.  First, a bit about what I really do, because I have come to find out that many of you have no idea, and that is okay!  I am quite happy to educate you all!  Below is an excerpt from an article about my work that I wrote for the winter newsletter sent to members by the non-profit I work for, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, to read the whole thing please consider joining BCA and supporting the great work that we do!

"Even those who are conservation minded don’t always have a strong grasp of what a wilderness inventory is, and why they are important.  So what do I really do?  I map routes, roads, and human influences in otherwise predominantly un-human influenced areas.  Why does this matter?  Because if I can prove that these areas possess “wilderness characteristics” such as outstanding opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation, than I can potentially be a catalyst in their lasting protection, and what more can I give to the generations to come than the joy of a wild place preserved?"

So this is what I do in a nutshell, but what I really seem to do is take a lot of photos of roads and change a lot of flat tires.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my job, it is perfect for me, I love the challenges and the beauty, and the fact that I have the real potential to bring about lasting change for at least 5 small corners of the beautiful Wyoming Wilderness.  And I am really good at changing tires.  Here's the wonderful part, I think when you are doing good work, good things come to you, and although I have had 3 flat tires in the course of this summer, at least 2 of them happened at just the right time.  By this I mean that when I am in the desert I rarely have cell phone service, and I tend to stay out for between 4 and 8 days at a time, i.e. longer than the accuracy of the weather forecast that I checked before I left.  Rain in the desert means slippery and dangerous roads and no chance of getting any work done, not to mention a greatly increased chance of getting stuck. The second to last flat tire that I got forced me to leave the desert 4 days earlier than planned, but just in time to miss 3 straight days of rain.  The last flat tire was this Sunday night, in the dark I might add, and it sent me into town 6 days early and just in time to find out that 3 cold fronts were headed right for me; dropping not only temperatures, but also several inches of snow.  So I appreciate my flat tires, for all the trouble that they have caused, I suspect that they have saved me from quite a bit more.

Plus I love the challenge, changing a truck tire is no easy task, and I've had some doozies, tires so flat that I can't fit a jack under them, in darkness, and rain, and cacti were often involved.  Every time I finally get through changing a tire I feel like a rock star; yeah, I just did that, all by myself, and I could do it again if I wanted to.  I love that, almost as much as I love the feeling of completing an inventory, now that is a victory.  By the time I am done with an inventory, I know every route, road, fence, and structure on a property; all the folds of the topography, and all of the property bounds.  I can navigate like a pro, I can hit any little 2 track road, no matter how small, and know exactly where I am, I can point to every hill I hiked and every arbitrary property line that I surveyed.  I love that, I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with the completion of something like that; yeah I memorized those 12,000 acres, and now I'm going to go do it again with 10,000 more, no big deal.

It's not all fun and flat tires though, the advocacy side of things (what I'm getting into now, since my field work is wrapping up) is a challenge of another sort.  The term wilderness means different things to different people, and many tend to visualize pristine mountain streams and dense forests when wilderness is brought to mind.  That's great, because those are wildernesses and also deserve protection; but a desert is too, although many have trouble recognizing this as wild land and not waste land.  The definition of wilderness that I follow comes from the Bureau of Land Management, because they are the ones who will make the call as to whether the land that I wish to protect qualifies for wilderness protection, but folks who have no experience in wilderness designation and its official definition tend to have a definition more like this one in their heads:

wil·der·ness  (wldr-ns)
n.
1. An unsettled, uncultivated region left in its natural condition, especially:
a. A large wild tract of land covered with dense vegetation or forests.
b. An extensive area, such as a desert or ocean, that is barren or empty; a waste.
c. A piece of land set aside to grow wild.
2. Something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion: the wilderness of the city; the wilderness of counterespionage; a wilderness of voices.

I resent this definition, especially part 1.b., which describes wilderness in deserts as "barren," "empty," and "a waste."  These are the attitudes that I face in my efforts to encourage others to protect these areas, a sentiment that there really isn't much there worth protecting.  It's not their fault, usually they have never been, have no idea what is or is not there, and some of them don't even know that Wyoming even has a Red Desert, at least not beyond the run down gas station at the Red Desert exit on interstate 80.

There is a lot more to this area than what can be seen from the I-80 corridor, acres and acres of beautiful buttes and sage brush country, wild horses and pronghorn herds, startlingly beautiful sunrises and sunsets, million upon millions of stars in the night sky.  These beautiful natural treasures are slowly being encroached upon by various energy and mineral extraction developments in such volume that it will take decades for the land to recover, if ever.  Below is a picture of the Jonah Field, the poster child of inefficient and destructive energy developments, from The Daily Climate.  This is the kind of development that I wish to prevent.  Don't get me wrong, I am not "against" the energy industry or fuel extractions as a practice, I am a realist and I know how heavily we depend on them in every facet of our lives.  The goal of my work is not to stand in the way of energy development (wilderness designation is one of the few designations that protects land from energy and extraction based leasing) but I am hoping to encourage innovations in smarter growth and development.  In short, I know I'm not going to stop the interested companies from getting at the fuels in the earth underneath my proposed wilderness areas, but at least I can ensure that in order to get at it they have to be smart about it and not destroy the land above it.

So this is my life these days, each day a wonderful adventure trying to protect the Wyoming wilderness.  Obviously I am enjoying it, but I am also saddened by it too, the mere fact that I need to fight the fight that I am fighting means that despite how far we have come as a society, in general people still forget that without this beautiful planet we would be nothing.  Nature has created a perfect, balanced system all on its own that we are slowly taking apart, one piece at a time; the least I can do is to try to be the proverbial barefoot hippie girl, trying to hold my ground against the bulldozer of development.

"The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." 

-Aldo Leopold