As Thoughtful As Zahniser

This article first appeared in Trail & Timberline magazine, in an issue devoted entirely to the subject of wilderness. To see the entire magazine, including the below article, CLICK HERE.
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“The wilderness…is indeed intensely human, and perhaps after all it is the human association with the wilderness—so intense, so remote from the artificial distractions of all our machines and contrivances—that gives to these wildlands their supreme value and gives to their preservation for still other human beings the ultimate justification and imperative.”
– Howard Zahniser

We could learn a lot from Howard Zahniser, and not just about the value of wilderness. His name is not often mentioned alongside the likes of Muir and Leopold, but his legacy may be more profound. Without the Wilderness Act that he authored—uniting the most wild of places into a system of wilderness reserves—the world might still be grappling with “a sequence of overlapping emergencies, threats, and defense campaigns,” the battleground against which he rallied in 1951.

“The wilderness that has come to us from the eternity of the past we have the boldness to project into the eternity of the future,” he wrote.

But to unite wilderness, he first had to unite opposing forces. His relentless promotion and justification for a wilderness bill was surpassed in significance only by his enduring pursuit of the broadest possible consensus around the bill. This may have been Zahniser’s greatest success. His dream was not to achieve any type of protection, but to forge a method of permanence, something he reasoned could only be achieved with respect and consideration for views unlike his own.

He searched for the virtues in the arguments of those who opposed wilderness, attempted to meet their objections with reason, and respected the integrity and sincerity of those on the other side of the wilderness line.

He did this not for himself but for wilderness. He genuinely yearned to reach some agreement whereby his interests and the interests of the opposition could be reconciled, for the benefit of wild places, wild things, and wild ideas.

It was his cloak of humility.

“Working to preserve in perpetuity is a great inspiration.
 We are not fighting a rear-guard action, we are facing a frontier.
 We are not slowing down a force that inevitably will destroy all the wilderness there is. We are generating another force, never to be wholly spent, that, renewed generation after generation, will be always effective in preserving wilderness.
 We are not fighting progress. We are making it.
We are not dealing with a vanishing wilderness.
 We are working for a wilderness forever.”

We want our Colorado to remain wild, like he wanted his wilderness to last forever. If you have no wild spaces in which to roam free, then how will you find yourself? If you can’t find calm in the singular tranquility of an alpine meadow, then what do you call serenity? If your views are muddied brown or your quiet shattered, then how will you ever think clearly?

Let us strive to be as thoughtful as Zahniser in whatever we do: meet opposition with wisdom, consider the opposition with admiration, stand true to our convictions and keep Colorado wild.

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