These places have given me something I don’t think I was capable of receiving in any other way, a quietude and a sense of transcendent insignificance.  For these permanent gifts, I am ever grateful.

My thoughts were turned in this direction when I recently read about an effort to identify the most remote place in the lower 48 states, as determined by elaborate satellite imaging and computer analysis.  In this instance, remoteness was defined in a way that even my 12-year old self would approve:  distance from a road.

Now, pause.  How far do you think this spot is from the nearest road?  How far do you think a place should be, to be really and truly Remote?

The lower 48’s remotest spot is in the southeastern corner of Yellowstone National Park.  It is 20.3 miles from a road.  From the ridge, the headlights of cars on the park’s highways are clearly visible, and the glow from Jackson Hole’s bars and boutiques smears the night sky.  Three government patrol cabins are located within three miles.   

So, if a Wyoming grizzly bear or wolf wants to get away from roads, the farthest it can get is 20 miles.  If a wolverine or a peregrine falcon or a human being would like to sit on a ridge at dusk and not see electric lights, it is almost impossible to do.  Let there be no doubt:  wilderness in America is almost extinct.    Even a seemingly expansive area like the 180,000 acre Kalmiopsis Wilderness works out to only about 16 by 17 miles:  a small box in which to fit a world.

We need wilderness because it is the world that made us.  We need it to preserve a space where the human spirit can unfold and tentatively acknowledge the kinship and common fate that we share with the natural world.  If we fail to protect the few remnants that remain, I fear a disconnected and tragic future for humanity. 

A century ago, John Muir wrote:  “The tendency nowadays to wander in wilderness is delightful to see.  Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.  Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of nature, and to get rid of rust and disease.”   Muir wrote those words in a world before radio and television, before the airplane, before the computer and before the chainsaw.  How much more rust has civilization layered upon us in the last 100 years, and how little wilderness is left to wash us clean again!