Lorah Waters

Our "job" has occasionally been the envy of the others with whom we crusade for wilderness protection. This is necessarily so: they do their valuable work from within the confines of the Rat Race, requiring offices, computers and their presence at any number of long meetings; while our work is conducted from the relatively enviable position of "the field", on the periphery of the very areas we strive to protect with Wilderness designation. We get to camp in it, listen to the silence of the twilight and dawn, appreciate the vistas. They are frustrated at times, I am sure, by the inescapable fact that working to save something takes one far from the joys of simple, direct experience with that thing-in this case, the Wild. On many days, I find myself identifying with that frustration as well, surprising as it may seem from our vantage point.....

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Mike Colpo - Bike Mountain, Make Wilderness

“Wilderness,” by both popular and political definition, is a large physical space devoid of the artifacts of human interference—no occupied permanent structures, no motors, no roads. The vast, dramatic landscapes of the American West inspired our modern understanding of Wilderness, drawing hordes of pioneers westward intoxicated with the twin dreams of freedom and adventure. The opportunity and enigma these open spaces offer continue to challenge our modern understanding. To be something eligible for protection under the law, Wilderness must be a concrete thing, something that can be measured and documented. But in places such as the wide open stretches of modern-day Eastern Nevada, this much is obvious: Wilderness is quite indifferent to the feeble boundaries we place around it. It is limited only by imagination. It is a state of mind, a reality that can be entered with an odd mixture of choice, conviction, and surrender. And contrary to popular belief, you can go there on your bike.....

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