In Praise of Wilderness

“Wilderness”

“But love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach, it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need—if only we had eyes to see…Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”

                                  Edward Abby

         Yesterday we drove through miles and miles of national seashore, protected wetlands and animal preserves.  It was wonderful to see these areas milling with birds and deer and I’m sure snakes, though I didn’t encounter any.  I am quite certain that the brown pelican is only one or two mutations removed from the pterodactyl.  Watching them fly. and dive, and skim the water with their wide, down-stretched wings and enormous beaks is a primordial experience.  We saw a particular type of tern flapping and dipping in the marshes that just days ago was abiding on the polar ice caps.  Its migratory journey covers 27,000 miles each year. 

         Yes, there are the usual beach excesses---too many restaurants with cute names like The Froggy Dog and Dirty Dicks Crab Shak, sunburned, red-eyed teenagers on senior trip wolfing down food like there’s no tomorrow, and the gargantuan houses built smack on the beach on stilts, just daring the hurricanes of 2011 to blow them into pink and green heaps of rubble.  There are too many gaudy shops selling trashy paraphernalia from China that no one on earth needs, and too many kite shops featuring huge wings that fly above the water dragging a human beneath them.  But in between and for long stretches, sprawling, blessed wilderness.  Not one oil or natural gas rig—praise the Lord—just a few, quiet windmills turning in the ten mph winds.

         I remember the bloody battle activists waged forty years ago to save the dunes on these barrier islands and I am gratified to see their determination prevailed.  Henry David Thoreau wrote in On Walden Pond, that “All good things are wild and free.”  North Carolina has always had the foresight to preserve wilderness areas for future generations—the only old-growth forest east of the Mississippi River is here.  I look forward to bringing my grandchildren (should I ever have any) to these protected shores to be ‘wild and free’ with all the other creatures.  I have a grateful heart this morning.  I hope you do as well.

                                  Thanks be to God,

                                  Jane