Empty is one of those words that reveals unspoken attitudes. Says Paul Gruchow in his book The Necessity of Empty Places: “Empty unoccupied or uninhabited unfrequented…. Wilderness, said President Theodore Roosevelt, must yield to the needs of people: “Surely … a rich and fertile land cannot be permitted to remain idle, to lie as a tenantless wilderness, while there are such teeming swarms of human beings in the overcrowded, overpopulated countries.” We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” Said Henry David Thoreau: “At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us…. Those environmentalists who talk about preserving the wilderness in Alaska - how many goddamned bloody people will end up going there in the next 100 years to suck their thumbs and write poetry?” I say we should preserve the redwoods, sure, maybe 100 acres of them, just like the way God intended them, to show the kids.

Says Justin Dart, an advisor to former President Reagan: “I am for preservation. Information like that usually evokes two kinds of reactions: One is: So what? The other is: Let’s save every bit we can, while there’s still time! In Europe, India, and most of China there is no wilderness. outside Alaska just two areas qualify as wilderness - the Greater Yellowstone area and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. Over 60 percent of this remaining wilderness is tundra, ice, or desert. How much of the earth’s surface would you guess is still wilderness? According to a Sierra Club survey, about one-third of the earth’s land area can still be called wilderness (defined as at least one million acres upon which there is no road, powerline, airport, dam, or other major human construction).

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