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Take a walk on the wild side

Community celebrates Wilderness Act

Wilderness is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.

On Saturday, the San Juan National Forest was joined by a list of proponents for such wild places to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. First implemented in 1964 to protect 9.1 million acres of precious lands, the act now includes 110 million acres of federally protected places.

Beginning with a two-mile Wilderness Walk along the Animas River Trail, the afternoon unfolded with a Family Fun Fair at the La Plata County Fairgrounds that included camp cook-outs, horses and llamas, primitive tool displays and seminars on outdoor equipment.

The all public-lands-employee band, The San Juan String Band, played bluegrass songs about the forest and its inhabitants.

Brian White, recreation and wilderness program manager for the national forest, said it was a chance to explain what wilderness means – and why it’s important.

“Those designated areas – one in five acres in the Rocky Mountain region – have no motorized uses, no mechanized uses, no permanent structures and no helicopters,” he said. “Once you pass that wilderness boundary, you’re on your own.”

He called the concept uniquely American. But since its inception, a dozen other countries have followed suit.

In Colorado, there are nearly 3.4 million acres of wilderness. The state’s largest – almost half a million acres – is the Weminuche, near Durango.

Ralph Swain oversees wilderness areas for the Rocky Mountain region and said 25 years of research shows that people value four things in an outdoor experience: clean air, clean water, wildlife and the ability to pass it on to future generations.

Associate director of wilderness-advocacy group Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Rose Chilcoat, said wild places make you feel alive.

“People are in a rush to be somewhere, their smartphone in hand, not looking up at the blue sky, not hearing the birds,” she said. “My fear is that someday we will have a generation of people that don’t know what wilderness is.”

Southwest Conservation Corps’ Kevin Heiner works months on end in the backcountry, restoring trails and building new ones. He called wilderness an opportunity to see what you’re made of.

“It’s a place to measure yourself up against a wilder world,” he said. “A place where your spirit can be free.”

bmathis@durangoherald.com



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