THE WILDERNESS MYSTIQUE

For a long time, I have nursed the belief that the kernel of the concept now embodied in our national wilderness policy was probably inspired by some of Arizona's wild country. Conservation historians identify Aldo Leopold as the American who originated and articulated the idea that evolved into the wilderness bill Congress enacted in 1964. My study of Leopold's life and writings tells me that his philosophy about the importance of saving expanses of wild land as a "cultural inheritance" for future generations crystallized during the second decade of this century, when he was working as a pioneer forester in Arizona's White Mountain country.

Two of the finest essays in Leopold's classic book, A Sand County Almanac, are about the "aristocracy of space" and "the high solitudes" he experienced on the roof of the White Mountains. He wrote poetically of the many moods of these mountains, of their great meadows, and of the magnificent wildlife that roamed in these forests. He also composed an essay about the blue dome of Escudilla Mountain that dominated the skyline where he worked in the new national forests created a few years earlier by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Leopold's original concept was that some virgin areas in our national forests should be designated by forest managers for nonexploitation and preserved as wild and "primitive" lands. That principle was first implemented in 1923 when a Gila Wilderness was established in an extension of this same range of mountains in New Mexico.

Aldo Leopold soon realized that his concept had a serious flaw: boundaries and areas thus designated could be altered at the whim of a forest manager. This defect led to a thirty-year campaign that culminated in 1964 with the enactment of a law setting up ground rules for a national wilderness system. That statute put more than nine million acres into the new system; even more important, it created a procedure by which Congress could give wilderness status to other eligible areas.

Historically, most industry groups that use public lands have opposed the creation of wilderness enclaves. To them, the policy "locks up" resources the nation will need in the future. Conservationists counter by pointing out that, in addition to the value these reserves have as havens for endangered species of plants andanimals, they serve as prime watersheds and offer wilderness experiences many consider the finest form of outdoor recreation. For obvious reasons, the dispute is destined to be a never-ending argument. There are signs, however, that the wilderness ethic is gaining more adherents as the years go by.

The Arizona Wilderness Act passed by Congress in 1984 had a broad sweep: it added forty areas in all parts of Arizona - including the summits of our highest peaks to our official wilderness estate. The law also encompassed a piece of conservation pioneering by conferring wilderness status on huge tracts of "BLM lands" administered by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management. And, as a final grand gesture, the bill established what ultimately may be Arizona's only federal Wild River-a twenty-sevenmile unspoiled stretch of the Verde, above the lake formed by Bartlett Dam.

ARIZONA AND THE WILDERNESS MYSTIQUE

Big decisions remain regarding the classification of Arizona's federally owned lands. Under the framework established in the basic law, it was contemplated that four categories of national lands would be studied to ascertain if they encompass areas that qualify as wilderness. These are the BLM, national forest, national park, and national wildlife system lands. Under the Wilderness Act, Indian tribes (which own twenty-seven percent of Arizona's real estate) are free to make their own decisions about giving wilderness protection to some of their lands.

In the last two decades, Congress has passed legislation that conferred wilderness status on forty-eight separate parcels of Arizona land totaling 2,037,000 acres (or nearly three percent of the land mass of the entire state). Thirty-five of these areas are within national forests; nine are located in BLM-managed properties; and four are in national park preserves and monuments (Organ Pipe Cactus, Petrified Forest, Chiricahua, and Saguaro). But the list has two glaring omissions: Grand Canyon National Park and the federal wildlife refuges, which constitute some of our state's most remarkable unmarred lands. The Arizona Wilderness Coalition's next goal is to persuade Congress to make a decision about the Grand Canyon-and to identify the sections of Arizona's magnificent Kofa and Cabeza Prieta national wildlife refuges that merit wilderness status.

Arizona has good reasons to be proud of its wilderness pioneering. It has led the way in providing protection for large tracts of BLM lands-and it can boast that it has the only major city in the nation, Tucson, that is bordered on three sides by a wil-derness estate within walking distance of its inhabitants. Still, the question recurs: how can a nation that favors aggressive development of its resources justify such withdrawals? During the wilderness debates in the 1960s, one of our neighbors, the late Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, put it this way: "Wilderness is an anchor to windward. Knowing it is there, we can also know that we are still a rich nation, tending to our resources as we should-not a people in despair searching every last nook and cranny of our land for a board of lumber, a barrel of oil, or a blade of grass...."

And a Western historian, Wallace Stegner, added: "We need (such lands) even if we never go there...as part of the geography of hope."

Arizona's wilderness proposals aroused lively controversy when they were advanced by conservationists. On several occasions, Representative Morris Udall, chairman of the House Interior Committee, was denounced as a landgrabber by the state's leading newspaper. It appeared there would be a stalemate until Senator Barry Goldwater locked arms with Udall as a cosponsor of the "big bill." The two-both native sons, and both former candidates for President-demonstrated once again that when their state's land legacy is on the line, they see eye to eye. Long after they are gone, I am confident the pristine realms portrayed in this issue of Arizona Highways will stand as inspiring monuments to the vision and statesmanship of these lawgivers.