Page 8B Friday, June 23, 2006 Longboat Key News

The Natural Travelerby Rusty Chinnis & Christine Killeen

“For me, and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most impor-tant passion of life is the overpower-ing desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civiliza-tion. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas are absolutely essential to happiness.”

-Bob Marshall (1902-1939)

We have all bumped into ideas that speak so clearly to us that we are amazed never to have thought of them ourselves. So who was this man Bob Marshall, and why did he have such an astute understanding of the value of wild open spaces? In the process of answering that question, a surprising portrait emerges of a man who, with a few friends, became the architect of today’s Wilderness Society.

Born on Jan. 2, 1901 in New York, Marshall was one of four children of Louis and Florence Marshall. His father, a successful attorney, fought for the rights of minorities, and was an active conservationist. Louis Marshall recog-nized the importance of protecting the Adirondacks and Catskills, because of their beauty and their crucial impor-tance to the water supply of New York City, and was instrumental in getting them protected under the “forever wild” designation.

The Meaning of Wilderness

Inspired by his father, and enamored of the mountains and woodlands of Lower Saranac Lake where, as a young man he and his family spent summers, Marshall aspired to a life in the outdoors as a “for-ester.”

A bright, shy young man, Marshall even-

tually received a Ph.D. in plant physiology from John Hopkins University. A prolific writer, he published an article in 1927 in “The Nation” in which he was the first to show that poor growth in trees could be detected in the tree rings, and developed a theory that correlated poor tree growth with inadequate rainfall.

In the early 1930’s, he spent a year in Wiseman, Alaska among the Koyukuk people, gathering information for his book “Arctic Village”, published in 1933. When he was paid for the book, he kept half of the money and shared the other half with the Koyukuk people. His passion for the outdoors was reflect-ed in an article published in 1930 in which he observed that because the “wilderness had an aesthetic beauty that no other place has, there should be an organization of spirited people to unite for the preservation of the forests.”

In 1934, Marshall’s words were translat-ed into action after a hike to Clingman’s Dome with several of his friends. Marshall, then director of the Indian Forest Service, and “friends” Benton MacKaye, “Father of the Appalachian Trail,” Bernie Frank, a TVA engineer, and Harvey Broome, a Knoxville lawyer, hammered out an idea for a wilderness league.

In January 1935, Aldo Leopold, a wild-life biologist and author of the sem-inal book “Sand Hill Almanac” (which first proposed the “land ethic” concept), and Robert Sterling Yard (publicist for the National Parks) joined Marshall and friends in Washington, D.C., and created the Wilderness Society. Their intention was simple. “All we desire to save from invasion is that extremely minor fraction of outdoor America which yet remains free from mechanical sights and sounds and smells.”

Their first challenge as an organization was to prevent the flooding of Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains. Developers wanted to create a lake and skyline drive to augment the luxury lodg-es they wanted to build in the area. The Wilderness Society fought and won this case in 1935, and the Cove became a part of a living history exhibit in the park.

Although this was a great victory for Bob Marshall and the Society he helped to create, it was his untimely death that

would help to ensure a financial foun-dation for the organization. In 1939, at age 39, he died on a train en route from Washington D.C. to New York City. In his will, he bequeathed one-third of his rather sizeable estate, or roughly $500,000 (in 1939, a small fortune) to the Wilderness Society.

Today the Society, over 70 years old, continues to work for the preserva-tion of lands at a time when our pub-licly-held legacies are under wholesale attack by big business interests.

In Florida, the organization helped to protect the Big Cypress National Preserve, located next to Everglades National Park, when Collier Resources Company, owners of the mineral rights within the park, wanted to move forward with a plan for oil and gas exploration. This preserve acts as a buffer zone against encroach-ing development and pollution and is one of the “most spectacular and biologically important ecosystems on the planet.” Had the plan been allowed to move forward, thousands of pounds of explosives would have been used to search for oil, effectively eliminat-ing wildlife habitat. In addition, the miles of access roads needed for this search would have forever destroyed a delicate plant ecosystem.

On the national front, one of the more recent battles the Society fought was a proposal in President Bush’s 2007 budget to sell off $1 billion worth of public lands, ostensibly to fund rural schools. When this plan met with widespread opposition from hunters, anglers and bipartisan groups of elected officials, Senators Ron Wyden and Max Baucus proposed instead that rural schools “be financed by closing a loophole that had been letting some government contractors avoid paying taxes.”

These are just some of the issues that the Wilderness Society addresses in it’s fight to preserve our last remain-ing wild spaces.

You can view the work of this great organization, or join them in this work to preserve our wilderness legacy for generations to come by going to www.wilderness.org.

Rusty Chinnis The Nushagak river runs through Alaska’s virgin wilderness to the Bering Sea. The Wilderness Society protects unique ecosystems like these for future generations.

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