“We’re running out of it,” I thought to myself as we as neared the northern edge of Colorado. I remembered looking at this portion of Colorado’s map before ever having visited the state. “No man’s land,” I thought, then.

I was on a small bush plane bound for Jackson, Wyoming. I was one of eight college students selected for EcoFlight’s 11th annual Flight Across America Program. This year, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, the theme was “Wilderness.” I was involved in what I now describe as an airborne think tank of students, each with some unique academic input and personal relationship to wilderness.

As we flew, I marveled at the spider web-like network of roads and petroleum extraction sites that stretched underneath us. It had been only a few minutes since we were in the seemingly boundless Maroon Bells Wilderness area in Aspen. “Where did it all go?”

We have the illusion, from the ground, that cities and towns are set like little pockets of civilization in a big interminable mass of forests and plains. From the air, however, it appears more to be an endless sprawl of roads, pipelines, factories, mines, power plants, stores, houses, towns, lots and agriculture that dominate and dissect the would-be wilderness.

There are many varying views on how to, and whether we even should, protect our nation’s remaining wild lands. Die-hard conservationists will tell you that we should immediately protect all of what remains. Many oil and gas folks, along with some motor-heads, tout the view that no more wilderness should be protected and that some should even be repealed.

Yet the emerging voice of the youth-conservation movement tries to encompass the needs of both man and nature – adopting a modern, pragmatic version of Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic. This voice embraces the various needs of those who seek access for mechanized recreation such as mountain biking, while also addressing the need for strong protections against development and overuse. The youth-conservation movement seeks to love the land but not love it to death.

Phil Carter

Durango