EARTH DAY WATCH : Ah, Wilderness

No American national fantasy has deeper roots or a longer history than that of leaving human corruption behind and heading out into God’s Country. Earth Day, which we celebrate Wednesday, owes much to this dream. The High Sierra has cried to many, as it did to naturalist John Muir, “Save me, and I will save you.” In wildness, as Thoreau wrote, is the salvation of the world.

And yet that dream may have destroyed as much as it saved. For as translated into action, it has created not just the Sierra Club and the Worldwatch Institute but also suburbia, exurbia and, most recently, endless variations of what Montanans call “the California ranch”: acreage subtracted from the forest and furnished with a large house in “rustic” style complete with all imaginable amenities. Those who fled early despise those who are fleeing late. And, of course, both groups pity those who--small of soul or purse--remain trapped in the city.

But if the salvation of the world is in wildness, the salvation of wildness is in the city. The spread of the human habitat wrecks the habitat for other species. But the only way to halt the wreckage is to make the urban habitat so attractive that the urge to flee will be quieted and wilderness-loving wilderness-wreckers will stay home.

You can’t flee the greenhouse effect by building a cabin at the end of a dirt road. But even the smaller, more traditional challenges of wilderness preservation can only be confronted by making the urban habitat fit for humans to live in. The city, too, is a part of the Earth.