Wilderness Likened to Cathedrals

Guy and Laura Waterman coauthored five books about the wilderness, including “Backwoods Ethics,” “Wilderness Ethics,” “Forest and Crag,” and “Yankee Rock and Ice.” Their latest, a collection of 20 stories, is titled “A Fine Kind of Madness: Mountain Tales, Tall and True” and is due to be published in September.

With vivid description, exhaustive research and humorous anecdotes, they examine the way hikers and campers have affected the backwoods. Passionately, they write about the need for stewardship, the need to preserve the spirit of the wilderness as well as the wilderness itself. Their books set the tone for a debate about environmental preservation that has lasted to this day.

Here are some excerpts:

Wilderness areas are like cathedrals, and there are some things you just don’t do in cathedrals. You don’t drive a dirt bike there; you don’t play a radio; you don’t fly a helicopter up the nave to the chancel even though that would be an efficient way to supply wine and wafers for Sunday’s “users”; you don’t mark the aisles with plastic ribbon to find your pew or to note where the carpet needs repair.

--Wilderness Ethics

Most people think of the attractions of the backcountry in terms of sights: striking mountain vistas, the rolling green carpets of hillsides that flame into orange and red in the fall, lovely waterfalls and cascades, intimate miniatures of moss and fern. But the sounds as well as the sights of the backcountry attract the perceptive visitor. And the principal sound to treasure is that of silence.

--Wilderness Ethics

Then, as they came around out of the lee of the summit, the full fury of the wind slammed into them, blowing a steady torrent of ice crystals into their faces. Progress became painfully slow. To guard against losing their way--which could have been disastrous--the son would go out from the last identified cairn as far as he could and still see it. Then the father would go out from there as far as he could without losing sight of the son, and stand there waiting for some brief lapse in the wind to try to squint forward into the fury of the storm in a forlorn effort to find another cairn.

--Backwoods Ethics

People say, for example, that one can’t expect to find wilderness on the Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. What they mean is that a whole lot of people can be found there on a good summer’s weekend, and the evidence of man’s passing is abundant in trampled trails, eroding soils, and the ruins of the old summit house on the top of Lafayette. But we invite you to venture onto that ridge on a storm-swept midweek October day, when the wind nearly blows you off your feet and the mist swirls among the pinnacles and boulders, coating them with ice. Those who cannot feel the spirit of the wildness on the Franconia Ridge at such a time are poor in spirit indeed.

--Backwoods Ethics

We have a rare and precious “resource” in the backcountry and it isn’t defined by just the physical resources of trees, wildlife, streams, or even mountains. What we have to defend is the opportunity for people to get on one-to-one terms with the natural world, to experience the full challenge of the backcountry--not some phony or illusory sense fostered by well-groomed trails, bridges over every stream, and instant rescue if you stub your toe. Katahdin is not just Central Park 400 miles removed.

--Backwoods Ethics