Page 5 - Spring 2014 magazine
P. 5
On September 3, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson
signed The Wilderness Act into law. It took eight
years and sixty drafts to get the law approved and
passed by Congress. The act produced a legal defini-
tion of wilderness in our country and created the Na-
tional Wilderness Preservation System. When Presi-
dent Johnson signed the act, he said: “If future genera- a diverse collection of contributors including politi-
tions are to remember us with gratitude rather than cians Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, Shoshone elder
contempt, we must leave them a glimpse of the world Corbin Harney, and the “Mother of Nevada Wilder-
as it was in the beginning, not just after we got ness” poet Marge Sill.
through with it.”
In the first essay entitled “Nevada,” natural history
In 1989 the Nevada Wilderness Bill was enacted. This author Ann Zwinger talks about how the landscape
bill increased the number of wilderness of the Great Basin turns Nevada “into
Sue Kolar
Sue Kolar
areas in our state from one, Jarbridge a treasure hunt” with its changing and
in northern Nevada, to thirteen. Today diverse beauty. Reno resident and
Clark County alone has 500,000 acres former New Yorker Patricia Swain,
of designated wilderness land. Parts of in her essay “Wilderness Point,” de-
LaMadre Mountain Wilderness and fines wilderness as “anywhere the
Rainbow Mountain Wilderness lie within quiet descends both within and
the Red Rock Canyon National Conser- without.” She points out that in Ne-
vation Area. vada you don’t have to go very far
from your home to find our state’s
In 2002, Great Basin National Park Rang-
“wealth”: trails, plants, trees, ani-
er Roberta Moore decided it was time for Sue Kolar mals, reptiles and birds.
the rest of the country to see the beauty of
the Nevada wilderness. With the help of Poet and activist Gary Snyder writes about his driv-
Friends of Nevada Wilderness, she compiled a collec- ing trips through the Great Basin. Rancher Linda
tion of thirty essays and poems written by people who Hussa’s poem disputes the idea that there’s nothing
truly believe that “Home Means Nevada.” in Nevada except the Las Vegas Strip. Professor and
Virginia City resident Gary Short writes about find-
Edited by Roberta Moore and University of Nevada,
ing a great-horned owl dead by the highway and
Reno Professor of Literature and Environment Scott
what he does to honor the owl’s memory. Non-profit
Slovic, the result is Wild Nevada: Testimonies on Be- director Shaun Griffin poetically explains that the
half of the Desert. Published in 2005, the book has
(Continued on page 18)
Page 5
