Who is left? WLC-05

 Land managers are debating restricting the number of visitors to the wilderness, to provide fewer visitors with more (read as better quality) solitude. 

  But solitude can also come in a dark room with headphones on. Can the lone trekker find solitude if he looks up and sees an airplane fly overhead or the twinkle of a light at a farmstead miles away across the valley? 

 It is up to us to determine whether we want “wildness or naturalness” and what our expectation of wilderness is. 

Aldo Leopold saw the need to show wilderness to the city dwellers for the good of the city folks mind set, and to encourage protection of the wilderness by the city folk that came and saw it and thusly fell in love with wilderness enough to want to protect it. 

But he saw a paradox in getting many people out into nature. . “All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.” ― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. 

Then Leopold talked of a river, but might as well have been talking of wilderness when he said…“The life of every river sings its own song, but in most the song is long since marred by the discords of misuse .…then comes a park with roads and tourists. Parks are made to bring the music to the many, but by the time many are attuned to hear it there is little left but noise. –Aldo Leopold,  Gavilan Essay. 

 So then we must ask ourselves, if we cannot find wilderness because of a tight definition or high expectation, or we cannot use the wilderness that does exist because we are restricted from using it to keep it as solitary wilderness, who is left to care for the demise of the wilderness?