The Geography of Hope

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is important to us simply because it is there - important, that is, simply as idea. It can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

Wallace Stegner

Photos: Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO, June 6, 2015

Arid space suggests unrestricted freedom and unlimited opportunity.

"Space, itself the product of incorrigible aridity and hence more or less permanent, continues to suggest unrestricted freedom, unlimited opportunity."

Wallace Stegner 

Photo: Scorpionweed, with Castle Rock in the background; near Moab, UT; May 5, 2014. "Incorrigible" means inveterate, habitual, confirmed.

The West is the native home of hope.

 

“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”

Wallace Stegner

Photo: Ranch entrance, near Dubois, WY; August 30, 2013

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The Geography of Hope

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.  The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.  It is important to us simply because it is there - important, that is, simply as idea.  It can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

Wallace Stegner

Photo: Rose Hips and a rocky outcrop; Granite Ridge Trail, Red Feather Lakes, CO; November 8, 2013

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The wilderness idea is a part of the geography of hope.

"The wilderness IDEA is a resource itself.  Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed . . . The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health . . . It is important to us simply because it is there - important, that is, simply as idea . . . It can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

Wallace Stegner

Photo: Looking down from Hurricane Pass on Alaska Basin and teal-colored Sunset Lake on July 6th, 2012.  The pass is in Grand Teton National Park; the basin is in Jedediah Smith Wilderness. Both are in Wyoming. The wildflowers are Western Yellow Paintbrush and Alpine Sweetvetch.