We are not, of course, in dire need of roads,
transmission towers, dams, reservoirs, and gas pipelines. We are in
dire need of courtesy. We are in dire need of a broadly intelligent
conversation about human fate. We are in need of a thorough and
piercing review of our plan for economic development, a plan that
at best is a hugely expensive speculation about human needs.
*Barry Lopez,
Testimony
Testimony, a
collection of essays and poems by 20 Western writers, includes
pieces as broad as the one by Barry Lopez on the economics of
wilderness and as precise and personal as a description by Stephen
Trimble of his favorite slickrock canyon.
Not for
sale, it’s a book with a mission: To influence legislators to vote
down Utah’s wilderness bill, H.R. 1745, considered an
anti-wilderness bill by environmentalists because of its small
acreage proposal, special language allowing development inside
wilderness areas, and hard release language prohibiting future
wilderness designations. The book was distributed to legislators
following a Sept. 27 press conference. Editors Terry Tempest
Williams and Stephen Trimble say their inspiration for the project
came from Wallace Stegner’s classic “Wilderness Letter,” sent to
the Kennedy administration in 1960, urging the designation of
wilderness areas.
As T.H. Watkins points out in
his essay, art and literature were used persuasively more than 120
years ago, when wilderness fans collected scientific evidence,
lyrical descriptions and the lush paintings of Thomas Moran into a
packet of information “that they waved into the faces of presumably
amazed and astounded senators and representatives until the
lawmakers did the right thing: Yellowstone National Park.”
For more information, contact Writers for the
Utah Wilderness, P.O. Box 1078, Salt Lake City, UT
84110-1078.
* Elizabeth
Manning
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Writers for Utah wilderness.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
