A territory of the heart

by Mary Jean Porter

Wilderness: a place apart; a cathedral where the sky sweeps down to met the earth, where rivers born of frozen lakes start their journeys to the sea, where centuries and seconds pass equally in the slow, uncaring cycles that govern nature.

Wilderness: a refuge for plants and animals where life can flourish undisturbed by human interference; a “savage” land beyond the civilizing influences of humanity.

Wilderness: a place that existed long before us and will exist long after us; a place that has no use for us, but which we need for many reasons; the place from which we came.

Wilderness: a haven of solitude and peace; an antidote for the stressed life; a place where the only wars are fought between the elements, where the only schedules are the ones we impose on ourselves, and the only clocks are the sun, the moon, and the seasons.

Wilderness: a place with enough breathtaking beauty to feed the soul for a lifetime; to inspire poets and painters, hunters and hikers; to reward earthly men and women with a glimpse of heaven.

Wilderness: a territory of the heart

The Sangre de Cristo Wilderness Area in southwest Colorado is all of these and much more. It is as simple and beautiful as the five-petaled wild rose that grows along the edges of its meadows, as complex as the debate about how America’s public lands should be managed.

Running along the crest and down the slopes of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, the wilderness area attracts residents from the valleys on either side—people who consider it “home” because they grew up hiking or hunting in the mountains or because their families once cut wood or grazed their sheep or cattle there.

People also come from nearby cities such as Pueblo and Colorado Springs, from more distant places such as Denver and Boulder, from other states and countries. They come for a day, or to spend a long holiday weekend, or to hike for a week up and down the area’s steep trails. They come to climb a “fourteener” or two, to fish in a shade-dappled pool, to ski or snowshoe quiet miles through a forest-turned-fairyland, to see the wildflowers or the aspens at their most vivid.

They take photos or write poems or paint pictures to match their dreams.

They eat squashed sandwiches and reconstituted “backpacker” dinners, and they drink lousy cowboy coffee. They endure soggy socks, sunburned and windburned faces, ticks, mosquitoes, ants, blisters, rain, hail, snow and wind, and sometimes leaky tents and stony ground.

They come in all seasons, in all weather, even when common sense should keep them at home. They come to the wilderness area because they can’t stay away.

What lures them, what siren whispers her song of beauty, mystery, and pleasure?

The attractions of wilderness

The reasons people seek out wilderness might be as individual as visitors’ names, but many people come to the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness Area—to any wild place—because they seek a connection with something greater than themselves—the natural world, spirit, God; call it what you like.

I think they want to spend time in a quiet, beautiful, often lonely place so they can feel what it really means to be alive; what it means to exist, however briefly, in a world that hasn’t been significantly changed by people.

People want to realize—at a level deeper than the intellectual—that a spring-fed lake high in the mountains is where their water actually comes from; that berries, rosehips, acorns, grass seeds, fish, and “wild animals” provide food more basic that a supermarket; that, as human beings, a wild place truly is their birthplace even through they were born in hospitals and their ancestors might have lived in cities.

Wilderness is at the root of our lives. It is the home, the reunion we yearn for when we watch a sunset and feel heartache. It is the past we try to recreate in our movies about wild times on a frontier peopled by cowboys and Indians—no matter how grim the reality might have been.

Our wilderness connections explains why a book about “running with the wolves” became an overnight bestseller and why the coyote—a creature feared, despised, and reduced to fur collars—is an icon of popular culture. Coyote is wild, unpredictable, and does what he pleases. Don’t we wish the same for ourselves?

That we revere wilderness can be seen in our determined effort to save the bald eagle, our national bird, from extinction as well as in our delight at seeing one today. That reverence also explains why vacationers will pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of watching whales or zebras in the wild, for a raft trip down a rampaging river, or for a visit to a Central American jungle.

Wilderness exposes what we human beings already have lost of our birthright, the natural world, and what remains. It represents our past and our future, our heritage and our legacy.

Experiencing wilderness

Wilderness is as it always has been, ever since life was set in motion. It is fluid like the waters of one of its creeks, as graceful as the sway of a sapling in the breeze. And when we visit, wilderness lends this fluidity and grace to our lives. It blesses us. It takes us out of ourselves and gives us new perspectives. It humbles, awes, and inspires us with its power and its grandeur and its beauty. It is a gift that enriches and enhances our lives.

We may gain a sense of its spirit from the many artists and writers who have tried to define it, but we don’t really taste the essence of wilderness until we walk beneath a canopy of golden aspens, or lie in a meadow of wildflowers and pick out shapes in the clouds that float above, or hear thunder and its echo in a rocky bowl above timberline, or shiver in the cold wind of a mountaintop while watching the play of light and shadow on the world below.

An hour spent in wilderness is restorative in ways that health-club workouts, alcohol, or prescription drugs never can be. This is because wilderness touches the soul and the heart.

And if we can’t always experience wilderness firsthand, we can know it exists and be comforted by that knowledge. I might only see it once, but I know that an icy lake high against the sky catches the colors of sunrise and sunset and that a patch of fuchsia shooting stars blooms beside a waterfall. I know that Amanita muscaria grows like blood-red surprise on the forest floor, and that Steller’s jays flash through the trees.

In my mind and heart I can retreat to those places, those snapshots of beauty, whenever I wish.

I earn my living at a computer terminal in a 9-to-5 job, so wilderness is more dream than reality for me, but that makes it no less precious.

It is a dream that consoles me on long afternoons when the phone keeps ringing, the clock ticks faster, and my deadline looms. It is a dream that helps me keep my balance in a world that’s changing too quickly for my taste, a world that seems increasingly violent and preoccupied with nonsense.

This wilderness dream helps define who I am. I might participate in the trappings of modern, middle-class life, but part of me is “checked out.” I feel different—I am different—because I have been to the wild. I have seen its great beauty, heard its silence, felt its solitude, magic, and mystery, and I cherish them. Long ago the natural world branded my heart and claimed my allegiance.

I don’t think I’m special because I feel this way, and I know I’m not alone in these kinds of feelings. Wilderness appreciation is not an exclusive club—it is open to everyone.

Excerpted from Sangre de Cristo Wilderness, a territory of the Heart, photographs by Bob Thomason and written by Mary Jean Porter with permission to reprint from Music Mountain Press.