As I stood near the cliff I could feel the wind grazing over my nose and I could feel it grazing against my shins. As I stood, I tried to drown out the noises coming from the others standing to my left and to my right. I was standing in wilderness. A designated spot of wilderness, a spot where human impact is supposed to be minimal. And where I was standing, in this designated spot of wilderness, I focused as I attempted to drain out the noises, laughs and comments of others around me.

The view was marvelous. As I looked out it was as if you could see for miles. The mountains stood tall and as I looked they ran continuously. They succession to the horizon line was unbelievable. Spanning from foreground of tress, to the rolling colorful hills of the mountain to silhouette of the blue mountains resting peacefully in the background.  As I continued to observe, I noticed  in the foreground the different clusters of color. As you would look from left to right, from place to place, the distribution of color would vary. You could see bright groups of colorful trees all populated together and then right next to them would be a group of barren trees. This patterned continued for all that I could see. Suddenly, it was back to reality. We were moving on continuing on the path of wilderness to our next destination, the next look out point.

Quotes from Nature Wars:

“Where do most people in the United States live? The answer is just as counterintuitive: They live in the woods… if you draw a line around the largest forested region in the contiguous United States- the one that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean of the Great Plains- you will have drawn a line around nearly two-thirds of America’s forests and two-thirds of the U.S population” (Sterba, 2).

” For many Americans, progress had become a dirty word. Much of the American “wilderness” had been methodically destroyed in the name of progress. Forests of the twenty-first century were being destroyed across swaths of the planet by a human population no more rapacious but far larger than in the past. This, too, was happening in the name of progress” (Sterba, 41).

“Growing populations of wild animals and birds became habituated to life with people or near people. Sprawl became their home. To be sure, many species showed little or no appetite for sprawl, which fragments habitat, disrupts migration and travel patterns, reduces species diversity, and adversely impacts native habitats. For many species, however, sprawl had all the things that they needed to thrive, foremost among them being food, protection and hiding places. Even species known to be people- shy- wild turkey’s and bears, for example- accommodated as their numbers grew” (Sterba, 57).