Owilderness Letter By Wallace Stegner Summary

In Wallace Stegner’s, ¨Wilderness Letter¨ ,the novelist is informing to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission his view toward the situation. He is explaining how important the wilderness in which we live in and how it provides natural servicers for humans and all other species that are essential to our health, our quality of life ,and also survival. In his letter, he also talks about the preserving of our natural world due to the history and how it has helped shape the population. Wilderness is a getaway from our fast moving society and it gives us a relief just as much as it just being there is reassuring. These are the kinds of things Stegner is passionate about throughout his letter.
Nature has changed and grown with us for
Stegner himself writes,” Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed…” (3) In making this comment, Stegner is arguing that if we ever destroy the last of our remaining untouched wild, we would grow insane and would be unforgivable. Wallace continues with,” If we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhaust, the stinks of human automotive waste.”(3) The essence of Wallace’s argument is that if we infect the last of our helpless air and water we will have nothing to turn back to. If we spread our human waste to the last remaining wild there would be chaos and sickness, and even the young will never know what there once was. The trees that people once saw cleaning our air which made it easy to breath are now factories and houses the continuously pollute the air which would never be cleaned. Nature is a crucial factor in our live that we should be caring for thinking about
The environment is a place or thought that can relax someone, make you carefree, and leave you with memories to last a lifetime. Wallace writes himself,” Hunting, fishing, hiking, mountain climbing, camping, photography, and the enjoyment of natural scenery.”(1) Wallace lists off many activities that people can take part in in nature. Wallace also believes that you don't necessarily have to take part in nature to enjoy it, but that the knowledge of it being there and it thriving is what can make someone reassured and happy. Wallace states,”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.”(3) In Wallace’s view you don’t need the experience of the wilderness but just the thought of it still being there is what make some more comfortable and still free. Wilderness is not necessarily needed to be explored to be enjoyed but the thoughts that keep it alive are more valuable. Wallace writes,” We need to demonstrate our acceptance of the natural world, including ourselves; we need spiritual refreshment that being in nature can produce.”(6) Basically Wallace is saying that nature can escape us to clear our minds and to refresh us from our busy and dramatic worlds. To continue Wallace states,” they can simply contemplate the idea, take pleasure in the fact that such a timeless and uncontrolled part of earth is still there”(12) Once again