When you get too far from Tarryall Creek to hear its current burble over the boulders, it is sometimes possible, if you stop walking and listen very carefully, to hear a truck laboring uphill on Rte. 24.
Possible, but unwise. The sound of the truck is a reminder that civilization is not far away, and the whole purpose of climbing upward from the creek is to forget about civilization for a while.
Not that civilization is a bad thing. On the contrary, it is both necessary and desirable. But as someone has noted, it is not without its discontents, and among its ironies is that as it expands, the discontents expand with it.
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So as civilization grows, so does the need to escape it from time to time, lest it become so oppressive that it degenerates into a condition that can only be described as uncivilized. Aren`t contradictions fun?
Happily for us, our civilization has provided a few opportunities for such escape. Not enough, no doubt, but some, including this hill just east of the Tarryall, up which one can walk past thousands of Ponderosa pines, through groves of Aspens still bare-branched late in May, around white and purple pasque flowers drooping their heads toward the rough, brown grass of the hillside, up past boulders standing like sentinels near a hilltop, far enough so that it is impossible to hear even the rumbles of a struggling truck.
And who has provided this respite from the crowds, the routines and the tyrannical systemization of modern life? Your federal government, that`s who. This is the Pike National Forest, near the boundary of the Lost Creek Wilderness, 105,000 acres of hills, peaks, pines and flowers into which anyone able-bodied enough can go but in which nobody may stay, according to the laws of the government that set it aside.
That was one very smart thing the government did, and it is especially important these days to remember that there are times when the government can do very smart things, because it is so fashionable to dwell on how often it does the opposite. No less a personage than the president of the United States recently propounded the alleged wisdom that government efforts to improve the lives of its citizens usually backfire, pointing out especially some of the less desirable residues of Lyndon Johnson`s plan to create a ”Great Society.”
This is standard conservativism, and though woefully overstated it is not entirely incorrect. In the flotsam that passes for political debate in this country these days, the response to it commonly comes from standard liberalism, which tends to argue that government enterprise is always a good idea and that the only thing wrong with ”The Great Society” was that it was underfunded.
Were ideology replaced by intelligence, someone would point out the wisdom of making distinctions. Like all institutions, government is often foolish, sometimes competent and occasionally right on the money, which it was in 1964 when, under Lyndon Johnson, it helped make this society greater by creating the Wilderness system, setting aside land to be used for nothing at all.
That system now consists of 37.4 million acres in the 48 contiguous states. That sounds like a lot of land, but it`s less than 2 percent of the total, little enough for an increasing number of people who find it increasingly necessary to escape civilization now and then.
So popular has the system become that recent efforts by its foes to weaken it have come to naught, though the foes have been running the government for the last decade. Despite their efforts, the system has grown, albeit slowly, and will grow some more. A new study by the Bureau of Land Management proposes setting aside another 9 million acres or so as land that will be left as it is.
Just to show that nothing can be done without some controversy, there is opposition to a proposal to add 641,000 acres in Colorado. The opposition comes not from ranchers or developers but from environmentalists unhappy that the proposal protects the land, but not the water.
Whoever said, ”Water and politics do not mix,” did not understand the American West, where they do nothing but, and where water, disregarding the laws of physics and hydrography, seeks the level of money. ”We would have second-class wilderness in Colorado,” said Joann Carter of the Wilderness Society, arguing that the current proposal would create a dangerous precedent. She`s probably right, and though the issue is complex and the forces who want to use the water for other purposes are powerful, there is ample evidence that most people would rather see the wild rivers continue to run as freely as was intended by whatever put them here. People know that civilization is tolerable only when its domain is limited, even if the government has to set the limits. It`s one of the things government does very well.