|
"When we strive to pass wilderness legislation, what we are really engaged in is democracy at work."
- Bart Koehler
Read an important message about patriotism and the purpose of wilderness from our friends at the Wilderness Support Center in Colorado.
|
Perspectives on Wilderness : Craig Weaver
Work was 24/7 when I first moved to Tonopah. So escaping the project for a hike or campout became my first course in the complex beauty contained within the nearby wild desert areas.
Long-time residents taught me about big, old, mountains plus the smaller, newer, volcanic ranges. Farmers, ranchers, and folks via hiking or horseback riding have added more chapters about the Sonoran desert’s birds, plants, wildlife, and even its insects. Historic sites and others — 3,400 years older — always surprise me.
Today, areas like Big Horn Mountain, Hummingbird Springs, Signal Mountain, Eagletails, and Woolsey Peak are preserved with Wilderness designation so you can explore the Sonoran desert too! With proper preparation, the openness of these areas makes hiking and horseback riding easy and fun.
Some call these Wilderness areas "jewels". But I see the five areas, that the community supported for protection in the Desert Wilderness Act of 1990, as pearls on a necklace. They are fragile, interconnected, and wrap the Tonopah Desert with scenic beauty.
So maybe the jewels of each area are for you to find. Will it be a colorful quartz, a teddy-bear cholla, a shiny phainopepla, a rare desert bighorn sheep, or maybe another natural wonder like the dark, star filled, night-sky? Wilderness areas await you!
|
