Essays From West of 98: The Essential Rural Places
Wallace Stegner, essential wilderness, and rural places
Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved—as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds—because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.
--Wallace Stegner, “Wilderness Letter”
On December 3, 1960, acclaimed Western author Wallace Stegner wrote what became known as the “Wilderness Letter.” It was penned in response to a request for Stegner’s input from the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC), which was established by Congress in 1958 to study recreation needs on public lands. Stegner’s letter, which was subsequently published far and wide, would deeply influence the ORRRC’s final report and the very course of wilderness preservation in America for decades to come.
The ORRRC’s work on the idea of “wilderness” initially focused on its quantitative values. A certain number of tourists could use a certain amount of land for fishing, hiking, photography, and more. The land could support a certain number of wild animals. It could support a certain amount of grazing for livestock. It could produce a certain amount of timber and minerals. Stegner looked past these metrics and focused on wilderness as something with extraordinary intangible value. Stegner wrote that wilderness had helped form the very character and history of the American people. Exchanging wilderness for technology had certain quantifiable losses, but the true loss was that which would diminish the very essence of our character and spirit.
As I embark on 2023’s essays on the concept of community-building, I have mulled on Stegner’s famous letter. I am struck by the similarities between Stegner’s view of the idea of “wilderness” and the idea of “community” as it helps compose our rural America. In fact, I would argue that the two are inextricably intertwined. The march of “progress” in Stegner’s era sought to pave, clear-cut, and extract all value from wilderness and it was the very same march that pushed rural America’s economy into decline and its communities into tattered remnants. Dating to the era of Theodore Roosevelt, Western demagogues had long pushed naked progress in the name of “helping” rural Westerners, but the “help” usually went to their own pockets or to their cronies. On the other extreme, the irascible preservationists often failed to consider the context in which humans COULD live on the land.
Wise men like Stegner and Wisconsin ecologist/farmer Aldo Leopold saw the healthy possibilities between naked progress and extreme preservation. Their successor Wendell Berry (a student of Stegner at Stanford University who views Leopold as the most important conservationist in American history) has brought this view to a modern audience and inspired countless others, by showing how humans can live on the land and with the land, amidst all its contours and constraints, and in a manner that builds up life—all of it—for all of God’s creatures that inhabit each such place.
Stegner described his Wilderness Letter as the mere “labor of an afternoon,” because the brilliant author needed only that period of time to write such a powerful work. I am no Wallace Stegner, but perhaps rural America needs its own version of the Wilderness Letter to outline the essential value of rural places to the character, history, and spirit of America.
Wallace Stegner wisely saw that America would lose a piece of itself if the wilderness were lost. Wisely, American leaders listened to him. As a result, America’s wild places are exponentially healthier today than they were in 1960. On the other hand, rural America has continued its multidecade decline. America will lose an invaluable piece of itself if its rural places fully give way to the march of “progress” and technology.” But it is not too late to see those rural places thrive, if perhaps, American leaders will listen to the rural leaders of today.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.