Today I am certified for CPR and First Aid. Well, not just today, but starting today and for the next two years, I am certified. Also today, I hiked up a trail on Rattlesnake Rec Area this afternoon, since we got back to town early. It was lovely and a nice gentle start for an East coaster afraid of being eaten by a mountain lion. There were loads of people, and as I was leaving (around 5:45) cars were parked along the sides of the road near the parking lot, leaning up hillsides, with their bike racks and kayaks straining dangerously against straps and props. It’s a popular place.
Since I didn’t get to write yesterday, I’ll make an attempt now to describe an intellectually exciting afternoon with the Peter Landres. Peter is the authority on wilderness thinking and doing and measuring and is both celebrated and demonized for it (the measuring part, at least, brings impassioned protest). On my second day thinking about wilderness, I was able to work through some of the struggles I recognized early on in my considerations, The Trouble with Wilderness being the first in my mind. I had subscribed to Bill Cronon’s idea since I read his Trouble piece, and as a student of East coast development and now Chesapeake-proportioned restoration efforts, I admit, there were moments in my preparation for this work that I thought, how silly, protecting such a tiny place where so few will go… but I know now, and defend, that it is not for the few (the number of visitors being irrelevant to the “purpose” of wilderness), and that it is not tiny (100 million + acres being a sizable quantity).
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