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BLUE BUNCH TRAIL — It takes only a few steps into one of Idaho's wilderness areas to get that feeling.
That feeling is freedom — from exhaust fumes, honking horns, buzzing cell phones, beeping handheld computers and tailgating, cussing drivers. It's freedom from neon lights, traffic jams, and bulldozers scaring a lush green carpet of pines and firs with eroding roadcuts. You know — today's cut-it-down, dig-it-up, money-driven society.
It only takes a short hike into the wilderness to have everything slow down so you can even feel your blood pressure take a dip.
Last weekend I wanted to get a photo overlooking Bear Valley. I hiked a short ways up the Blue Bunch Trail into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
I wasn't on a five-day backpacking trip. It was a stroll. I was in the wilderness, and I felt it.
You walk past the weather-stained wooden sign saying River of No Return Wilderness - Boise National Forest. After a few steps on the other side of the sign, that feeling of being out of the rat race and in a peaceful place starts to set in.
All you can hear are the gurgling sounds of Bear Valley Creek as you walk the well-worn pathway through a canopy of pine and fir. The thick stand of timber insulates the area from the sounds of Bear Valley Road, which is a mile or so away.
It doesn't take more than a 15-minute stroll past bleached-gray granite boulders and brilliant white, blue and scarlet wildflowers to get to a quiet spot.
There are no sounds except for the chattering of the songbirds that are darting all over the place.
You sit down on a log and just think about how lucky we are that the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness was established in 1980. The wilderness designation was established by the Wilderness Act of 1964, which calls wilderness "an area where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
Wilderness is to be managed "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness . . ."
Thank heavens Congress had the foresight to pass the Wilderness Act.
It doesn't take much to experience wilderness. OK, so where am I going with this? A lot of folks call wilderness the land of no use. They're under the impression that it takes a three-day pack trip, a week-long backpacking trip or a six-day river trip to enjoy wilderness, and that limits a lot of people and keeps some people out entirely.
On this hike last weekend, I realized that's not the case.
You can experience wilderness on a 100-foot or 100-yard stroll and with a nice little picnic. It doesn't take much. I remember when I was recovering from a broken leg a few years back and was in a walking-boot cast. I was able to hobble a few feet down the Marsh Creek trail in the Frank Church wilderness. It didn't take much distance across that wilderness boundary to enjoy the therapy of the wilds.
You cross the wilderness boundary and sit down on a weathered-gray log and look into the distance.
There's that feeling, where you can hear yourself think. You can meditate about the last of the few wild places that are left in this country, where there are no roads, no heavy machinery scraping the Earth's carpet down to bare, eroding sediment that will wash into streams and smother the spawning beds of steelhead, salmon and cutthroat trout, and no holding ponds containing toxic chemicals.
Right here in wilderness, the lush bunch grasses all around you are holding the soils in place as undisturbed vegetation has done so for thousands of years.
Wilderness is not a land of no use. Besides hiking, fishing, hunting, rafting, picnicking and horseback riding, there is strolling and peace of mind.
But more deeply than recreation, wilderness is a place that provides protection for our valuable watersheds. It's where melting snow filters through the soil and provides clean water in wilderness rivers and streams and eventually into our farmlands and into the city drinking water.
Wilderness is the ultimate protection and haven for wildlife. Just look at the number of elk in the Bear Valley area.
There isn't that much wilderness in Idaho. We have the Frank Church, Selway-Bitterroot, Hells Canyon, Gospel Hump, Sawtooth and Craters of the Moon wilderness areas. Out of 53 million acres in the state, only a little more than 4 million are wilderness. That's not much.
Well, I sat on my rock and pondered the wilderness. You should do the same. Go out and enjoy it this weekend on a short stroll and picnic. There are hundreds of trailheads in Idaho wilderness areas where you can walk in a few hundred feet, sit on a log or rock and contemplate our lands the way they were hundreds of years ago.
There are still many, many acres that still need protection.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050703/IDOUT/507030342
That feeling is freedom — from exhaust fumes, honking horns, buzzing cell phones, beeping handheld computers and tailgating, cussing drivers. It's freedom from neon lights, traffic jams, and bulldozers scaring a lush green carpet of pines and firs with eroding roadcuts. You know — today's cut-it-down, dig-it-up, money-driven society.
It only takes a short hike into the wilderness to have everything slow down so you can even feel your blood pressure take a dip.
Last weekend I wanted to get a photo overlooking Bear Valley. I hiked a short ways up the Blue Bunch Trail into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
I wasn't on a five-day backpacking trip. It was a stroll. I was in the wilderness, and I felt it.
You walk past the weather-stained wooden sign saying River of No Return Wilderness - Boise National Forest. After a few steps on the other side of the sign, that feeling of being out of the rat race and in a peaceful place starts to set in.
All you can hear are the gurgling sounds of Bear Valley Creek as you walk the well-worn pathway through a canopy of pine and fir. The thick stand of timber insulates the area from the sounds of Bear Valley Road, which is a mile or so away.
It doesn't take more than a 15-minute stroll past bleached-gray granite boulders and brilliant white, blue and scarlet wildflowers to get to a quiet spot.
There are no sounds except for the chattering of the songbirds that are darting all over the place.
You sit down on a log and just think about how lucky we are that the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness was established in 1980. The wilderness designation was established by the Wilderness Act of 1964, which calls wilderness "an area where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
Wilderness is to be managed "for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness . . ."
Thank heavens Congress had the foresight to pass the Wilderness Act.
It doesn't take much to experience wilderness. OK, so where am I going with this? A lot of folks call wilderness the land of no use. They're under the impression that it takes a three-day pack trip, a week-long backpacking trip or a six-day river trip to enjoy wilderness, and that limits a lot of people and keeps some people out entirely.
On this hike last weekend, I realized that's not the case.
You can experience wilderness on a 100-foot or 100-yard stroll and with a nice little picnic. It doesn't take much. I remember when I was recovering from a broken leg a few years back and was in a walking-boot cast. I was able to hobble a few feet down the Marsh Creek trail in the Frank Church wilderness. It didn't take much distance across that wilderness boundary to enjoy the therapy of the wilds.
You cross the wilderness boundary and sit down on a weathered-gray log and look into the distance.
There's that feeling, where you can hear yourself think. You can meditate about the last of the few wild places that are left in this country, where there are no roads, no heavy machinery scraping the Earth's carpet down to bare, eroding sediment that will wash into streams and smother the spawning beds of steelhead, salmon and cutthroat trout, and no holding ponds containing toxic chemicals.
Right here in wilderness, the lush bunch grasses all around you are holding the soils in place as undisturbed vegetation has done so for thousands of years.
Wilderness is not a land of no use. Besides hiking, fishing, hunting, rafting, picnicking and horseback riding, there is strolling and peace of mind.
But more deeply than recreation, wilderness is a place that provides protection for our valuable watersheds. It's where melting snow filters through the soil and provides clean water in wilderness rivers and streams and eventually into our farmlands and into the city drinking water.
Wilderness is the ultimate protection and haven for wildlife. Just look at the number of elk in the Bear Valley area.
There isn't that much wilderness in Idaho. We have the Frank Church, Selway-Bitterroot, Hells Canyon, Gospel Hump, Sawtooth and Craters of the Moon wilderness areas. Out of 53 million acres in the state, only a little more than 4 million are wilderness. That's not much.
Well, I sat on my rock and pondered the wilderness. You should do the same. Go out and enjoy it this weekend on a short stroll and picnic. There are hundreds of trailheads in Idaho wilderness areas where you can walk in a few hundred feet, sit on a log or rock and contemplate our lands the way they were hundreds of years ago.
There are still many, many acres that still need protection.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050703/IDOUT/507030342
