The Land Unplowed

The Appalachian Mountains are some of the oldest mountains in the world and this high place, not too far from my home, is on a trailing edge — the hard spot that has not eroded over 480 million years.

Ancient mountains now reduced to plowed soil stretch below this lump — this Sugarloaf of hard stone.

The quartzite and granite here is dead and has been since the beginning of time, and yet it is the stone of this mountain that has saved the wildlife that is on it.

And what is true here is true all over.

Where there is wilderness in this country, and around the world, is where there is land we humans have passed by because it was too high, too rocky, too sandy, too dry, too remote, too cold, or too wet.

And yet still we invade.

Texas and Nevada are now occupied by air-conditioners.

The malarial swamps have been drained and sprayed.

Logging roads run up mountains, and skyline cables run timber down.

Desalination plants now pump sea water into the desert.

Solar panels and satellite communication can provide heat, cold, and communication anywhere on earth.

Forests fall to farms, and farms to freeways.

Asphalt and corn fields stretch to the horizon.

The last bit of scrub land at the back of the shopping mall is now falling to tract houses, gas stations, and ornamental landscaping.

Where we once fenced wildlife out to protect ourselves from tooth and claw, we now fence it in to protect our last large predators from our own rapacious greed and fecundity.

Where will it end, and when?