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Exploring The Geography of Hope
In 1960, Stegner wrote his Wilderness Letter to the US Congress in which he made the argument that altered the course of how America viewed public land and wilderness. In the letter he described wilderness as places of spiritual renewal, the birth of awe, and recognition of identity. He concluded, saying we need to preserve wilderness as a means of “reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”
Geography of Hope – the Stegner Legacy
A child walks away from the kitchen door, through weeds trampled grey to the edge of the garden where the wind and grass waits. Beyond the rhubarb and into the endless sage-pocked green, the sound of his father’s cursing fades and is gone. He enters easily into a solitude held together by meadowlark song. There are gophers and small, bobbing owls that live in their burrows and now and then a badger looking back at him.