The World's Fair

This is the third of three parts in our Wilderness series interview with Kevin Marsh, by Michael Egan (Part I; Part II).

All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.

Continuing from Part II...

ME: Moving into the twenty-first century, where are wilderness politics now, and where do you see them going?

KM: It's an interesting time of transition and renaissance in wilderness politics. After relatively little action in the 1990s (many debates over roadless lands had moved in to the court system, such as with the spotted owl controversy) Congress in recent years has passed some major wilderness bills in various states. In a major breakthrough in Nevada, Congress created several wilderness areas but also in the same bill granted federal land to Las Vegas to build a new airport. This exchange of political favors to both preservation and development interests is not new, but there are some new players involved. More than from the traditional resource extraction industries, the main opposition to expanded wilderness designations comes now from off-road vehicle users and their lobbyists.

ME: So, a lot of this seems to be about collaboration and compromise.

KM: That's true. Although there is a lot of division among the motorized recreation crowd whether or not to participate, there is a model arising of extensive collaboration between groups of competing interests, to hammer out wilderness proposals as a group and then submit them to Congress. This collaborative conservation has some impressive models thus far. The Nevada bill is a product of this. In Idaho, two major wilderness bills are on the table that come from the local communities themselves, where ranchers, county commissioners, off-road riders, and environmentalists have all collaborated with the support of Congressional sponsors within the state delegation to bring a wilderness bill to Congress. Both seem quite close to passing as of the summer of 2007. Another collaborative bill that seems certain to become law this year would create the Wild Sky Wilderness in Washington State. These are lands left outside of the wilderness boundaries numerous times before, mainly because they were lower elevation timberlands. Now the timber industry there has not strongly opposed the bill. It's a case where environmentalists joined with hikers, mountain bikers, snowmobilers, and float plane users to create a bill of mutual interest. To many critics, these bills are too full of loopholes for wilderness (float planes allowed in the Wild Sky) and development subsidies (the Vegas airport and other grants of federal land). However, in many ways this process is just an extension of the public participation provided by the Wilderness Act.

ME: Do you have a soft spot for a particular wilderness area, either one you wrote about or otherwise?

KM: For me, it's an area where I worked for 10 years for the Forest Service in wilderness management, the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. I wrote about both in the book, but with an entire chapter devoted to the Alpine Lakes, not because it's my favored area but because it represents a moment of national significance for wilderness politics. Though next door to each other, they are very distinct areas. The Alpine Lakes, Seattle's "Backyard Wilderness," is heavily used. Many lakes there see several hundred visitors on any given day. It's a very rugged area, however, and there are many valleys and lake basins where it is rare to see anyone else over the course of a week.

However, when I'm daydreaming, my mind more often wanders through the high meadow country of the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness. Senator "Scoop" Jackson from Washington plays a significant role in my book as someone who helped negotiate various bills through Congress. The area was named for him after he died in office. It's a relatively unknown area with dramatic scenery. My favorite place on Earth is among the glacier lilies on Benchmark Mountain. Just don't tell anyone about it.

ME: I know this is a common question, but I don't want to skip it just because it's obvious: What is the relationship between wilderness and baseball? If you had to put together the all-wilderness baseball team what would your line up look like?

KM: Well for both most people experience them as part of summertime activities; they both are steeped in deep, fabricated ideological traditions of a pastoral, pre-industrial America; and both are imbued with tremendous idealism by their most passionate advocates. Although we experience the results in the summer, much of the most important work is done outside the lines in the winter. Like general managers negotiating trades and contracts and players conditioning themselves mentally and physically, it is the public testimony at hearings and the lobbying and political negotiations that set the tone for what people experience in the summer. Now that's way too serious an answer to a silly question.

ME: And the team?

KM: As for a team, my manager would be Howard Zahniser, a genius at bringing competing interests together. Assuming a Northwest team, here's a possible lineup:

Doug Scott, CF: Always finds a way to get on base
Polly Dyer, RF: A tough out who hasn't given in to difficult pitches in decades
Mike McCloskey, C: He was used to serving as a field captain for a long time
Brock Evans, 3B: Here's strong man for the hot corner; not even cancer could knock him down
Ruth Onthank, SS: Has great range, involved in so many issues
Andy Kerr, 1B: Tough as caulked boots
William O. Douglas, LF: Well, lots of people always thought he was out in left field
Karl Onthank, P: A wiley guy, who always seemed to be ahead of hitters
Hazel Wolf, 2B: Probably surprised to find herself on the right side of anything, let alone a baseball diamond.

Go back to Part I here; and again, Part II is here.