“The tendency nowadays to wander in wilderness is delightful to see,” wrote John Muir. “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of nature, and to get rid of rust and disease.”
The Atlantic published that in 1898—over a century before the Trump administration began decimating national monuments, and over a century before Portland’s swollen population began to infest the region’s hiking trails and riverbanks every weekend. His words are worth remembering whenever one sees SUVs crowding a trailhead in the Gorge: People getting into nature is a good thing, not only for them, but also to ensure the popular support needed to preserve wild spaces.
Later in The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West, Muir writes of “the sea and the sky, the floods of light from the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth”—all of which are covered in 2018’s Portland EcoFilm Festival, which runs at the Hollywood Theatre from Thursday, September 27 to Sunday, September 30.
