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First and Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100
In the summer of 1922, Aldo Leopold traveled on horseback up into the headwaters of New Mexico's Gila River and proposed to his bosses at the Forest Service that 500,000 acres of that rough country be set aside as roadless wilderness. Thus was born America's first—the world's first—designated wilderness. A century later, writer-activists come together to celebrate this vast, rugged landscape, the Yellowstone of the Southwest. Contributors include Michael P. Berman, Philip Connors, Martha Schumann Cooper, Beto O'Rourke, Martin Heinrich, Pam Houston, Priyanka Kumar, Laura Paskus, Sharman Apt Russell, Jakob Sedig, Leeanna T. Torres, JJ Amaworo Wilson, and more.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
172 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 25, 2022
I grew up in a little village on the northern side of the Gila, America’s first wilderness. I guided hunters in the Gila. It has enriched my life in so many ways. I’ve been away for decades I can still picture the diversity, beauty, and innate wildness of this massive piece of rugged land.
This collection of essays generated a few warm memories, but my primary emotional sadness. The massive wildfire in 2012 that destroyed so much for the interior. The ongoing battles to domesticate the last free river in the southwest. The brutal reality of climate change that will forever alter what has been.
I hope this book becomes a call to action for everyone who cares about the wild places, the wild birds and animals, the last vestiges of wildness in each one of us.
This collection of essays generated a few warm memories, but my primary emotional sadness. The massive wildfire in 2012 that destroyed so much for the interior. The ongoing battles to domesticate the last free river in the southwest. The brutal reality of climate change that will forever alter what has been.
I hope this book becomes a call to action for everyone who cares about the wild places, the wild birds and animals, the last vestiges of wildness in each one of us.
May 21, 2022
A good array of viewpoints of the importance of Wilderness to a diverse audience. Reading about the mega fires of the past in New Mexico, it really strikes a chord to today's issues in May of 2022 as well. A delightful read.
July 9, 2024
In December 1919, the future author of A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, then an employee of the United States Forest Service in New Mexico, had a fateful encounter with landscape architect and surveyor Arthur Carhart. Carhart, also a Forest Service employee, had been assigned the task of determining how many summer cottage building lots should be subdivided around Trappers Lake in northern Colorado’s Flat Tops Range. Carhart advocated a revolutionary number: zero. Trappers Lake’s shoreline was never developed, and the lake is now within the Flat Tops Wilderness; it is recognized as the “Cradle of Wilderness.”
Leopold heard about Carhart’s report and stopped at Carhart’s office as he traveled back to Albuquerque from a Forest Service meeting in Salt Lake City. In a day-long discussion, the two men agreed that development of public lands was already too aggressive (in 1919!). Leopold believed some wild areas ought to be spared the “marring features of man-made constructions.” Soon, he circulated among his Albuquerque colleagues a plan to establish a vast, protected wilderness area in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. The Gila was remote, rugged, and arid in the 1920s and remains so today. Leopold’s proposal got a sympathetic reception from some of his coworkers, but lumber interests and the Forest Service administration initially opposed the concept. Nevertheless, Leopold codified the concept of establishing wilderness areas in an essay, “Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy” (Leopold, A. 1921. Journal of Forestry 19[7]:718-721).
In a formal proposal to the Forest Service in October 1922, Leopold recommended protecting 870 square miles in the Mogollon Mountains encompassing the headwaters of the Gila River. The highest elevations above 9,000 feet were cloaked with spruce-fir forests that gradually transitioned at lower elevations through ponderosa pine woodlands to piñon-juniper scrub and then to willows and cottonwoods in riparian areas.
In 1924, Frank Pouler, Leopold’s Forest Service supervisor, set aside over a half-million acres as the Gila Wilderness by administrative fiat—America’s first, and the world’s first wilderness. However, another four decades would elapse before the passage of the federal Wilderness Act conferred permanent protection on the land.
To commemorate and celebrate Leopold’s vision made manifest in the Gila a century ago, Torrey House Press and WildEarth Guardians commissioned First and Wildest, a collection of short essays, poems, reflections, and photographs edited by Elizabeth Hightower Allen.
A foreword by former U.S. Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico sets the stage. Editor Allen then goes on to provide details about the wilderness in her introduction, which also includes a brief overview of the book’s conceptualization and organization. The body of the volume is creatively imagined and presented. The essays are bracketed by two poems, an Invocation (“Ode to the Gila”) and a Benediction (“Gibbous Moon”), both by Eve West Bessier. The essays themselves are organized into five sections (Bedrock, Heat, Flow, Howl and Seeds) each with three of four contributions. The introduction to each of these sections features one of Michael P. Berman’s black-and-white photographs and an epigraph.
The 26 contributors include politicians, poets, activists, biologists, horse packers, academics, fire lookouts, archeologists, and administrators. They hail from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds—Apache, Mexican-American and Anglo—and they bring a variety of perspectives and viewpoints to the project. Like any collection with multiple contributors, the essays are a bit uneven. Nonetheless, they are all well-written, incisive, and engaging.
The essays coalesce around three overriding themes: wildfire, drought, and climate change. The 300,000-acre Whitewater-Baldy Fire in 2012 that burned a significant proportion of the wilderness was the largest in New Mexico history (until 2022’s even larger Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire). Most of the writers acknowledge Whitewater-Baldy’s impacts in their essays. Despite lamenting the changes and loss, the authors also recognize that fire is an integral part of the Southwestern ecosystem, that fire has been suppressed for too long, that burned areas are inherent to such ecosystems and should be embraced for the diversity they introduce, and that the Gila is large enough to accommodate natural fire. Furthermore, because of climate change and the continuing drought in the Southwest, people need to acknowledge and accept that, henceforth, fires likely will be more frequent and intense.
In addition to these comprehensive themes, some of the contributors address several other topics: wilderness as an existential concept, the value of solitude and escape, the lack of crowds, and the dark skies. The importance of wilderness as habitat is the focus of more than a few essays, especially habitat for Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi), a subspecies that declined to as few as seven individuals before being rescued from extinction through a captive breeding program and controversial release back into the wild in the rough Arizona-New Mexico borderlands beginning in 1998. Today, 186 wolves roam the Gila, Aldo Leopold and Blue Range wilderness areas and environs.
Also of critical significance to the Gila is the recent extinguishment of schemes to dam the river at the mouth of its canyon. The Gila is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. As a result of diversions for agriculture downstream of the wilderness, though, its waters rarely reach the confluence with the Colorado River. The plan to dam the river and divert 14,000 acre-feet annually was completely unrealistic; the river only delivers a total of 14,000 acre-feet during especially wet years, and such years are increasingly rare as drought extends its grip on the region.
Each reader will find a set of essays that most appeals to them. Two especially impressed and resonated with me. Michael P. Berman’s “Learning to Fall” recounts lessons the author learned during off-trail peregrinations through the wilderness. Pam Houston’s “On (Not) Wanting to See a Wolf” presents a fierce defense of wolves and the importance of wilderness as habitat.
The book’s front matter includes one grayscale map of southwestern New Mexico centered on the Gila Wilderness, adjacent wilderness areas, and the Gila National Forest. In one sense, I wish that the map had been more detailed to pinpoint some of the locations referenced by the contributors. On the other hand, such specificity might have detracted from the book’s larger message: the sacred nature of all untrammeled wilderness.
I have never set foot in the Gila Wilderness, only explored its margins. I have walked the Catwalk National Recreation Trail, a rebuilt scaffold bolted to the sheer canyon wall above Whitewater Creek originally constructed by gold and silver miners in the 1890s. I have birded two Nature Conservancy preserves, one on the Gila floodplain just outside the wilderness and one on the Mimbres River, a beautiful riparian corridor southeast of the Gila. I have also visited the Ancient Puebloan Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument that is embedded geographically deep within the wilderness but separate from the wilderness because of an umbilicus of a paved road providing access to the monument. Hiking to these stone ruins requires crossing a bridge over the rushing West Fort Gila River. The bridge affords a panoramic view upstream into the river canyon. I came to the monument as a tourist, unprepared to backpack into the wilderness that was literally steps away. But the calling was there—beckoning and visceral. If you have ever been drawn to strike out and challenge yourself, or have been overwhelmed by an awe-inspiring landscape, many of the essays in First and Wildest will grab you and kindle a desire to explore, escape, or simply appreciate the natural world more deeply.
Leopold heard about Carhart’s report and stopped at Carhart’s office as he traveled back to Albuquerque from a Forest Service meeting in Salt Lake City. In a day-long discussion, the two men agreed that development of public lands was already too aggressive (in 1919!). Leopold believed some wild areas ought to be spared the “marring features of man-made constructions.” Soon, he circulated among his Albuquerque colleagues a plan to establish a vast, protected wilderness area in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. The Gila was remote, rugged, and arid in the 1920s and remains so today. Leopold’s proposal got a sympathetic reception from some of his coworkers, but lumber interests and the Forest Service administration initially opposed the concept. Nevertheless, Leopold codified the concept of establishing wilderness areas in an essay, “Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy” (Leopold, A. 1921. Journal of Forestry 19[7]:718-721).
In a formal proposal to the Forest Service in October 1922, Leopold recommended protecting 870 square miles in the Mogollon Mountains encompassing the headwaters of the Gila River. The highest elevations above 9,000 feet were cloaked with spruce-fir forests that gradually transitioned at lower elevations through ponderosa pine woodlands to piñon-juniper scrub and then to willows and cottonwoods in riparian areas.
In 1924, Frank Pouler, Leopold’s Forest Service supervisor, set aside over a half-million acres as the Gila Wilderness by administrative fiat—America’s first, and the world’s first wilderness. However, another four decades would elapse before the passage of the federal Wilderness Act conferred permanent protection on the land.
To commemorate and celebrate Leopold’s vision made manifest in the Gila a century ago, Torrey House Press and WildEarth Guardians commissioned First and Wildest, a collection of short essays, poems, reflections, and photographs edited by Elizabeth Hightower Allen.
A foreword by former U.S. Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico sets the stage. Editor Allen then goes on to provide details about the wilderness in her introduction, which also includes a brief overview of the book’s conceptualization and organization. The body of the volume is creatively imagined and presented. The essays are bracketed by two poems, an Invocation (“Ode to the Gila”) and a Benediction (“Gibbous Moon”), both by Eve West Bessier. The essays themselves are organized into five sections (Bedrock, Heat, Flow, Howl and Seeds) each with three of four contributions. The introduction to each of these sections features one of Michael P. Berman’s black-and-white photographs and an epigraph.
The 26 contributors include politicians, poets, activists, biologists, horse packers, academics, fire lookouts, archeologists, and administrators. They hail from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds—Apache, Mexican-American and Anglo—and they bring a variety of perspectives and viewpoints to the project. Like any collection with multiple contributors, the essays are a bit uneven. Nonetheless, they are all well-written, incisive, and engaging.
The essays coalesce around three overriding themes: wildfire, drought, and climate change. The 300,000-acre Whitewater-Baldy Fire in 2012 that burned a significant proportion of the wilderness was the largest in New Mexico history (until 2022’s even larger Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire). Most of the writers acknowledge Whitewater-Baldy’s impacts in their essays. Despite lamenting the changes and loss, the authors also recognize that fire is an integral part of the Southwestern ecosystem, that fire has been suppressed for too long, that burned areas are inherent to such ecosystems and should be embraced for the diversity they introduce, and that the Gila is large enough to accommodate natural fire. Furthermore, because of climate change and the continuing drought in the Southwest, people need to acknowledge and accept that, henceforth, fires likely will be more frequent and intense.
In addition to these comprehensive themes, some of the contributors address several other topics: wilderness as an existential concept, the value of solitude and escape, the lack of crowds, and the dark skies. The importance of wilderness as habitat is the focus of more than a few essays, especially habitat for Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi), a subspecies that declined to as few as seven individuals before being rescued from extinction through a captive breeding program and controversial release back into the wild in the rough Arizona-New Mexico borderlands beginning in 1998. Today, 186 wolves roam the Gila, Aldo Leopold and Blue Range wilderness areas and environs.
Also of critical significance to the Gila is the recent extinguishment of schemes to dam the river at the mouth of its canyon. The Gila is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. As a result of diversions for agriculture downstream of the wilderness, though, its waters rarely reach the confluence with the Colorado River. The plan to dam the river and divert 14,000 acre-feet annually was completely unrealistic; the river only delivers a total of 14,000 acre-feet during especially wet years, and such years are increasingly rare as drought extends its grip on the region.
Each reader will find a set of essays that most appeals to them. Two especially impressed and resonated with me. Michael P. Berman’s “Learning to Fall” recounts lessons the author learned during off-trail peregrinations through the wilderness. Pam Houston’s “On (Not) Wanting to See a Wolf” presents a fierce defense of wolves and the importance of wilderness as habitat.
The book’s front matter includes one grayscale map of southwestern New Mexico centered on the Gila Wilderness, adjacent wilderness areas, and the Gila National Forest. In one sense, I wish that the map had been more detailed to pinpoint some of the locations referenced by the contributors. On the other hand, such specificity might have detracted from the book’s larger message: the sacred nature of all untrammeled wilderness.
I have never set foot in the Gila Wilderness, only explored its margins. I have walked the Catwalk National Recreation Trail, a rebuilt scaffold bolted to the sheer canyon wall above Whitewater Creek originally constructed by gold and silver miners in the 1890s. I have birded two Nature Conservancy preserves, one on the Gila floodplain just outside the wilderness and one on the Mimbres River, a beautiful riparian corridor southeast of the Gila. I have also visited the Ancient Puebloan Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument that is embedded geographically deep within the wilderness but separate from the wilderness because of an umbilicus of a paved road providing access to the monument. Hiking to these stone ruins requires crossing a bridge over the rushing West Fort Gila River. The bridge affords a panoramic view upstream into the river canyon. I came to the monument as a tourist, unprepared to backpack into the wilderness that was literally steps away. But the calling was there—beckoning and visceral. If you have ever been drawn to strike out and challenge yourself, or have been overwhelmed by an awe-inspiring landscape, many of the essays in First and Wildest will grab you and kindle a desire to explore, escape, or simply appreciate the natural world more deeply.
May 12, 2023
The birthplace of the idea for nationally designated Wilderness Areas, the Gila Wilderness in southwest New Mexico was Aldo Leopold's inspiration when he proposed setting aside places to be preserved from development forever. In 1921 this idea was revolutionary, and even a hundred years later in the face of overwhelming marketplace forces it's not yet accepted by large segments of our world.
This book of readings was a way for me to get another glimpse of Aldo Leopold the person, by way of his early career activities. Most of the contributions are natural history stories; there's a good emphasis on indigenous peoples' contributions, offering historical context for thinking of alternative basic assumptions about setting land aside.
Two sections I found particularly informative: a reprint of Leopold's original paper proposing the idea of Wilderness Areas, and an area native's perspective on Leopold's personal family. Given the importance of the family in his later development of The Farm and The Shed, I found this background expecially valuable.
My personal preferences in natural history books and stories are for graphics and visuals. This book contains a half-dozen black and white photos, well-employed in the layout. Unfortunately they are poorly printed and easily ignored.
I'm happy to have read the book. I'm also happy I was able to find it through interlibrary loan and can now return it for others to enjoy.
This book of readings was a way for me to get another glimpse of Aldo Leopold the person, by way of his early career activities. Most of the contributions are natural history stories; there's a good emphasis on indigenous peoples' contributions, offering historical context for thinking of alternative basic assumptions about setting land aside.
Two sections I found particularly informative: a reprint of Leopold's original paper proposing the idea of Wilderness Areas, and an area native's perspective on Leopold's personal family. Given the importance of the family in his later development of The Farm and The Shed, I found this background expecially valuable.
My personal preferences in natural history books and stories are for graphics and visuals. This book contains a half-dozen black and white photos, well-employed in the layout. Unfortunately they are poorly printed and easily ignored.
I'm happy to have read the book. I'm also happy I was able to find it through interlibrary loan and can now return it for others to enjoy.
January 4, 2023
Some good esays in this small book in which I enjoyed, but not the book I expected. One author made sure to mention that she was a "queer chicana" while another fretted throughout her's about big pickups and anyone with a trump flag. I was intersted in their history and experiences in the Gila, not that they were made fun of at the post office for wearing a mask. All in all the good writting outways the one's that got off track.
March 29, 2023
Great diversity of viewpoints and experiences around this country's first designated wilderness. The essays by Saenz (Apache) and Solis Ybarra (Chicana) were the most provocative and evocative in my opinion, because they really force the reader to grapple with the contradictions of having set aside nature for protection (which seems like an objectively good thing?) but having forced indigenous peoples off their ancestral homelands in order to establish these "wild" areas.
July 11, 2022
Three and a half to four stars...with Pam Houston's powerful essay shining above the pack. Some other gems, too.
April 25, 2025
some very good essays, some tedious.
October 30, 2024
Moving collection of essays about environmental protection and Southwest US history and culture.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews