This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The new guidelines by the Bureau of Land Management concerning wildlands have the potential to change the landscape in Utah. Or, more accurately, to leave the landscape unchanged. While waiting for positive steps of implementation, I am reminded of one aspect of wilderness that is personally critical. The federal Wilderness Act includes this as one of several qualifying criteria for wilderness: an area that "has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation."
The opportunity for solitude is important for healthy individuals because our world is filled with noise, including the increasing dominance of cell phones and the many forms of entertainment via television, movies, computer games. However we achieve this balance between solitude and noise, and if the proposed wildlands become part of the solution, please allow my solitude by respecting that it requires the all-terrain-vehicle crowd be somewhere other than on my trail.
John Hoener
Heber City