The Wilderness Warrior

It's getting cold outside.  The days are getting shorter.  It's getting dark before the evening news comes on.  It's about time to find a good book to curl up with on these nights of late fall and early winter.  I have found mine and it's a beast, just like the subject I'm reading about.  Teddy Roosevelt.

The book I am referring to is the 824 page long epic "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America" by Douglas Brinkley (editor of "The Reagan Diaries" and author of sixteen other works).  I was wary buying a book this long - I do not often read books that take months to read.  But Brinkley "had me at hello", when I opened up his brick of a book at Borders and read the prologue, a quote from our great, burly, bear of a president.  It goes like this:

"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometime seek to champion them by saying that 'the game belongs to the people.'  So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people.  The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction.  Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations.  The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."   

I could quote you a thousand more awesome "TR-isms" like that from the hundreds of dog-eared pages of my copy.  But I won't and hope that you find the same inspiration that I did from the opening, fiery, righteous declaration from TR.  However, I would like to leave you with this.  In his eight years in office (1901-1909), our 26th president arguably did more for our natural environment than all other 43 presidents combined.  From the strokes of his pen alone, the following occurred: 

* 230 million acres of wild America were set aside for posterity (you and me!)

* 150 National Forests were created or enlarged, including Sequoia National Forest in California (1909)

* 51 Federal Bird Reservations were created, including Pelican Island Bird Reserve in Florida (1903, enlarged in 1909)

* 4 National Game Preserves were created, including National Bison Range in Montana (1909)

* 6 National Parks  were created, including Crater Lake National Park in Oregon (1902)

* 18 National Monuments were created, including Grand Canyon National Monument (1908)  

This Thanksgiving, I will still be reading this wonderful story of a man who understood and fiercely fought for this core belief - that the greatness of the American spirit is deeply tied to its amazing, awe inspiring natural beauty and resources and to the wildness found in these ever decreasing pockets of the world.  I will give thanks for President Roosevelt and continue to give thanks for him....and hope to do my part to keep that spirit alive in this country.

For more on Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior, and a few jokes, see Jon Stewart's interview on The Daily Show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-10-2009/douglas-brinkley

Jeff

jeff@jgowdyconsulting.com