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The following was written and submitted by Tom Gagnon
Exploring Sweetwater county’s diverse wild landscapes makes living here an endlessly intriguing, adventurous, and inspirational experience. The caprock pinnacles of Adobe Town, the contorted ravines of the Devil’s Playground, the awe-inspiring views from atop the Oregon Buttes, from where a person can look out over the Great Divide Basin and see the curve of the Earth itself, are settings of legend and beauty and mystery, and Mona Lisa-like quality visualizations etched and piled into our very home. Priceless.
Some of the very best landscapes we have are within the wilderness study areas. Our county has thirteen of them and they should all be preserved for our time and for all time as full wilderness areas. It is an indisputable course of action for anyone who loves this county and this nation, to preserve the very best of our scenic, wild, historical, and pristine landscapes.
To steal immortal words from Theodore Roosevelt regarding the Grand Canyon, and could be applied here, “Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, … We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it.”
The initiative to kill our wilderness study areas is from Representative Liz Cheney. She has been a resident of McLean, Virginia, for a long time. She has no love for our high desert or any business interfering with how we manage it. There is no benefit in allowing her to trash our values. Her real last name is Perry. She used her father’s famous name to win an election; in other words, everything about her is fake.
Surely our county commissioners, Wally Johnson, John Kolb, Don Van Matre, Randy Wendling, and Reid West, could not be so crass and cynical as to not preserve a mere 3.7% of our county for the enjoyment and solace of we the living, and for all posterity. No greater value can be mined or drilled from these small pieces of holy Earth than they already provide. The tourism dollars that these diamonds can bring to us will be greater and longer lasting than temporary fossil fuel exports.
Tom Gagnon
