The beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in wilderness are three considerable answers to, “Why do we need more large wilderness areas?” Each of the three increases us in its special way.
Recalled from my many Saunterings inside Grand Canyon, over the years:
The beautiful: the air smelling of creosote after rain; the tadpoles lazing in rock basins.
The picturesque: every haphazard jumble of rocks and colors, in every direction, at every distance, viewed in every degree of light.
The sublime: the Canyon’s immensity; thunder echoing and re-echoing around; the Milky Way as ancients saw it.
The officials that designate areas as wilderness should put in their standards that the areas must be large; small areas cannot satisfy our needs to know the picturesque and the sublime.
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Frederic Edwin Church’s paintings of scenes in the Catskills illustrate the picturesque. His paintings of icebergs and of Niagara Falls suggest the sublime. To see samples, click here. For a brief biography of him, click here.
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