 Wilderness. So mysterious. So promising. So dangerous. These forbidding landscapes of the New World symbolized vastness and wildness. They epitomized abundance and fulfillment. Vastness meant space, intellectual and social elbow room. Emptiness meant the possibility of new creation. Wildness meant freedom and release. Through the drama of its changing forms, a national vision was born. It said, we are the land, and the land is us. Wilderness was the mother of this nation. For our Native Americans, she was a vision of home. But for successive beholders, her land was changed to reveal different meanings. The explorers and mountain men were mystified by its wildness and challenged it. The settlers in search of independence tamed the land and cultivated it. And finally, the builders conquered it. By the turn of this century, an ocean of wilderness had been reduced to islands. Islands in time, surrounded by seas of civilization. Both time and the visions of generations changed the character of these wild places. Even today, wilderness means different things to different people. For those who have touched wilderness, they are islands of retreat from the stress of a modern world. For those who have not, the pleasure lies in knowing these islands of the mind exist. To some, wilderness is pristine, an area untouched by civilization. To others, wilderness is any patch of undeveloped land there for the taking. As our society became more industrialized and mechanical, our connections with nature were looked upon as a matter of national health. Space and wildness became the necessary tonic of recreation. The fact that wilderness is here today owes itself to our collective national conscience. A conscience fueled by a need to preserve the vision for future generations. The need for wilderness with a capital W became a national campaign. The contributions of conservation giants such as John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt are well known. But it was the forest service that would take the first steps in federal wilderness management. Under the leadership of Gifford Pinshow, its first chief, the agency would play a key role in rescuing these islands in time from the axe, the dam and the rail. In 1919, Arthur Carhart, a forest service landscape architect, surveyed the Trappers Lake area in Colorado's White River National Forest. Instead of developing a plan for summer home sites as he was charged, he was inspired to offer a plan to preserve the area for its beauty, a precedent in forest service history. Later, Aldo Leopold, a forest supervisor on the Carson National Forest, wrote a plan to protect our first national wilderness, the Gila in New Mexico. 1929 was the year America's dreams were crushed. Getting a nation back on its feet consumed everyone. But for wilderness America, the crash was not all bad. Chief of the Forest Service, William Greeley, issued the first regulations protecting primitive landscapes. Later, Bob Marshall, head of the Forest Service Lands Division, expanded the scope of that protection. In his honor, the Bob Marshall wilderness was dedicated. Today, Marshall and Leopold are respected as the fathers of our national wilderness system. In the late 30s, Howard C. Zahnheiser of the Wilderness Society injected a new awareness of wilderness into the American conscience. For him, wilderness was solitude, a romantic adventure, the keys to human health. This bill on wilderness, Mr. Speaker, I request, raise our names. I have Jeff, point of order. No order, call the road. Zahnheiser wrote a National Wilderness Act based on forest service regulations. His crusade was to protect wild America from machine America by law. He led a legislative war that lasted seven years, saw 66 rewrites and endless compromises. Worn out, he died two months before the Act passed in 1964. The Act gave birth to the National Wilderness Preservation System. It protected more than 9 million acres where the imprint of civilization is barely noticeable or non-existent. It directed federal agencies to manage a system that has expanded ten times its original size. Today, the American wilderness is scattered from sea to sea. Areas range in size from a scant six acres at Pelican Island in Florida to well over a million acres in Alaska. They contain both the highest and lowest places in North America. Some are visions of giant trees in the enchanted forests of the far west. Some are endless panoramas of snow and ice in Alaska. Others hold visions of the hard arid deserts of the southwest. A few are visions of slump lands in the southeast and Lakeland forests of the north and east. Each is a living portrait of an America that was. Here we can relive the adventure and challenge that greeted our pioneers. In contrast to the campgrounds of the national parks and forests, wilderness is roadless, resortless with none of the bare necessities. You enter on foot or by horseback. A few trail markers guide you through their pathways. At times the going can be taxing, but the rewards are beauty, challenge and solitude. While recreation for our recreation holds an important place in wilderness use, there's something else that makes wilderness significant. It contains unique features of scientific and educational value. Wilderness is a living laboratory, a biologic yardstick used to measure the effects of time and natural forces. Wilderness is also sanctuary for many species of plants and animals that could face extinction without it. For the packer, wilderness can mean a living. For the rancher, it is summer grass for livestock. But whether we depend on wilderness, study it or play in it, all of us are simply visitors. Our commitment is to leave only footprints and take away only memories. Recent years have witnessed an enormous popularity for the pleasures of wilderness. And because the quality of wilderness is related to visitor use, wilderness must be managed. Some areas are literally being loved to death. Regulations to control use at popular areas keep the system's success under control. Wilderness Ranger Mike Artemiev knows the problems. We must manage wilderness to protect that traditional character of the wild. Some people have the idea that wilderness areas like a park in the city or like a giant playground. But it's more than that. Wilderness transcends recreation. It's a concept, sacredness and solitude. You see people coming in on a Friday evening from a busy life in the city with obvious signs of stress. I mean, it's written all over them. They're tight. But once they've been in there for a few days and been able to experience that natural flow of energy from wilderness, then it changes. It gets much more comfortable. The permit system along with the quota system has saved the wilderness from just being overwhelmed. It was just too crowded. You'll see a lot of impacts that have occurred over the years that aren't going to change. The ground is packed down like cement. There's no plants growing into the area. Trees have been cut and limbs have been cut off and that sort of thing. People don't realize that food packages nowadays are all foil lined or plastic lined. They throw those things into a fire and the outside paper will burn off. But the foil certainly doesn't. The results were just garbage and a lot of fire pits, which we cleaned up constantly, always. So the pack it in, pack it out idea is working. It's just not working probably as well as it could. There's a sacredness to wilderness. It's a special. People have to have this feeling in order to preserve it and to make it last. Because it's got to last. It's got to be there a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now. That's what it was set aside for originally. I really believe that for some reason we all need the idea of wilderness. And when you get right down to it, the wilderness can survive without us. To answer the call of the wild within these untamed lands is to realize deeply personal rewards. Today's wilderness visitors pleasurably lose themselves in the inviting disorder of wildness. They are the hikers, the fishermen and the photographers from cities, suburbs and farms. Here we are alone. We stand face to face with our strengths and fears. We touch our spirit and see a vision of our abilities and our individuality. To succeed we are asked to reach deep within the untapped reservoir of our own resources. Each touches the wild and takes home what is perhaps the final treasure. The ultimate vision in life. Peace.