Wilderness, as Wallace Stegner wrote in his Wilderness Letter, “... can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” David Brower’s son, Kenneth Brower, recently wrote, “Wilderness reminds us of who we are. Once the entire world, it is that shrinking sliver where life operates as Creation--or the life force, or God, or Nature--intended before humankind's attempted improvements on that old plan, and we lose it at our peril.”

Land area in Colorado totals 666,784,000 acres, but just over 3.5 million acres is federally protected Wilderness in 41 separate Wilderness areas. As defined by the Wilderness Act of 1964 in Section 2(c), Wilderness is...an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man...an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvement or human habitation...generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable..." The Roaring Fork Group of the Sierra Club supports and is working toward the designation of more Wilderness lands for Colorado.