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Show 450. appreciate a great deal from her lawn chair, he did not wish, as Ruskin did, to drag the mountaineer down from his mountain. Neither did he wish to see everyone able to "sing excelsior in safety." He thought that a wilderness was for those who were willing and able to seek it. Not a right, but a priviledge given by Nature to those who worked for it. A utilitarian and democratic aesthetic - the aesthetic of moderation - became the basis for policy in National Parks, premised upon a belief that "wilderness experience" was an "inalienable right." This was called "facing political and economic realities." Yosemite and Yellowstone became "Our National Parks." If one were not for the "greatest number" then one could be accused of economic discrimination. Just as today it is a mark against wildernesses that they seem to be utilized primarily by well-educated professional people, not by blue-collar workers. The trouble with this aesthetic utilitarianism was that the spiritual value of wilderness might be judged, even by its champions, by men of the Sierra Club like Warren Olney, to be less important than other greater goods. The aesthetic spirituality of Hetch Hetchy would have to compete with the aesthetic spirituality of San Francisco, on the assumption that a new Jerusalem was at least as important and probably more important than Nature's temples. Hetch Hetchy could be utilized for a higher good if it were the source of water for San Francisco. The Protestant's mission had always been to change the world, not to accept it. So it was that San Francisco could argue that a reservoir would make |