Olaus and Mardy Murie were leaders in the campaign to establish the Arctic Refuge. As respected scientists and Alaskan explorers the Muries knew the facts about the Arctic Refuge. But their efforts were successful because they appealed to American values that extend far beyond statistics about oil and caribou. “It is inevitable,” wrote Olaus Murie, “if we are to progress as people in the highest sense, that we shall become ever more concerned with saving intangible resources, as embodied in this move to establish the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.”
The Arctic Refuge remains an intact piece of the original wild America that shaped our national character. The American frontier demanded qualities that we want to think still prevail – self-reliance, ingenuity, and determination. Even in the 1950’s Olaus Murie wrote that “we are losing the last vestiges of that precious frontier atmosphere that helps build a strong civilization,” and now, in the 21st century, that frontier atmosphere has nearly vanished.
We live in a time of great dislocation. Our equilibrium is threatened by economic turmoil, upending our expected levels of comfort and ease. We are disoriented by a rapidly changing climate, no longer able to rely on long-established patterns and processes of nature. Meanwhile, the pace of life steals our souls as we move ever faster to remain in place or fall behind.
We have run up against the limits of the consumer culture and find ourselves dangerously adrift. The times demand a return to lives simple in means but rich in ends. “We long for something more,” wrote Olaus Murie, “an alternative to the materialism and greed that has settled over our land, something that has a mental and spiritual impact on us. This idealism, more than anything else, will set us apart as a nation striving for something worthwhile in the universe.”
Protecting land is a grand American tradition extending back to the founding of our nation. The idea of safeguarding the national heritage in parks and refuges began in the United States and has spread to every country on earth. Yet conservation of our iconic American landscapes has always encountered opposition from those few who sought to profit at the expense of all Americans. Lengthy battles, often stretching over decades, accompanied the creation of Grand Teton National Park, Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite, and the Arctic Refuge. Our country would be vastly poorer if conservationists had not persisted in all of these fights. We resisted the drive to degrade these special places, and now cannot fathom an America without them.
The Arctic Refuge matters more now than ever. The Arctic Refuge, like Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Yosemite, is one of our great national treasures. Defacing our American heritage for the sake of convenience severs us from our past, cheapens our present and cheats the future. We should all care about what happens to this American land, as what happens to the land happens to us. “Will our society,” asked Mardy Murie, “our modern society, realize the value of keeping one such area, at least, empty of technology and full of life?"
Steve Duerr is Executive Director of The Murie Center in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. Email him at steve@muriecenter.org.
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