Black Mountain
Lookout Tower
Photo by
Dru Claridge
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This is the most beautiful place on earth," I said to my cat our first evening at Black Mountain tower together. I had just ridden horseback up here; Kipper had travelled with me, safe in her pet taxi. Now she stood on her hind legs to look out the window. She trembled, whether at her distance off the ground or at the wilderness all around us, I couldn’t say.
From the tower we could see much of the Gila’s three million acres. Visible over the treetops were wooded hills, bare mesas, canyons and ridges, and Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. To the west, the Mogollon Mountains glowed in the sunset at 11,000 feet. To the north were the bare and lonesome Plains of San Agustín, cut by curiously shaped hills.
On the peak were the amenities that would make life bearable for the next three months. A small cabin below was kitchen, pantry, and washhouse, with a refrigerator and a hot plate that ran on bottled gas. Next to the cabin a cistern collected water from the tin roof. I would work eight to ten hours a day in the tower, and sleep up there on one of the two bunks. An outhouse nestled below in the trees.
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Aldo Leopold
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It is autumn 1919, in a wild and scenic area of New Mexico’s Gila Forest. A young assistant district forester named Aldo Leopold is on horseback, trying to imagine what his surroundings will be like if a proposed road system goes through, a "civilizing" influence becoming all too familiar in other forests of the Southwest.
Not here, he resolves. Something must be done to save it so future generations will be able to enjoy the purity and beauty of this back country.
Leopold, with the aid of a few like-minded U.S. Forest Service colleagues, and strongly supported by the local community, eventually persuaded his employer that the area should remain free of roads and be preserved for wilderness recreation.
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