Monumental Decisions: What is Wilderness?

A man enjoying the view overlooking Canyonlands National Park near Green River Overlook, Utah; Photograph by Dan Ballard The long story of wilderness, national monuments, and how America’s public lands are going to change during the last year of the Obama Administration. In his famed 1862 essay “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau wrote: “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.