Mark Teague | Austerlitz, NY

Mark Teague is an avid backpacker.

Why does wilderness matter to you?

In the afternoon the breeze fades. On the canyon walls the piñon pines are as still as features in a diorama. As quiet deepens into silence my own restless mind is the only proof that time hasn’t stopped altogether. I still have a distance to travel, but in this place the old imperative is reversed: don’t just do something, sit here. So I do, and for the briefest moment I wish that the politicians and bankers conducting this most recent land grab—Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase Escalante—could sit here with me. Maybe they would actually see the land, and feel it. Maybe this quintessential American landscape would become something more than an abstraction to them, more than another profit center. And maybe they would finally understand that beyond the art of the deal—sometimes—lies the wisdom to leave things as they are.