Glenn Randall | Boulder, CO

Glenn Randall is a freelance writer and photographer specializing in the outdoors.

Why does wilderness matter to you?

Wallace Stegner once wrote, “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we drive our roads through the last of the silence.” Today, silence, or at least the absence of industrial cacophony, can only be found deep in the wilderness. Wild places have been an integral part of my life for more than half a century, ever since my parents first took me and my sister to the mountains and deserts of California, and are still immensely important to me today, at age 69. Wilderness has given me many of the most powerful experiences of awe I have ever felt. Without wilderness, my life would have been much poorer.