Somewhere in Oregon there is a corner of an office, a closet or attic space where dozens of cardboard tubes are hidden away. Each tube contains several topographical maps, many with scrawled notes about landscapes that he visited. Most of these landscapes were Roadless Areas in National Forests. On most of these maps are drawn boundaries; lines which hope to protect something precious.
Life has boundaries for all of us. Some
are limited by income, others by physical impairments, mental limitations, or
simply circumstances. Wilderness must be protected within boundaries because
deep inside the DNA structure of all humans there is a primitive desire to
greedily consume everything which is balanced by an equally primitive need to
know that there are still places on maps where the disease of civilization has
not yet infected and sickened the land. He understood this.
Wilderness advocates are an odd lot. We
gather together reluctantly to protect the lands we love. In 1975, when a group
in Bend first formed to protect Roadless Areas of the Deschutes National
Forest, there was a slide show and a lecture scheduled in an auditorium on the
campus of Central Oregon Community College. As attendees filtered into the room,
most seated themselves as far from others as the space allowed, resulting in an
audience that resembled an array of free radicals in a biochemistry graph.
If there can be such a thing as a
camaraderie of solitary individuals, this room represented exactly that.
Wilderness advocates value our isolation not because we crave loneliness but
because we require solitude as a respite from the world of civilized chaos that
swirls around us and threatens to devour peace of mind. A love of solitude and
a desire to be free from the constraints of society form the basis of a desire
to protect wild lands. But few individuals stay true to this cause their entire
lives, devoting themselves to it. Poring over maps for forty years with a
cigarette and a cup of coffee while Red Garland’s Country Little Shack plays in
the background.
Tim Lillebo loved those maps. He loved
a good blues tune. He loved good coffee and he loved rolling a cigarette while
his eyes followed the well spaced loops in a contour line that represented a
seep or a bog where elk could wallow in mud and escape biting deer flies in the
middle of summer in a remote canyon near Glacier peak. He loved to follow the
tight contours of ridgelines where perhaps the last lone wolverine in Oregon
was spotted near Monument Rock. He loved to stand in a forest of old ponderosa
pines; he called them pumpkin pines, and gaze into the rich yellow and orange
hues of their puzzled barks. He loved wild land enough to devote his entire
adult life to it, with little monetary reward. If good coffee and blues and a
pouch of roll your own could be acquired, Tim was happy. Saving and protecting
wild land kept his soul fed. And Oregon will forever benefit from his efforts.
Over the past 40 years most of us
wandered away from the cause, nipping at the edges in our respective habitats
by signing a petition here, writing a letter to congress there. We had families
to raise, careers to chase, dreams to follow. But Tim stayed at it, working
every day to draw some protective boundaries around land that is always
threatened. One man’s passing does not stop a cause as deeply rooted in the
human psyche as Wilderness advocacy, but it certainly sent a tremor wave
throughout this odd camaraderie of solitary souls who still seek the solitude
of wild places.
Somewhere, in an office or a closet or
an attic are dozens of cardboard tubes of topographical maps which should be
protected so that future generations can unroll them and study the work of one
man who stood for something greater in a world that seems to only reward wealth
and power. We should teach those after us to follow those contour lines.
Because land will endure long after human effort passes away.
