We need wilderness. Wallace Stegner wrote, "We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in."

Stegner called wilderness "the geography of hope," and thanks to U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and U.S. Rep. John Salazar, both of Colorado, a major wilderness and conservation bill is now before Congress to help protect part of Colorado's Western Slope in the canyons between Delta and Grand Junction.

Unlike other high-elevation rock and ice wildernesses in Colorado, the proposed 210,677-acre Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area and Wilderness can be accessed on foot or by canoe or raft down the lower Gunnison River. One of my favorite memories is canoeing into this Bureau of Land Management wilderness study area when my boys were young. They delighted in the many pools and pouroffs along Dominguez Creek. Our Colorado Historical Society expedition found historic cowboy corrals, rock shelters made by sheepherders, prehistoric Fremont and historic Ute Indian rock art, and a magnificent, wild canyon system perfect for exploring.

That visit was 10 years ago. Last month I went back on a BLM reconnaissance trip, and I appreciated how little had changed and how serious the BLM had become about protecting the area. A new steel bridge at Bridgeport, south of White Water, allows day hikers to park near the Union Pacific railroad tracks, walk a mile, cross the bridge and then enter the 66,255-acre Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Area, which is included in the proposed conservation area.

As Congressman Salazar explains, "Colorado's Western Slope is home to some of the most beautiful land in the entire nation and this bill will help ensure it stays that way." All nine county commissioners from Mesa, Delta, and Montrose counties have voted on resolutions supporting the bill. Former Judge Joan Woodward from Mesa County explains, "It's one of the most spectacular and easily accessible sites in the Grand Valley with abundant wildlife and desert bighorns that pose for cameras. People of all hiking abilities can traverse the area."

Within the larger National Conservation Area that will include designated campgrounds and mechanized recreation at the edges along old jeep roads, the wilderness area is in two big forks of Dominguez Canyon. Each fork ascends for miles westward into U.S. Forest Service land on the Uncompahgre Plateau.

Mapmaker F.V. Hayden named the canyons for the Spanish friars Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, who explored Colorado in 1776 but never actually made it into these canyons. But homesteaders and ranchers did, and part of the joy of exploring the landscape is seeing remnants of homesteader occupation and cowboy culture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Muriel Marshall wrote about the area in Red Hole in Time, the best account of the ranchers who eked out a living among the cacti, Sego lilies, and deadly larkspur growing along the canyon walls.

Former Outward Bound instructor Tony Prendergast from Crawford explains that the wilderness designation is "a great idea and a long time coming. The canyons are perfect in the winter time and shoulder months. As Grand Junction has grown, the area has gotten a higher degree of attention and it needs more management." Most visitors will stay close to the Gunnison River riparian corridor and the red rocks, but for Prendergast the best wilderness values can be found higher up in remote sections above the river and below the forest.

Sen. Salazar states, "I am proud that this bill will protect some of the most spectacular desert landscapes on Colorado's Western Slope, ensuring that recreationists, hunters and anglers can enjoy these wildlands for generations to come."

If a wilderness is a wild place with opportunities for silence, solitude and darkness, can you improve upon it? Yes! Recently, Durangoans from the San Juan Mountains Association canoed into the area. They camped along the mouth of Dominguez Creek. With a crew from Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, and logistics and cuisine provided by Centennial Canoes, they spent a long, hot day removing invasive tamarisks and making the area more accessible for watercraft. Along the river, crews used chainsaws to remove tamarisks at two campsites and then handsaws within the wilderness study area.

Volunteer Dianne Donovan saw "a remarkable change in just two days." In addition to removing the invasive, water-sucking tamarisks, the next day volunteers planted cottonwood trees along the river, which will eventually provide shade for future generations of wilderness visitors. Donovan says, "I think it would be a spectacular wilderness area. It's a beautiful, dramatic canyon."

We need wilderness. We need wilderness as a genetic bank for plants and animals, but also because wilderness and access to wildlands helped shape our unique American character. Who we are as a nation, and who we became as a people, is a direct result of our intimate contact with wild landscapes. Hiking and camping on wildlands, "where man is a visitor who does not remain," to quote from the 1964 Wilderness Act, is one of America's most enduring traditions.

But if wilderness visits are about solitude, they are also about building community and sharing the outdoors, which is exactly what San Juan Mountains Association volunteers enjoyed on their successful canoe trip. They relearned that significant wilderness lesson about the ties that bind - to the land and to each other.

Thank you, Ken and John Salazar, for introducing this important piece of federal legislation. When the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area and Wilderness law gets passed, Durangoans will be happy to provide the canoes and paddle you into Dominguez Creek to frolic in the pools and to camp under the stars.

For more information about canyon access, contact the Montrose Public Lands Center at 970-240-5300. They have a new relationship with the San Juan Mountains Association bookstore and have area books and maps. For information on the National Conservation Area legislation, contact Ann Brown, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar's office, 970-259-1710.

gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu. Andrew Gulliford is an historian and a professor of Southwest Studies and History at Fort Lewis College.