ABQjournal: Leaders Save Wilds at the City’s Edge By Bob Howard, Wilderness Advocate

[The Sandia Mountains] loom as timeless sentinels on our horizon, as Albuquerque’s “Acropolis”— so familiar in its beckoning wildness and blissful solitude.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of an important step in preserving the Sandia Mountains. It is a story worth remembering.

Gazing up at Sandia Crest, I think of the leadership that has preserved some of New Mexico’s grandest wilderness areas. In a less frantic and driven world, one might think such gems of public land wilderness could preserve themselves. But as early as the 1920s, farsighted leaders understood that in the face of ever-growing development pressures, wilderness areas would persist for our grandchildren’s children to savor only if we deliberately protect them while we can. …

Who benefits from half a century of bipartisan efforts to preserve areas such as the Sandias? To my Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican conservationist way of thinking, we all do.

We earn the blessing of future generations for our restraint in leaving some of New Mexico’s still-wild landscape for them to know and enjoy. We all benefit, too, from the fact that our wild Sandia “Acropolis” stands above us, visible throughout Albuquerque and the surrounding valley. It enriches our busy lives with the scenic grandeur of its lofty, well protected wildness. Even if we never set foot within its boundaries, the Sandia Mountain Wilderness is a pillar of what makes Albuquerque unique.

What metropolis would not envy us this wilderness setting! …

Viewing the wilderness crest of the Sandias reminds us that it is the land of enchantment we must preserve for all who will follow us.