Hiking for Change How William O. Douglas Saved the Wilderness Story by Ted Rosen
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the migrant laborers, the Chicanos and the I.W.W’s who I saw being shot at by the police. I saw cruelty and hardness, and my impulse was to be a force in other developments in the law.” With help from his Whitman fraternity brothers, Douglas headed east and enrolled at Columbia University. Despite his academic excellence at Columbia, Douglas was troubled by money problems and struggled in the concrete jungle of New York City. The boy from Yakima William O. Douglas was who had spent every free moa judge. In fact, he was an asment exploring the forested sociate justice of the Supreme mountains of the North Court of the United States. Cascades was now trapped He was also the longestin a tiny apartment overlookserving jurist in the history ing a dismal air shaft bereft of the Supreme Court: 36 of anything green and alive. years and 211 days. Yet he The stresses of law school was also a fierce defender of Douglas Rallies the Troops. America’s wild places, happy Photo by John Vallentyne (courtesy of MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 1986.5.23791.6) were slight compared to the pain of being so far removed to make public demonstrafir that almost hid it from view—these from his beloved hills and streams. tions of his noble crusade. How these two combined to give it an air of mystery in Of his time in New York, he wrote: forces existed inside one man’s head is an the faint light that preceded the sunrise. “Packed tight in a New York City interesting story—and played a crucial The view stirred in me a feeling of eagersubway. I have closed my eyes and role in the preservation of the wild Pacific ness and suspense that I have experienced imagined I was walking the ridge high coastline of Olympic National Park. again and again on coming to a ridge above Cougar Lake. That ridge has Growing up in poverty in Yakima, overlooking an unexplored lake in the the majesty of a cathedral. The Pacific Douglas studied hard, worked odd jobs wilderness.” Crest Trail winds along it under great throughout his teens, and earned a seat at While at Whitman, Douglas worked cliffs that suggest walls and spires yet Whitman College in Walla Walla. As a as a waiter, a janitor, and a cherry picker. unfinished. At points along the trail young student, he was awed by the natuWorking alongside immigrant workers at are meadows no bigger than a city lot, ral beauty of eastern Washington State. the cherry orchard inspired Douglas to from whose edge the mountain drops “I stood at daybreak one August study law. off a thousand feet or more. Here one morning on the ridge above Diamond “I worked among the very, very poor, stands on a dais looking directly down Lake in the Wallowas. We were camped
e expect judges to be impartial, to render calm decisions free of emotional baggage, but judges are human. There will always be some influence from their own experiences and personal outlook. Usually, they strive to limit that influence and render unbiased decisions. Their success in that exercise is as variable as the people who wear the robe.
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The heartbeat of Cascadia
at Tombstone Lake, and I had risen early to find and explore Diamond, which lay below me 800 feet or more in a deep pocket of the mountains. The dark sapphire of its water, its remoteness from the trail, the steep slopes surrounding it, the
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