January 17, 1974 - “And above, in the high thin blueness, the Bridge of Heaven on Horsethief Trail. Four hundred years of it – the plunder trail to heart’s desire. So for Coronado’s Spaniards and Wm. Ashley’s beaver hunters, for the miners and the stockmen and the utopian colonists, for tie cutters and ditchdiggers. So, too, for today’s vacationists and dambuilders and the purveyors who batten on them – there are, after all, more ways than one to skin either a cat or a continent,... that’s the hell of heaven: defining it to everyone’s taste. Somehow, though, it has to be managed. For there simply aren’t four hundred more years of plunder remaining, either in the Rockies or in the country as a whole.” Those were David Lavender’s words, from his book, “The Rockies,” quoted in Grand Junction at the recent wilderness hearings, by Bart Kohler, Denver, who spoke for Wilderness Society members in Colorado and Wyoming. Kohler told the Plaindealer that the “Bridge of Heaven” (above the amphitheater over Ouray) is included in the proposal for a larger area of wilderness than that proposed by the Forest Service.