www.wawild.orgIf you give an infinite number of Congressional monkeys with typewriters an infinite amount of time, will they write and pass a bill to protect 106,000 acres of wilderness area near Mount Baker? It’s starting to seem maybe so. Yesterday Sen. Patty Murray talked up Wild Sky, the area that’s been on the table for the highest level of federal protection an area can get–almost no development of any kind allowed. Packaged with an enormous land bill, it sailed through the Senate. “I’m immensely proud of this legislation,” Murray said from the chamber floor yesterday.The bill is expected to get a quick up or down consensus vote in the house. Then the first designated Washington wilderness area in 23 years will only need a signoff from Bush, though he has yet to indicate whether or not he plans to sign the package.It’s a long time coming for this one–first floated as an idea more than nine years ago and formally introduced in 2002, it cleared the Senate three times, always hitting a snag from a hostile committee chair on the House side of the hill. Then last year the Dems took control and there a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. I was actually in the House last April when Larsen gave an impassioned speech to a couple of other legislators there to back something else and a couple of tour groups. It was pushed through with a consensus vote (which basically means it has put it up for an up or down go ahead from anyone in the chamber at the time.) I skittered across the Capitol building to get Murray’s take on it and was assured that it would sail through the Senate once again and on to victory. But then the Attorney General started firing judges for political reasons, a rare alliance between the President and many Democrats on immigration went up in flames, and there was a standoff with that same President over attempts to secure a time line on Iraq by tying it to funding (the Dems blinked). And Wild Sky was put on hold once again.Getting in with a bigger package is always good for uber-local legislation like Wild Sky and the 91-4 vote in the Senate is a good sign. If it gets the same treatment in the House that it got last year then it should be smooth sailing at least to 1600 Pennsylvania, which is farther than it has made it so far. But that’s still a lot of contingencies for something that was supposed to be a done deal last year. Still, it’s a light at the end of the tunnel for wilderness supporters.