I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. John Muir (/mjr/; April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. In no other way than under some one of these laws can a citizen of the United States make any use of the public forests. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. . John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold todaythat much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. The settlement laws, under which a settler may enter lands valuable for timber as well as for agriculture, furnish another means of obtaining title to public timber. Abstract. Visit the John Muir National Historic Site, located in Martinez, California. In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded Gods trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get rid of. In crafting a sense of place for the forests, Muir is passively working his readers . Madison Grant's nature was the last redoubt of nobility in a levelling and hybridizing democracy. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. Only by gift or purchase, so far as I know, can the government get back into its possession a single acre of this wonderful forest. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes > My Account | John Muir (1838-1914), the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, has long been a favorite of mine. Though far less abundant than the redwood, it is, fortunately, less accessible, extending along the western flank of the Sierra in a partially interrupted belt about two hundred and fifty miles long, at a height of from four to eight thousand feet above the sea. All the pine needles and rootlets and blades of grass, and the fallen decaying trunks of trees, are dams, storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived devastating floods. Old grizzlies I despise, they want cannon to kill em; but the blacks and browns are beauties for grease, and when I get em just right, and draw a bead on em, I fetch em every time. Another said he was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the rains set in, hitch them to a gang-plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin plains for wheat. John Muir (1838 - 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. Critics including the . From an early age, Muir was fascinated by nature and was eager to learn about his environment. Chapter 2: How is Sustainability a Political Issue? World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) Being rather partial to trees, I could not resist reading "A wind-storm in the forests" by Scottish-born American naturalist/enviromentalist John Muir (1838-1914) when it lobbed in by email today as this week's Library of America story of the week.Anyone who has been to the stunning Yosemite - or visited the peaceful Muir Woods north of San Francisco - will have heard of John Muir. Only the forests of the West are significant in size and value, and these, although still great, are rapidly vanishing. Not a mountain is left in the landscape. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky, Many of natures five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields. To the northward, over Maine and the Ottawa, rose hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens, white pine and spruce, hemlock and cedar, shoulder to shoulder, laden with purple cones, their myriad needles sparkling and shimmering, covering hills and swamps, rocky headlands and domes, ever bravely aspiring and seeking the sky; the ground in their shade now snow-clad and frozen, now mossy and flowery; beaver meadows here and there, full of lilies and grass; lakes gleaming like eyes, and a silvery embroidery of rivers and creeks watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness. Thence westward were oak and elm, hickory and tupelo, gum and liriodendron, sassafras and ash, linden and laurel, spreading on ever wider in glorious exuberance over the great fertile basin of the Mississippi, over damp level bottoms, low dimpling hollows, and round dotting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery park openings, half sunshine, half shade ; while a dark wilderness of pines covered the region around the Great Lakes. Theyre good as hog hams any day. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. Our annual Brave Thinkers list, an interview with Mike Bloomberg, the strangest potential threat to the president, the Army's culture of mediocrity, Benjamin Schwarz on the end of jazz, and more, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. Even lumbermen in these regions, long accustomed to steal, are now willing and anxious to buy lumber for their mills under cover of law: some possibly from a late second growth of honesty, but most, especially the small mill-owners, simply because it no longer pays to steal where all may not only steal, but also destroy, and in particular because it costs about as much to steal timber for one mill as for ten, and therefore the ordinary lumberman can no longer compete with the large corporations. The Pantheon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1959. John Muir; At Home in the Wild. This magazine has been fully digitized as a part of The Atlantic's archive. The Yellowstone National Park 3. These residual forests are generally on mountain slopes, just where they are doing the most good, and where their removal would be followed by the greatest number of evils; the lands they cover are too rocky and high for agriculture, and can never be made as valuable for any other crop as for the present crop of trees. Once, in a company of this kind, I heard a man say, as he peacefully smoked his pipe: Boys, as soon as this jobs done Im goin into the duck business. Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on unchecked like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too late, though it is high time, for the government to begin a rational administration of its forests. Still, in the long run the world does not move backward Light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain. The great forests of Northern United States captivated him and fueled . Yet the dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking. Let them be as free to pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and hew, dig and plant, for homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries from the wild bushes, and moss and leaves for nests. On account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate, and the kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line, and the ashes are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed can never be rivaled. David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. John Muir was born on April 21, 1838 in the small rural town of Dunbar, Scotland. Read more from, Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. The wonderful advance made in the last few years, in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. The feudal lords valued the woodlands, and enacted vigorous protective laws; and when, in the latest civil war, the Mikado government destroyed the feudal system, it declared the forests that had belonged to the feudal lords to be the property of the state, promulgated a forest law binding on the whole kingdom, and founded a school of forestry in Tokio. travel our way. Trees from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three hundred and fifty feet, or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of fresh, exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron. Muir strategically uses God to appeal to the readers of the time. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time-and long before that-God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools,-only Uncle Sam can do that.''. "No prisoners were taken," recalled the witness to these events . Armed with a plant-press and a blank notebook, Muir wandered for weeks at a time, through the mountains that would later be Yosemite National Park. dwelling in the most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious climate, breathing delightful doors both day and night, drinking cool living water, roses and lilies at their feet in the spring, shedding fragrance and ringing bells as if cheering them on in their desolating work. 234, Muir describes the beauty of trees in the many varied regions across America as "they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness." (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. Bright seas made its border with wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and plains; while lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and openings, and happy birds and beasts gave delightful animation. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, whose main goal was to "do something for nature and make the mountains glad.". But, busied with tariffs, etc., Congress has given no heed to these or other appeals, and our forests, the most valuable and the most destructible of all the natural resources of the country, are being robbed and burned more rapidly than ever. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christs timeand long before thatGod has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from foolsonly Uncle Sam can do that. Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far! Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park. Thoreau, when contemplating the destruction of the forests on the east side of the continent, said that soon the country would be so bald that every man would have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God that at least the sky was safe. Gold, gold, gold! The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. Through his book Travels in Alaska, I learned about the formation of Glacier Bay and Muir's exploration of that twinned body of water I called home for two summers. With such variety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance, even nature, it would seem, might have rested content with the forests of North America, and planted no more. But when the steel axe of the white man rang out in the startled air their doom was sealed. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. There is no real sky and no scenery. The big tree is also to come extent being made into lumber. Any fool can destroy trees. The Civil War had just ended. In 1879, Muir made the first of his seven trips to Alaska, where he risked his life exploring the glaciers in Glacier Bay to find evidence of glacial activity. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes. Many of the miners find that timber is already becoming scarce and dear on the denuded hills around their mills, and they too are asking for protection of forests, at least against fire. About. Ginger Wadsworth. Word Count: 490. A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. Katherine S. Talmadge. Railroad tracks were just . There will be a period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. . To prepare the ground, it was rolled and sifted in seas with infinite loving deliberation and forethought, lifted into the light, submerged and warmed over and over again, pressed and crumpled into folds and ridges, mountains and hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic fires, ploughed and ground and sculptured into scenery and soil with glaciers and rivers, very feature growing and changing from beauty to beauty, higher and higher. With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of flour, a few pounds of coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, the shake-maker ascends the mountains to the pine belt where it is most accessible, usually by some mine or mill road. In the clearings of one of the largest mills on the coast we found thirty men at work, last summer, cutting off redwood shoots in the dark of the moon, claiming that all the stumps and roots cleared at this auspicious time would send up no more shoots. Hence they went wavering northward over icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and birch, by the coasts and the rivers, to within sight of the Arctic Ocean. In "The American Forests", John Muir's purpose is to reveal the disloyalty that Americans have towards their agriculture. After the destructive 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the decision was made to dam the valley to provide the recovering city with clean water. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. Nevertheless the Andes and the South American forests continued to fascinate his imagination, as his letters show, for many years after he came to California. I was consequently keen to read his short essay "Save the redwoods" when it popped up as an LOA story-of-the-week three weeks ago. Then he advertises, in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy of access and cheap. The remnant protected will yield plenty of timber, a perennial harvest for every right use, without further diminution of its area, and will continue to cover the springs of the rivers that rise in the mountains and give irrigating waters to the dry valleys at their feet, prevent wasting floods and be a blessing to everybody forever. The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction. The cool shades of the forest give rise to moist beds and currents of air, and the sod of grasses and the various flowering plants and shrubs thus fostered, together with the network and sponge of tree roots, absorb and hold back the rain and the waters from melting snow, compelling them to ooze and percolate and flow gently through the soil in streams that never dry. Drought and barrenness would follow. Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. Ours is the blackest. This tree is one of the most variable and most widely distributed of American pines. Starting in the i87os, Muir made exploring wilderness and extoling its values a way of life. He concluded that all life forms have inherent significance and the right to exist. Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. 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