Back at the turn of the 20th Century Gifford Pinchot and John Muir had radically contrasting views of how to manage . John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. It has, therefore, as shown by Mr. Pinchot, refused to deliver its forests to more or less speedy destruction by permitting them to pass into private ownership. 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. Katherine S. Talmadge. The plan was usually as follows: A mill company desirous of getting title to a large body of redwood or sugar-pine land first blurred the eyes and ears of the land agents, and then hired men to enter the land they wanted, and immediately deed it to the company after a nominal compliance with the law; false swearing in the wilderness against the government being held of no account. This paper looks at the roles that language had in the writings of John Muir, the father of American national parks and Gifford Pinchot, the father of American forest conservation. 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. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers waged interminable forest wars, Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end So far our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will, depending on their inexhaustible abundance, Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long. Muir served as the club's president until his death in 1914, and today, the Sierra Club boasts more than 3 . Here the forests reached their highest development. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. The chief aims of the administration are effective protection of the forests from fire, an efficient system of regeneration, and cheap transportation of the forest products; the results so far have been most beneficial and encouraging. Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. On the other hand, about one half of the fifty million francs spent on forestry has been given to engineering works, to make the replanting of denuded areas possible. Happy robbers! During heavy rainfalls and while the winter accumulations of snow were melting, the larger streams would swell into destructive torrents; cutting deep, rugged-edged gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well as sand and rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and covering the lowland fields with raw detritus. 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. For years, the conservationists, who wanted to protect the awesome valley in its natural setting, were pitted against the Californians who wanted to dam the valley to create a new and reliable drinking water reservoir. About seventy million acres it still owns, enough for all the country, if wisely used. Yet the dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking. The big tree is also to come extent being made into lumber. Then he goes to work sawing and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a hundred. Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. John Muir. Basically, Muir's essay is a moment by moment account of one of his outings in the California . > They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. American forests! John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Wisconsin as a young boy. But there is no such road on the western side of the continent. Surveyed thus from the east to the west, from the north to the south, they are rich beyond thought, immortal, immeasurable, enough and to spare for every feeding, sheltering beast and bird, insect and son of Adam; and nobody need have cared had there been no pines in Norway, no cedars and deodars on Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-clad selvas in the basin of the Amazon. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. Chapter 2: How is Sustainability a Political Issue? 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. Muir became politically active to protect Yosemite from being threatened by commercial developments. Every place is made better by them. Muir constantly brings up the burning of the forests. 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. "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Had he gone West he would have found out that the sky was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of the mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and black that no sunbeam can pierce it. As for reservation and protection of forests, it seems as silly and needless to them as protection and reservation of the ocean would be; both appearing to be boundless and inexhaustible. the glory of the world! The Arctic Refuge is a crucial refuge as it is one of the few left in the Arctic and around the world. Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. HASC - Digital Archives But timber-thieves of the Western class are seldom convicted, for the good reason that most of the jurors who try such cases are themselves as guilty as those on trial. By the act of June 3, 1878, timber can be taken from public lands not subject to entry under any existing laws except for minerals, by bona fide residents of the Rocky Mountain States and Territories and the Dakotas. As timber the redwood is too good to live. They went to the woods to escape aspects of. After the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly cleared and scorched into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude of bread and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile middle West, spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over the rich valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region about the Great Lakes. This tree is one of the most variable and most widely distributed of American pines. Over nearly all of the more accessible slopes of the Sierra and Cascade mountains in southern Oregon, at a height of from three to six thousand feet above the sea, and for a distance of about six hundred miles, this waste and confusion extends. > He was 29. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. travel our way. Author: SAISD Created Date: 06/16/2016 20:10:00 Last modified by: SAISD Muir emigrated from Scotland with his family to Wisconsin in 1849. His family did not have enough money to send him to school, so after completing his daily farm chores, Muir spent his spare time teaching himself algebra and geometry. In most mills only the best portions of the best trees are used, while the ruins are left on the ground to feed great fires which kill much of what is left of the less desirable timber, together with the seedlings on which the permanence of the forest depends. They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise with no forbidding angel either from Washington or from heaven. As is shown by Mr. E. A. Bowers, formerly Inspector of the Public Land Service, the foundation of our protective policy, which has never protected, is an act passed March 1, 1817, which authorized the Secretary of the Navy to reserve lands producing live-oak and cedar, for the sole purpose of supplying timber for the navy of the United States. This grand tree, Sequoia sempervirens, is surpassed in size only by its near relative, Sequoia gigantea, or big tree, of the Sierra Nevada, if indeed it is surpassed. Here and there in the Southern States there are still considerable areas of timbered government land, but these are comparatively unimportant. He is best known for his work as a conservationist, particularly his role in the establishment of Yosemite National Park in California. Thus, the prospector, the miner, and mining and railroad companies are allowed by law to take all the timber they like for their mines and roads, and the forbidden settler, if there are no mineral lands near his farm or stock-ranch, or none that he knows of, can hardly be expected to forbear taking what he needs wherever he can find it. They are invited to heaven, and may well be allowed in America. Nevertheless, under this act wealthy corporations have fraudulently obtained title to from ten thousand to twenty thousand acres or more. 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. 341, v. 6, pp. Everywhere, everywhere over all the blessed continent, there were beauty, and melody, and kindly, wholesome, foodful abundance. Muir, John, "The American Forests" (1897). My Account | T he Mountains of California, published in 1894, is John Muir's first book. The sky is black and the ground is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. The trees are felled, and about half of each giant is left on the ground to be converted into smoke and ashes; the better half is sawed into choice lumber and sold to citizens of the United States or to foreigners: thus robbing the country of its glory and impoverishing it without right benefit to anybody, a bad, black business from beginning to end. In Switzerland, after many laws like our own had been found wanting, the Swiss forest school was established in 1865, and soon after the Federal Forest Law was enacted, which is binding over nearly two thirds of the country. The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed. The Yellowstone National Park 3. Not only do the shepherds, at the driest time of the year, set fire to everything that will burn, but the sheep consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young conifers when they are in a starving condition from crowding, and they rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren. A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. John W. Winkley, M.A., D.D. John Muir wrote a great essay, known as the "The American Forest" which spoke about the great beauty of nature and Chief Seattle gave a great speech known as the " Environmentalist Statement" which spoke about sustainability and the respect we need to provide and invoke. Its focus is the general geology and characteristics of the Sierra Nevada. The forests of America, however slighted. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. This magazine has been fully digitized as a part of The Atlantic's archive. Listen to the trailer for. O ver 150 years ago, John Muir set out on a thousand mile journey across the US, from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, on foot. The sprouts from the roots and stumps are cut off again and again, with zealous concern as to the best time and method of making death sure. Ours is the blackest. 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. Conservation generally refers to the act of consciously and efficiently using land and/or its natural resources. Most notably, this was John Muir's first published essay (1871). Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nathaniel Cowper. FAQ | The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe. Thus every mill is a centre of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from use. They have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and irreligious interference with vested rights, likely to endanger the repose of all ungodly welfare. There is no real sky and no scenery. Drought and barrenness would follow. For many a century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed them every day; working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing, painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled by. An exception would seem to be found in the case of our forests, which have been mismanaged rather long, and now come desperately near being like smashed eggs and spilt milk. Both environmentalists were great activists that informed the . It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a lesson on the management and care of forests. During his lengthy wanderings, Muir contemplated man's relationship to nature. The closing chapter reviews American forests broadly, and utters an ardent plea for their preservation. 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. How strong a voice that metal has! In France no government forests have been sold since 1870. Within the pantheon of environmental greats, few match the stature of John Muir. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? There is none to say them nay. The Land Ethic Aldo Leopold Part II: Two Philosophical Issues in Forestry Ethics MULTIPLE VALUES IN FORESTS . It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods, trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Still, the species is not in danger of extinction. A proprietor who has cleared his forest without permission is subject to heavy fine, and in addition may be made to replant the cleared area. A large portion of the best timber is thus shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge knotty tops, is left in ruins for tremendous fires that kill every tree within their range, great and small. Honest citizens see that only the rights of the government are being trampled, not those of the settlers. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. An extension of this law by the passage of the act of March 2, 1831, provided that if any person should cut live-oak or red cedar trees or other timber from the lands of the United States for any other purpose than the construction of the navy, such person should pay a fine not less than triple the value of the timber cut, and be imprisoned for a period not exceeding twelve months. The American Forests Appendix Index List of Illustrations Sequoias, Mariposa Grove [bigger] Like 0. No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. 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 same thing is true of the mines, which consume and destroy indirectly immense quantities of timber with their innumerable fires, accidental or set to make open ways, and often without regard to how far they run. The axe is not yet at the root of every tree, but the sheep is, or was before the national parks were established and guarded by the military, the only effective and reliable arm of the government free from the blight of politics. In decrying the destruction of woodlands by loggers, settlers, and industrialists, Muir, the father of Americas conservation movement, advanced the notion that natural resources ought to be preservedan idea that spawned vast new parks as well as the creation of the U.S. Forest Service. Land commissioners and Secretaries of the Interior have repeatedly called attention to this ruinous state of affairs, and asked Congress to enact the requisite legislation for reasonable reform. 357-[393]. He was a strong voice in preserving the area known today as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. His visit with the naturalist had a tremendous impact on his political actions. The Pantheon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1959. The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) 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! 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. These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all of them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four hundred feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameter, lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. The Forests of the Yosemite Park . This can be in the form of setting aside tracts of land for protection from hunting or urban development, or it can take the form of using less resources such as . 1993. It is a compilation of his own accounts of his travels and journeys, and his explorations and examinations, of the mountain ranges of California, in particular the Sierra Nevada, during the late 1860s to the early 1870s, a time when the wild places in the State where . The Mountains of California, his first book, was published in. Surely, then, it should not be wondered at that lovers of their country, bewailing its baldness, are now crying aloud, Save what is left of the forests! Clearing has surely now gone far enough; soon timber will be scarce, and not a grove will be left to rest in or pray in. The conservation/preservation battle first played on the 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. NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window. Gold, gold, gold! They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyedchased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woodstrees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. After several legal battles, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890 in order to protect thousands of acres of forest land from further destruction. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two. Born April 21, 1838, Muir has become America's most famous naturalist and conservationist. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it is claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage. But in the Rocky Mountains and California and Arizona, where the forests are inflammable, and where the fertility of the lowlands depends upon irrigation, public opinion is growing stronger every year in favor of permanent protection by the federal government of all the forests that cover the sources of the streams. As a boy, Muir was "fond of everything that was wild" (My Boyhood and Youth 30) and took great pleasure in the outdoors. Last summer, in the Rocky Mountains, I saw six fires started by sparks from a locomotive within a distance of three miles, and nobody was in sight to prevent them from spreading. I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. The fact is, it was all started over 100 years ago by two men I like to refer to as the founding fathers of America's public lands. While reading the John Muir excerpt from the reader, I was struck with how closely he followed the traditions of Emerson and Thoreau while still expanding on his own style. The volume is from the press of Houghton . And in the fullness of time it was planted in groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest, most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the world. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley . Enthralled by nature from a young age, Roosevelt cherished and promoted our nation's landscapes and wildlife. The largest sawmills ever built are busy along its seaward border, with all the modern improvements, but so immense is the yield per acre it will be long ere the supply is exhausted. A champion of America's great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation's history and culture. not unlike those which confront us now. Merely what belongs to all alike is reserved, and every acre that is left should be held together under the federal government as a basis for a general policy of administration for the public good. But when the steel axe of the white man rang out in the startled air their doom was sealed. Restless to explore more of the country, he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. 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. "A wind-storm in the forests" by American naturalist/environmentalist John Muir (1838-1914) was the first Library of America (LOA) story of the week that I ever reviewed here. 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? As a child, he designed many inventions that would ease the familys work. Each article originally printed in this magazine is available here, complete and unedited from the historical print. 'Yes, John Muir; and you know I promised to return and visit you in about twenty-five years, and though I am a little latesix or seven yearsI've done the best I could . About. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate College 2016 Three men in the wilderness: Ideas and concepts of Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. John Muir was one of the country's most famous naturalist and conservationist and Muir Woods, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is named in his honor. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. Publisher's Summary During the past twenty-five years, North American forestry has received increasingly vigorous scrutiny. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. 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. Thence still westward swept the forests to right and left around grassy plains and deserts a thousand miles wide: irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and willow, nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca, caring nothing for drought, extending undaunted from mountain to mountain, over mesa and desert, to join the darkening multitudes of pines that covered the high Rocky ranges and the glorious forests along the coast of the moist and balmy Pacific, where new species of pine, giant cedars and spruces, silver firs and sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky three hundred feet above the ferns and the lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long centuries, preaching Gods forestry fresh from heaven. John Muir Lesson for Kids: Facts & Biography 2022-10-26. He concluded that all life forms have inherent significance and the right to exist. Our National Parks, by John Muir (1901, c. 1909) - The Writings of John Muir - John Muir Exhibit (John Muir Education Project, Sierra Club California) Our National Parks by John Muir Contents List of Illustrations Preface The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West The Yellowstone National Park The Yosemite National Park 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. From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely . Any fool can destroy trees. by man, must have been a great delight to. 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