The passage of the Wilderness Act was an historically important event in American environmental politics, which tied the fate of much of America's public lands to disputes over the meaning of wilderness. 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 . For it must be told again and again, and be burningly borne in mind, that just now, while protective measures are being deliberated languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster and farther every day. Muir, John, 1838-1914 Publication date 1901 Topics National parks and reserves -- United States, Yosemite National Park (Calif.) Publisher Boston, New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Company Collection cdl; americana Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor University of California Libraries Language English His lifelong passion for hiking began when he hiked 1,000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in. Working in concert with many individuals and organizations, the Roosevelt administration was responsible for the following: the Newlands Act of 1902 . John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. Muir Inlet and Muir Glacier are both named for him. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/234. Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long. In 1892, Muir and other private citizens banded together and established the Sierra Club to increase awareness about the potential destruction of the countrys wilderness. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Year by year the remnant is growing smaller before the axe and fire, while the laws in existence provide neither for the protection of the timber from destruction nor for its use where it is most needed. These two sequoias are all that are known to exist in the world, though in former geological times the genus was common and had many species. He came to the San Francisco area in 1868 and there he discovered the Sierra Mountains. 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. "The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted." He described trees with a diameter of twenty feet as "lordly. All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried and found wanting, and the costly lessons of our own experience, as well as that of every civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the remnant of our forests is in the hands of the federal government, and that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly. 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. The annual appropriation for so-called protection service is hardly sufficient to keep twenty-five timber agents in the field, and as far as any efficient protection of timber is concerned these agents themselves might as well be timber. Muir served as the club's president until his death in 1914, and today, the Sierra Club boasts more than 3 . Happy robbers! I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. 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.''. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California, have been read by millions. Restless to explore more of the country, he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth. Shirley Sargent. 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. 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. After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt used his authority to establish 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks and . 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 Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. 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. He also realized how fragile nature was; how peoples impact on the land, through grazing, lumbering and commercial developments, was slowly destroying all the beauty in the wilderness. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are required. John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The most significant battle that Muir and the Sierra Club ever fought was over the damming of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley. It is the only genuine Erebus route. Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. not unlike those which confront us now. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. Chuck Roe -A Sesquicentennial Account of John Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk - A review of the landscape 150 years after Muir's walk, with a focus on the progress of land conservation and identification of the many publicly-accessible, protected natural areas now located immediately along Muir's route. Roe's intent was to observe and describe the publicly accessible parks, nature preserves, forests . Every place is made better by them. This means that less than 50,000 acres have been planted with stunted, woebegone, almost hopeless sprouts of trees, while at the same time the government has allowed millions of acres of the grandest forest trees to be stolen, or destroyed, or sold for nothing. John Muir (1838 - 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. 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. 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 part of the John Muir Exhibit, by Harold Wood and Harvey Chinn. 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. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain. 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. Madison Grant's nature was the last redoubt of nobility in a levelling and hybridizing democracy. 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. 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. They might run into the adjacent forests and burn the timber from hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State would care to spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his own fences and buildings were not threatened. Katherine S. Talmadge. 1971. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. The Land Ethic Aldo Leopold Part II: Two Philosophical Issues in Forestry Ethics MULTIPLE VALUES IN FORESTS . 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. 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. 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. As the title suggests, this essay is a study of the glaciers found in the region of the ensuing Yosemite National Park. The forest service does not rest satisfied with the present proportion of woodland, but looks to planting the best forest trees it can find in any country, if likely to be useful and to thrive in Japan. 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. But most preferred the shake business, until something more profitable and as sure could be found, with equal comfort and independence. 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. The big tree is also to come extent being made into lumber. They have disappeared in lumber and smoke, mostly smoke, and the government got not one cent for them; only the land they were growing on was considered valuable, and two and a half dollars an acre was charged for it. John Muir. Born April 21, 1838, Muir has become America's most famous naturalist and conservationist. The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest and most influential conservation organization in the United States. 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! Read the whole article in the August 1897 Atlantic. A Wind-Storm in the Forests. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two. Under the timber and stone act, of the same date, land in the Pacific States and Nevada, valuable mainly for timber, and unfit for cultivation if the timber is removed, can be purchased for two dollars and a half an acre, under certain restrictions. But light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. 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. But the state woodlands are not allowed to lie idle. During the course of his political term, Roosevelt set aside 148 million acres of forest reserves, created 50 regions for the protection of wildlife, founded 16 national monuments and established 5 new national parks. 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. 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, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. 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. The ground will be glad to feed them, and the pines will come down from the mountains for their homes as willingly as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomons temple. It is not generally known that, notwithstanding the immense quantities of timber cut every year for foreign and home markets and mines, from five to ten times as much is destroyed as is used, chiefly by running forest fires that only the federal government can stop. Home | On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth. By looking at their views and uses of language we can gain a better understanding of the environmental movement both during their lifetimes and as it . 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. Part One, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the big tree to the Sierra. John Muir Papers 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. With the exception of the timber culture act, under which, in consideration of planting a few acres of seedlings, settlers on the treeless plains got 160 acres each, the above is the only legislation aiming to protect and promote the planting of forests. President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838, as the oldest son in religious shopkeepers family. -John Muir The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. 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. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. He shared his love of the outdoors through writing and inspired people to protect our country's wild places like Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Sequoia & King's Canyon . The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and stars, is simply blotted out. Both environmentalists were great activists that informed the . A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. 237, pp. To Muir, these forests are a true creation by God himself--everlasting, plentiful, and can feed every man and . 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. 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. They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. 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. Anyhow, these vigorous, almost immortal trees are killed at last, and black stumps are now their only monuments over most of the chopped and burned areas. 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. From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely . 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. 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. 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. Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. According to Muir, 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 . 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. About | Thence still westward the invading horde of destroyers called settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky Mountains, felling and burning more fiercely than ever, until at last it has reached the wild side of the continent, and entered the last of the great aboriginal forests on the shores of the Pacific. He wrote many magazine articles and books, inspiring other people to love nature and drawing attention to the need to protect the environment. Everywhere, everywhere over all the blessed continent, there were beauty, and melody, and kindly, wholesome, foodful abundance. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. Then he strikes off into the virgin woods, where the sugar-pine, king of all the hundred species of pines in the world in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. 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 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 diameterlordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. Many of his ideas merely echoed the thoughts of earlier deists and Romantics, especially Thoreau, but he articu- lated them with an intensity and enthusiasm that commanded widespread attention. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky. of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot Matthew E. Whitbeck Western Oregon University, wolfen.one79@gmail.com Follow this and additional works at:https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/his . Muir became politically active to protect Yosemite from being threatened by commercial developments. Of all the destroyers that infest the woods the shake-maker seems the happiest. So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. 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. (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. . He was a strong voice in preserving the area known today as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The blackness is perfect. The effect of the present confused, discriminating, and unjust system has been to place almost the whole population in opposition to the government; and as conclusive of its futility, as shown by Mr. Bowers, we need only state that during the seven years from 1881 to 1887 inclusive the value of the timber reported stolen from the government lands was $36,719,935, and the amount recovered was $478,073, while the cost of the services of special agents alone was $455,000, to which must be added the expense of the trials. 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. 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. Of the total area of government forests, perhaps 70,000,000 acres, 55,000,000 acres have been brought under the control of the forestry department, a larger area than that of all our national parks and reservations. The outcries we hear against forest reservations come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale. University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate College 2016 Three men in the wilderness: Ideas and concepts of Muir enumerates the forest regulations of the principal countries of the world, and then reviews the abuses this country has allowed, detailing the fraudulent methods used by the timber thieves to gain title to thousands of forested acres. 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. 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. As timber the redwood is too good to live. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. > Uncle Sam is not often called a fool is business matters, yet he had sold millions of acres of timber land at two dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was worth more than a hundred dollars. It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a lesson on the management and care of forests. 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." Starting in the i87os, Muir made exploring wilderness and extoling its values a way of life. 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. 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. Theyre good as hog hams any day. 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. 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