The legitimate demands on the forests that have passed into private ownership, as well as those in the hands of the government, are increasing every year with the rapid settlement and upbuilding of the country, but the methods of lumbering are as yet grossly wasteful. The great forests of Northern United States captivated him and fueled . He wrote many magazine articles and books, inspiring other people to love nature and drawing attention to the need to protect the environment. The American Forests by John Muir (1901) . John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes Drought and barrenness would follow. This excerpt from "The American Forests," was part of John Muir's 1897 campaign to save the American wilderness. Enthralled by nature from a young age, Roosevelt cherished and promoted our nation's landscapes and wildlife. 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. Any fool can destroy trees. One of the reasons why John Muir and other naturalists would have believed that the grandeur of Western America was shaped entirely by natural forces is that they had no idea how many Native. My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir's reverent acclamation of the beauty of the wilderness and particularly the Yosemite Valley in California, is a dated journal account of . 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. A few bolts from the same section that the shakes were made from are split into square sticks and built up to form a chimney, the inside and interspaces being plastered and filled in with mud. Shot em on the Joaquin, tied em in dozens by the neck, and shipped em to San Francisco. The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction. 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. 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 . David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Its focus is the general geology and characteristics of the Sierra Nevada. The great naturalist also visits the. Then he goes to work sawing and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a hundred. FAQ | John Muir. He would later be called the godfather of the American environmental movement. The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread. There was some virtuous effort made with a view to limit the operations of the act by requiring that the purchaser should make affidavit that he was entering the land exclusively for his own use, and by not allowing any association to enter more than one hundred and sixty acres. 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 . "No prisoners were taken," recalled the witness to these events . John Muir, (born April 21, 1838, Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotlanddied December 24, 1914, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Scottish-born American naturalist, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation, who was largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park, which are located in California. A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. -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. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is wrong to steal government timber. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky. 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. 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. Muir believes the forests must have been a delight to God, for "they were the best he ever planted" (145). Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure. Then he advertises, in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy of access and cheap. As the title suggests, this essay is a study of the glaciers found in the region of the ensuing Yosemite National Park. The two most fascinating questions about extraterrestrial life are where it is found and what it is like. The 39th president of the United States of America Jimmy Carter fears the domination of domestic use of the Artctic Refuge. 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. But light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain. John Muir. The gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and more sublimely beautiful. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. His visit with the naturalist had a tremendous impact on his political actions. As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree. Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth. Here and there in the Southern States there are still considerable areas of timbered government land, but these are comparatively unimportant. Each article originally printed in this magazine is available here, complete and unedited from the historical print. John Muir was born on April 21, 1838 in the small rural town of Dunbar, Scotland. HASC - Digital Archives Relating how the ever-increasing horde of settlers had poured across the continent, Muir writes: " with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers waged interminable forest wars; chips flew thick and fast, trees in their beauty fell crashing by the millions and the smoke of their burning has been rising to heaven more than 200 years . 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." Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. 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. The volume is from the press of Houghton . T he Mountains of California, published in 1894, is John Muir's first book. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. This magazine has been fully digitized as a part of The Atlantic's archive. Madison Grant's nature was the last redoubt of nobility in a levelling and hybridizing democracy. 1971. Every one of the frail shake shanties is a centre of destruction, and the extent of the ravages wrought in this quiet way is in the aggregate enormous. Basically, Muir's essay is a moment by moment account of one of his outings in the California . God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, and avalanches; but he cannot save them from fools, only Uncle Sam can do that.. The American Forests In decrying the destruction of woodlands by loggers, settlers, and industrialists, Muir, the father of America's conservation movement, advanced the notion that. The Yosemite National Park 4. John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. 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. 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. University Libraries President Theodore Roosevelt & 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. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West 2. Our National Parks, by John Muir (1901, c. (1901)) - John Muir Writings . 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. the glory of the world! 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. 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. John Muirthe surprise star of Ken Burns's recent PBS documentary, The National Parks is most remembered for founding the Sierra Club in 1911 and for the preservation of Yosemite, but another of his great legacies is his prose, which introduced a new vocabulary to the genre of nature writing. 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. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. Muir emigrated from Scotland with his family to Wisconsin in 1849. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity; but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. In the East and along the northern Pacific coast, where the rainfall is abundant, comparatively few care keenly what becomes of the trees as long as fuel and lumber are not noticeably dear. 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. Publisher's Summary During the past twenty-five years, North American forestry has received increasingly vigorous scrutiny. In their natural condition, or under wise management, keeping out destructive sheep, preventing fires, selecting the trees that should be cut for lumber, and preserving the young ones and the shrubs and sod of herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be a never failing fountain of wealth and beauty. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. 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. His lifelong passion for hiking began when he hiked 1,000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in. 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. Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long. John Muir (1838-1914), the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, has long been a favorite of mine. The forests of America, however slighted. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) 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. In 1913, Congress passed a law that approved the construction of the dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley. At least none is in sight from the lowlands, and they all might as well be on the moon, as far as scenery is concerned. 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. In crafting a sense of place for the forests, Muir is passively working his readers . 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. 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. 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. . 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. As he grew older, Muir became increasingly excited about what plants and nature could teach him. Still, the species is not in danger of extinction. A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. He is best known for his work as a conservationist, particularly his role in the establishment of Yosemite National Park in California. In the nature of things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. This tree is one of the most variable and most widely distributed of American pines. John Muir (1838 - 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn." John Muir, The Mountains of California tags: energy , mountains , nature 1227 likes Like U.S. Even in Congress, a sizable chunk of gold, carefully concealed, will outtalk and outfight all the nation on a subject like forestry, well smothered in ignorance, and in which the money interests of only a few are conspicuously involved. Of all the destroyers that infest the woods the shake-maker seems the happiest. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. not unlike those which confront us now. And when he was tired wading in the sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he just knocked off on ducks, and went to the Contra Costa hills for dove and quail. Most notably, this was John Muir's first published essay (1871). So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. 357-[393]. That a change from robbery and ruin to a permanent rational policy is urgently needed nobody with the slightest knowledge of American forests will deny. The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the big tree to the Sierra. > The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. 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. They cover an area of about 29,000,000 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. 341, v. 6, pp. Muir, John, "The American Forests" (1897). Part One, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? 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. He was a strong voice in preserving the area known today as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Only the forests of the West are significant in size and value, and these, although still great, are rapidly vanishing. America is one of the wealthiest Continue reading Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged John Muir, The American Forests | 1 Comment Restless to explore more of the country, he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness. 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. John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Wisconsin as a young boy. In France no government forests have been sold since 1870. It is not a book of forestry, but the forest is the most . Railroad tracks were just . Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous melancholy ruins; and the companies might well cry in their advertisements: Come! Muir's nature was a pristine refuge from the city. 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