Muir, even more than Thoreau, played a key role in popularizing love of wilderness
- Born in Scotland in 1838,
family moved to Wisconsin when he was 11
- He grew up in a harsh home--his father had a very strict view of Christianity and the importance of hard work--Muir thought wilderness far more appealing than civilization
- he escaped to the University of Wisconsin, where he discovered the ideas of natural theology and trancendentalism
- he was talented as an inventor and considered that as a career until he nearly lost his sight in an accident
- he walked a thousand miles to the gulf of Mexico, then took a ship to San Francisco and headed for the mountains
- he discovered the Yosemite valley and stayed
his ideas came from trancendentalism--nature is a mirror reflecting the Creator
- "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. "
- "Wander a whole summer if
you can. Thousands of God's blessings will search you and soak you as
if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are
business-tangled and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out
of the heavy laden year, give a month at least. The time will not be
taken from the sum of life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely
lengthen it and make you truly immortal. "
- In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware. -- John of the Mountains
- Against the building of a
dam in a valley near Yosemite: "These temple-destroyers, devotees of
ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and
instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to
the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the
people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been
consecrated by the heart of man."
- "When we try to pick out
anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
Universe." -- My First Summer in the
Sierra
- he took it much farther than Thoreau or Emerson, glorying in being alone in the wilderness
what he said that was new was seeing wild nature as having the right to exist for its own sake, not just for the benefit of human beings:
- "No dogma taught by the present
civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in a way of a
right understanding of the relations which culture sustains as to
wilderness, as that which declares that the world was made especially
for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in
the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as
something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the
enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged." from "Wild
Wool", 1875.
- "Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, 'What are rattlesnakes good for?' As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a French traveler put this old question replied that their tails were good for toothache, and their heads for fever. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life." -- Our National Parks, ch. 2.
- "Why should man value himself as
more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what
creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not
essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos? The universe
would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete
without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our
conceitful eyes and knowledge. From the dust of the earth, from the
common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the
same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and
insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow
mortals.... This star, our own good earth, made many a successful
journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of
creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to
claim them. After human beings have also played their part in
Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or
extraordinary commotion whatever." -- A
Thousand-Mile Walk to the
Gulf (1916)
- "wise use": set aside
natural resources for future use and manage them wisely (Pinchot)
- preservationists want
natural areas unaltered by humans, for their own sake
- Muir tried to have it both ways for a while but ended up a leading preservationist
In 1892 Muir founded the Sierra Club
Meanwhile at the same time the federal government also passed a law setting aside forest reserves, leading to the National Forests, which have a very different philosophy than the National Parks
- Forestry was developing as a profession--one of the key leaders was Gifford Pinchot
- Pinchot argued for sustained yield--if it takes your trees 100 years to grow cut down and replant 1/10 of the forest every 10 years
- see trees as a crop--the trees are going to die anyway so why not use them
- use the forests for the long-term greatest good of the nation (benefit the public, as is appropriate in a democracy)
- wise use--cut down trees
only as fast as they grow again
- this wasn't Muir's idea of
preservation
- National Park and National Forest systems developed very differently
- the Forest Service is part
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Park Service is part of the
Department of the Interior
- so long as forestry techniques involved cutting only selected trees, sustained yield seemed like a good idea to many people
- multiple use--we can use
forests for timber production and recreation both
- but when new technology made clearcutting (rather than selective cutting) the more efficient approach and cutting increased in the 1950s and 1960s the public was horrified
- The Greatest Good
ch. 4 to Hetch Hetchy
"Any
fool can destroy trees. 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. Few
that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards
getting back anything like the noble primeval 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. Through all the
wonderful, eventful centuries 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. "
