Taking from the government is with them the same as taking from nature, and their consciences flinch no more in cutting timber from the wild forests than in drawing water from a lake or river. Enthralled by nature from a young age, Roosevelt cherished and promoted our nation's landscapes and wildlife. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. There is no real sky and no scenery. 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. They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. 1971. 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 . 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. Flying Spur Press, Yosemite, California. Muir strategically uses God to appeal to the readers of the time. Type the abstract of the document here. Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. The great forests of Northern United States captivated him and fueled . The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest and most influential conservation organization in the United States. 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 was an early proponent of a view we still hold todaythat much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. 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. 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. John Muir. 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. 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. Muir believes the forests must have been a delight to God, for "they were the best he ever planted" (145). As a boy, Muir was "fond of everything that was wild" (My Boyhood and Youth 30) and took great pleasure in the outdoors. John Muir, The American Forests. So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West, chapter 1 of 'Our National Parks' by John Muir (1901). 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. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain. 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. Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. 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. President Roosevelt's concern for the environment was influenced by American naturalists, such as John Muir, and by his own political appointees, including Gifford Pinchot, Chief of Forestry. Still, in the long run the world does not move backward. Accessibility Statement, John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes, Holt-Atherton Special Collections homepage. 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 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. Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. 237, pp. As he grew older, Muir became increasingly excited about what plants and nature could teach him. Have you ever wondered why your favorite National Park is surrounded by a National Forest? 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 Muir; At Home in the Wild. 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. '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 . 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. 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. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. In "The American Forests", John Muir's purpose is to reveal the disloyalty that Americans have towards their agriculture. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. "No prisoners were taken," recalled the witness to these events . 1) The Sierra Nevada. Then he goes to work sawing and splitting for the market, tying the shakes in bundles of fifty or a hundred. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. 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. 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. Muir walked through these groves of giant sequoias and thought them to be among the most fascinating of ecosystems certainly worth whatever protection humans could afford them. The most significant battle that Muir and the Sierra Club ever fought was over the damming of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley. 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. Critics including the . John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838, as the oldest son in religious shopkeepers family. 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 . Muir's conservation efforts saved many forests and natural areas for all of us. A Wind-Storm in the Forests. American forester, the first Chief of the US Forest Service and his family was the financial backer for the country's first forestry school (at Yale University), so there can be no doubt where the profession of forestry locates itself in the Muir-Pinchot debate. Here the forests reached their highest development. His lifelong passion for hiking began when he hiked 1,000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in. No other route on this continent so fully illustrates the abomination of desolation. Such a claim would be reasonable, as each seems the worst, whatever route you chance to take. 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. Sheep-owners and their shepherds also set fires everywhere through the woods in the fall to facilitate the march of their countless flocks the next summer, and perhaps in some places to improve the pasturage. Conservation generally refers to the act of consciously and efficiently using land and/or its natural resources. But most preferred the shake business, until something more profitable and as sure could be found, with equal comfort and independence. During his lengthy wanderings, Muir contemplated man's relationship to nature. 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. 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. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. In particular, from our Earth-based vantage point, we are keen to know where the closest life to us is, and how similar it might be to life on our home planet. Every place is made better by them. John Muir. Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike - John Muir, 1869. 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. Drought and barrenness would follow. Another of the company, a bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in his voice, drawled out: Bird business is well enough for some, but bear is my game, with a deer and a California lion thrown in now and then for change. 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. Under the act of June 3, 1878, settlers in Colorado and the Territories were allowed to cut timber for mining and agricultural purposes from mineral land, which in the practical West means both cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere, for any purpose, on any sort of public land. An 1867 accident caused him to abandon an industrial career and devote himself to nature. 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. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes. 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. The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. Honest citizens see that only the rights of the government are being trampled, not those of the settlers. Muir constantly brings up the burning of the forests. 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. Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains. T he Mountains of California, published in 1894, is John Muir's first book. 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. 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. Muir Inlet and Muir Glacier are both named for him. Happy robbers! Mere destroyers, however, tree-killers, spreading death and confusion in the fairest groves and gardens ever planted, let the government hasten to cast them out and make an end of them. Listen to the trailer for. Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. 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. 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. > 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. Home | Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nathaniel Cowper. It grows sturdily on all kinds of soil and rocks, and, protected by a mail of . Since then, critics both international and domestic, but mostly from within the environmental movement, have criticized the idea of wilderness. On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. The provisions of the code concerning private woodlands are substantially these: No private owner may clear his woodlands without giving notice to the government at least four months in advance, and the forest service may forbid the clearing on the following grounds: to maintain the soil on mountains, to defend the soil against erosion and flooding by rivers or torrents, to insure the existence of springs and watercourses, to protect the dunes and seashore, etc. 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. Part One, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? chicago booth job market candidates, cafe sydney dress code, App before your next visit to work sawing and splitting for the market, tying the in... National Recreation Area, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of.. 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