Savage's men fired indiscriminately into the Ahwahneechee camp, a people who had called this valley their home for centuries. Muir emigrated from Scotland with his family to Wisconsin in 1849. Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. 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. 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. 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. The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and stars, is simply blotted out. John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. In the administration of its forests, the state righteously considers itself bound to treat them as a trust for the nation as a whole, and to keep in view the common good of the people for all time. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. The closing chapter reviews American forests broadly, and utters an ardent plea for their preservation. He wrote many magazine articles and books, inspiring other people to love nature and drawing attention to the need to protect the environment. John Muir (1838-1914), the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, has long been a favorite of mine. 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 redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the big tree to the Sierra. Worn out from this devastating loss, Muir retreated from political life and spent his remaining years writing and spending time with his family.John Muir died in December, 1914. Working in concert with many individuals and organizations, the Roosevelt administration was responsible for the following: the Newlands Act of 1902 . Shot em on the Joaquin, tied em in dozens by the neck, and shipped em to San Francisco. Muir fell in love with the immense beauty of the mountain landscape. "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. The two most fascinating questions about extraterrestrial life are where it is found and what it is like. 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 its reading, one must keep in mind that compared with today, very little was known about glacial activity. 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. 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.''. The Forests of the Yosemite Park . At university, Muir focused his studies on chemistry, geology and botany. The Yosemite National Park 4. Carter argues that it is the duty of everyone to preserve the Arctic Refuge rather than dig holes in it to extract oil. 357-[393]. > The volume is from the press of Houghton . 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. To the northward, over Maine and the Ottawa, rose hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens, white pine and spruce, hemlock and cedar, shoulder to shoulder, laden with purple cones, their myriad needles sparkling and shimmering, covering hills and swamps, rocky headlands and domes, ever bravely aspiring and seeking the sky; the ground in their shade now snow-clad and frozen, now mossy and flowery; beaver meadows here and there, full of lilies and grass; lakes gleaming like eyes, and a silvery embroidery of rivers and creeks watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness. The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. 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. It has been planted and is flourishing over a great part of Europe, and magnificent sections of the aboriginal forests have been reserved as national and state parks, the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near Yosemite, managed by the State of California, and the General Grant and Sequoia national parks on the Kings, the Kaweah, and Tule rivers, efficiently guarded by a small troop of United States cavalry under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. The gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and more sublimely beautiful. Read more from, Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. 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. On account of the superior skill of our workmen, advantages of climate, and the kind of trees, the charring is generally deeper along our line, and the ashes are deeper, and the confusion and desolation displayed can never be rivaled. (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it is claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage. 237, pp. There will be a period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. Abstract. 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. 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. It is the only genuine Erebus route. To the southward stretched dark, level-topped cypresses in knobby, tangled swamps, grassy savannas in the midst of them like lakes of light, groves of gay sparkling spice-trees, magnolias and palms, glossy-leaved and blooming and shining continually. Word Count: 490. My Account | 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. 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. Last summer, of the unrivaled redwood forests of the Pacific Coast Range the United States Forestry Commission could not find a single quarter-section that remained in the hands of the government. The Land Ethic Aldo Leopold Part II: Two Philosophical Issues in Forestry Ethics MULTIPLE VALUES IN FORESTS . 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. 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 Mountains of California, his first book, was published in. 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. No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. Here, in The Mountains of California, is the first time the phrase Range . Of all the magnificent coniferous forests around the Great Lakes, once the property of the United States, scarcely any belong to it now. 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. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. The American Forests by John Muir (1901) . He educated Americans about the value of the countrys wilderness, inspiring generations of wilderness advocates. you may Download the file to your hard drive. 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. 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. Theres always a market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. 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. It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a lesson on the management and care of forests. 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. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes. His family immigrated to America in 1849 and settled into farm life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its reading, one must keep in mind that compared with today, very little was known about glacial.... 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