At a bookstore in Portland
in July I purchased a biography of John Muir by history professor Donald
Worster. An excellent book, I gradually read it over the last few months. For a
decade Muir has been a significant role model for me. My first substantive
introduction to his writing was towards the end of graduate school when my mom
bought me a book with a collection of his writings. Muir's romantically-infused
view of nature, his attentiveness to natural history details, his wit regarding
our own species, and his deep love of nature's beauty all resonate deeply with
me.
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| President Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point overlooking Yosemite Valley in 1906. Image in the public domain. |
Muir is widely regarded as the godfather of Yosemite , of the National Park System, and of wilderness
as a human value. He grew up in Scotland
in a stern religious household, immigrated with his family to Wisconsin
during childhood, and began to study science at the University of Wisconsin California
– and scarcely giving any attention to the shiny city of San
Francisco where his ship landed – headed for the Sierra
Nevada .
Muir would end up spending years living in and exploring Yosemite and the nearby Sierra range. Though he lacked
higher academic credentials, he would eventually help decipher from the rocks
that the great valleys of the Sierra were formed by the slow action of glaciers,
even though leading geologists of the time tended to favor other, incorrect
theories. Muir also traveled beyond his beloved Yosemite to other regions of
the west - to Mt. Rainier , to the Great Basin, and on seven different
trips, to the recently acquired US
territory of Alaska
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| A panorama of forest in Sequoia National Park, August 2014. Crowns of giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in Muir Grove can be seen at top center. From a glacier to a wilderness area in the Sierra, to a beach, Muir has numerous natural landmarks named after him throughout the western United States. |
Worster’s biography shed some light on aspects of Muir's
life that I didn’t know or that I under-appreciated. By hard work and financial
thrift, he gradually grew into a life of significant financial and social
comfort by his later years. This was an interesting point of contrast for a man
who was perfectly happy to sleep outside below the stars or who packed little
but tea and bread for several days of wandering in the wilderness. In addition
to his exploration throughout the western US, he also took several long
international journeys (traveling to most continents) and he spent a
significant amount of time in the deserts of the southwest, though he is mainly
known as the patron saint of the Sierra. Finally, I learned that he actually camped
with not one, but two, US
Presidents who made visits to California
(Roosevelt and Taft).
Muir's life was a celebration of nature, and on the time
scale of history he had a tremendous impact on conservation and natural
resource protection, but his life ended on a sad note. For years, he was
involved with others in a political battle to save the beautiful Hetch Hetchy valley
in Yosemite National
Park from drowning under San
Francisco 's uncompromising push for urban growth and
consumption. For a time it seemed that the proposed dam Muir strongly opposed
would be put on hold for at least a generation, but in the end other political
forces prevailed and Yosemite Valley’s northerly twin granite cathedral was
allowed to drown to become a reservoir. The valley remains underwater today.
Muir epitomized aesthetic love of nature, but he was a
pragmatist too and did not object to mankind’s use of natural resources or
natural areas. His lifetime spanned a great period of technological and
engineering advances (the mid 1800s to early 1900s), which perhaps accelerated
the pace and degree to which human intervention in the natural world could
leave lasting imprints. He was favorable to industrial advances, but he
advocated for a much greater emphasis on conservation than most of his
contemporaries. He didn’t see industrial or agricultural progress as an enemy,
but rather recognized that true human progress depended on a deep reverence
for, and sufficient protection, of nature. Today, he would likely be astounded
at just how far humankind has impacted every ecosystem on earth, but perhaps he
would also be relieved that his successors have set aside some of the most inspiring
natural places as wildernesses and national parks.
----
I stumbled upon Muir’s old mansion in Martinez ,
California
inadvertently this summer while car shopping. Just off the highway, a National
Park Service sign appeared across the road which marked the house and orchards
where Muir spent the last decades of his life. It was originally owned by his
father-in-law but eventually came to be owned by the naturalist. After an
uneventful visit to the car dealership, we stopped at the visitor’s center and then
toured the house and grounds.
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| The Muir mansion in Martinez, California. The photo at right is Muir's office, which he called his "scribble den". |
The Muir-Strentzel mansion is perched on the top of a small
hill. It is spacious with several stories, a large kitchen, a green-house like
room on the east side of the building, and a small bell tower. There are fancy
chandeliers. Muir had an office on the second floor across from his bedroom
where a desk sat below windows that open up to the Alhambra Valley
Out on the grounds the fruit trees have been preserved by
the Park Service, perhaps including some of the original trees that Muir, his
family, and hired workers tended. He was a successful and hard-working business
man, turning a good profit on the property. The mansion and grounds are not the
expected scene of a lover of all things wild. Yet, down the slope from the
house also grows a single tall Sequoiadendron giganteum specimen too, planted by Muir.
----
Writing apparently came with great difficulty to Muir,
though in books like My First Summer in
the Sierra, I've felt his words flow with grace and ease. He frequently
used superlatives, even religious language, to describe the landscapes
impressed on his mind. To Muir, the geologic labor that built cathedrals like
the Yosemite Valley was superior to anything
humankind could construct. His early writings consisted of articles for
periodicals published on both the east and west coasts. He was able to
introduce the marvelous natural areas of the west to eastern readers who had
never seen the less-densely populated areas of western North
America . His books tended to emerge later in his life (or even
shortly after his death); in some cases they were re-workings of his shorter
essays.
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| A photo of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park taken by Isaiah Taber in the first decade of 1900s, before the valley was flooded. Image in the public domain. |
One of the refreshing hallmarks of Muir’s writings is his
near complete avoidance of politics, and even of human actors and voices. He
was intimately involved in the politics of conservation towards the end of his
life, but that was a necessary evil to protect his beloved wild places, not a
manifestation of a propensity towards the political life. Muir’s pen focused on
nature, and if there is a lesson to be had from his approach for my own
attempts to write about nature, it is the power of letting the organisms have
the main voice in the narrative.
Muir had a profoundly different perspective on the natural
world than many of his contemporaries, or even of many people alive today. As I
came to the conclusion of Worster’s biography, it seemed to me that Muir's
greatest concern over how humans interacted with nature was the inability of
most to see beyond money. Such a narrow focus could afflict both the poor and
the rich of his day - the rich because they were willing to sacrifice the irreplaceable
beauty of nature for short-term monetary gain, and the poor because they were
confined to a system that kept them focused on economic concerns for their very
daily survival. Muir advocated for recognizing the true wealth of nature and
its irreplaceable value to humankind. Nature is the wealth of eons of history,
accumulated by slow but ruthless and elegant forces of biology and geology.
Nature reminds us of what is insignificant and unimportant. Nature inspires our
aesthetic and spiritual aspirations as a species.
“How fiercely, devoutly wild is
Nature in the midst of her beauty-loving tenderness! – painting lilies,
watering them, caressing them with a gentle hand, going from flower to flower
like a gardener while building rock mountains and cloud mountains full of lightening
and rain. Gladly we run for shelter beneath an over-hanging cliff and examine
the reassuring ferns and mosses, gentle love tokens growing in cracks and
chinks. Daisies too, and ivesias, confiding wild children of light, too small
to fear. To these one’s heart goes home, and the voices of the storm become
gentle. Now the sun breaks forth and fragrant steam arises. The birds are out
singing on the edge of the groves. The west is flaming in gold and purple,
ready for the ceremony of the sunset, and back I go to camp with my notes and
pictures, the best of them printed in my mind as dreams.” John Muir, 20 July
1869, My First Summer in the Sierra.
References
Muir J. 1911. My First Summer in the Sierra. Penguin Books.
Worster D. 2008. A Passion for Nature. The Life of John
Muir. Oxford University
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