1,279 research outputs found
Letter from [author unknown] to John Muir, 1895 Dec 23.
No full textSomers, Dec. 23rd. 1895.Mr. John Muir,Your book “The Mountains of California” has given such pleasure to one reader that she wishes to express gratitude to the author. My trip was a limited one and taken many years ago, but so far as ray experience went, your book confirms and revives my impressions. It was read with keen enjoyment and sympathy and many another will follow its pages with the same zest. The lines were not inspired by the book, but perhaps they will be in touch with it. My name has no significance and so it is not signed, but perhaps it will gratify you to know that your descriptions have brought some of the glories you have seen to an obscure person in an obscure village.Merced.Merced, Merced, thy crystal waveO\u27er granite sands doth flow, Whereon the vagrant sunbeams weaveA net of gold below.Thy banks are daintily besetWith ferns and grasses fine And beds of snowy violetThe tangled roots entwine.The stately rocks (E1 CapitanCathedral, Brothers Three) Within thy bosom hold divanIn tranquil majesty.Unaltered \u27neath the flowing tideThose sharp reflections dwell; E\u27en so while busy lustrums glideEndures thy beauty\u27s spell.[Envelope containing letter inscribed, in Muir\u27s handwriting, “Miss No Name, Somers, Cal.”]02054https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/25216/thumbnail.jp
The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 2010/2011
No full textPage 1 transcription missing
PAGE 2 John Muir Back and Newsletter Going Digital After a year, we are back! Last year we announced that we would become an occasional newsletter, projecting two issues per year. We only released one issue this past year. In an age of high cost of reproduction and mailing we have decided to follow the trail of other newsletters by going digital. Those with e mail can continue to receive at no charge the newsletter as part of a web serve list. Simply e mail us at [email protected] and we will include you in our future announcements and you will receive a PdF version of the Newsletter. Those who do not have web access, please send us a short note requesting a hard copy of the Newsletter. We suggest a donation of nln 1 869: OYamhte, to tne AMmmll al JlLount Jy^olLmxxAt, eX&Q&n tnauAana LeeX, nian, tne, hiatve&t paint in wle. 6, iawun&n nvn LeeX, natie. net taucnea. From Mount Hoffman John Muir My First Summer in the Sierra By Terry G if ford Your \u27ramble\u27 up from the Valley To spend a night on this bare mountain, A steep ascent of five thousand feet, Left me breathless before I turned the page. And even starting from Snow Flat I was pleased to pause on a real chair (My first in weeks of boulder- seats) Left outside by the tree-stump table Amongst the cabins of May Lake Camp. Breathless from the final scramble And the view, looking down on Half Dome, Cloud\u27s Rest, far glaciers and Tenaya Lake, I sit quite still and meet the marmots Smiling eerily like cats as they creep Out from their crevices, expecting to be fed. Disgusted by these half-tame summit pets I turn and scree-slide down the dusty trail To bathe my legs in the clear May Lake. From: Terry Gifford, Reconnecting with John Muir (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2006), p. 131. John Muir Event at Pacif April 13 On April 13, 2011, a special John Mur event will be held in the Janet Leigh Theater at University of the Pacific. From 7:00 to 7:30 p.m. photographer Scot Miller will give a presentation on his work in the illustration of the 100th anniversary edition of My First Summer in the Sierra. From 7:30 until 9:15 p.m., film maker Catherine Tatge of Global Village Media will give a brief introduction to her film John Muir in the New World . This is a biographical documentary of the extraordinary life of John Muir and his influence on American history. The 90 minute film, which is sched uled to be broadcast on the PBS American Masters series on April 18, will be shown after Ms. Tatge\u27s introduction. From 9:15 until 10:00 p.m. there will be a reception and book signing by Scot Miller.
Page 3 Mike Wurtz In the archives 2010 Online Inventory of Muir Papers is Updated By Michael Wurtz Holt-Atherton Special Collections University of the Pacific Library Recently, the staff of the Holt-Atherton Special Collections had announced the addition of thousands of John Muir correspondence to the web - library.pacific.edu/ha/muir and click on digitized material. This was added to images of Muir\u27s drawings, photographs, and journals. These digital assets have been a tremendous help to researchers around the world. However, there is still much of the collection that is not available online. Digitally scanning and loading the entirety of John Muir Papers and other collections would be a daunting task, so only the most useful and significant items are made available via the web at this time. In addition to all the new online material, we have updated the John Muir Papers finding aid. A finding aid, sometimes referred to as a finding guide, could be considered an inventory, table of contents, index, and annotated bibliography all in one. Collections that are the size and scope of the Muir Papers cannot be easily itemized. Atypical six inch box can hold over a thousand individual documents. To list and describe each of those items would take a great deal of time. Archivists have chosen to organize collections along the lines of what the creator (in this case, John Muir) intended. Once we have created the categories (such as letters, drawings, published materials, etc.) we describe them in slightly more specific terms, such as by date or location or subject. Then the researcher must request the items by folder or box. The online material represents the richest portion of the John Muir Papers. However, it is a minority of all the Muir material. The microform project that was completed in the 1980s includes much more of the collection, but still not every item. The entire collection resides at Holt- Atherton Special Collections in the University of the Pacific Library. How can the researcher find out about what is in the materials that are not accessible via the web or microform? The online finding aid is the answer. It lists the contents to every folder in the collection. For example, researchers will find that the Papers contain most of the collected bibliography of Muir as listed in Kimes\u27 John Muir: A Reading Bibliography. They will also find photographs that have been donated to the collection since the microform project was completed. In addition, the collection includes Muir biographer William F. Bade\u27s transcriptions of many of Muir\u27s Journals, as well as Bade\u27s collected reminiscences, and personal letters. One can also find Linnie Marsh Wolfe\u27s correspondence and papers as she wrote her biography of Muir, and her transcriptions of some of Muir journals. Papers from the Strenzel and Muir family including legal and business papers for the Muir ranch in Martinez are also available. There is also poetry to and about Muir; John Muir\u27s clipping files that he kept on many different topics and memorabilia that includes Muir\u27s odds and ends such as passenger lists, maps and botanical information from trips he took around the world. Researchers can also find a few real jewels within the John Muir Papers that have never made it to microform or online including photographs of construction of the Half Dome Cables Trail in 1919 and clippings on early California agriculture that were probably collected by Muir and his father-in-law, John Strentzel. To get to the finding aid for the John Muir Papers, visit library.pacific.edu/ha/muir/find and click on Finding Aid of the John Muir Papers. From the above website, researchers are invited to click on Related Collections. Here, researchers can see over a dozen finding aids to other Muir related collections that the University of the Pacific Library holds.
Page 4 Charles E. Swann\u27s Military Map of Kentucky and Tennessee www.davidrumsey.com &heJve, \A nathlna, nuyce, eXaauenl in. JLatwie, than a nvoumXain fivtteam, ana Void, id, tne, Ia/iaI s eXleA, daw.. . . (continued from page 1) Muir\u27s choices of routes, and through comparison to modern maps. Some of the maps examined were George Woolworth Colton\u27s 1869 Map of Kentucky and Tennessee, 9 A.J. Johnson\u27s 1866 Map of Kentucky and Tennessee, 10 as well as all the relevant, internet- available maps from the collections of the Library of Congress11, the David Rumsey collection of historical maps12, and the historical map archive of the University of Alabama.13 These comparisons show that the best available map from the era of Muir\u27s walk is Charles E. Swann\u27s 1863 Military Map of Kentucky and Tennessee. 14 Also valuable because it gives the names and characteristics of roads, is N. Michler\u27s 1862 Map of Middle and East Tennessee.15 The 1863 map Mountain Region of North Carolina and Tennessee by W. L. Nicholson and A. Lindenkohl16 has almost twice the scale and was useful for confirming the previous two maps. Finally, the General Topographical Map by Julius Bien & Co. was issued by the United States War Department in 1895, but it was part of an Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1861- 1865 and seems to show features as they existed in 1865, not 1895. Sheet XV is the relevant map.17 None of these maps show features with the accuracy and scale with which we are familiar today. None of them show elevation contours; however the General Topographical Map of Julius Bien mentioned above depicts mountain- David Rumsey Map Collection r.........,n, I ous terrain through the use of hachures. The earliest maps that would today be considered topographic maps are the 30 minute quadrangles18 issued by the US Geological Survey in the 1890s. These were surveyed two or three decades after Muir\u27s walk, so they need to be used judiciously and in connection with the Civil War- era maps. Reconstructing the route In order to reconstruct Muir\u27s probable route, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf and Muir\u27s journal for the trip were searched for geographical clues, then a reasonable route was traced out on Civil War-era maps. That information was then transferred to topographical maps from the 1890s, and then transferred to modern maps. The result of this process has been recorded on Google maps.19 To see this map, go to http:// maps.google.com/ Click on search options. On the drop-down menu, select User-created maps. Type in John Muir Cumberland. Click on search maps. Then click on John Muir\u27s Crossing of the Cumberland to see Muir\u27s route and places visited along the way. This process is for the most part easier than it sounds, and while it cannot be and does not pretend to be exact, most individuals performing the process would come up with a very similar route; however a researcher possessing detailed local historical and geographical knowledge could probably improve the end result. According to Muir\u27s journal and A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, Muir passed through Burkesville, Kentucky on September 8. He (i.nriivil inttncjf.-Tphk.-il m,sp. Sh^r-1 XV. lull us Hkn A Co.r I itfe.., \.Y. (EH\u27J] ifw:*) The author found this map of the Cumberland drawn in 1895, but represents this area from the Civil War, to have provided the most detail of that area from the time that Muir passed through. (captured from the David Rumsey Map Collection website)
page 5 Google rn a PS John Muir Cumborl and Search Maps 6M Cmrtiom UlMUX Save 1oM» Mans Jolin Muir\u27s Crossln-g of Hie Cumberland My cost estimation ti4 ihe route t aken b| John Muir when he crossad tho Cumberland Plateau on 10.11, and 12 September 1 ST. Thw was pan of Mun\u27i wilh horn Lour*rfle. Kairtiicky.to Cedar h\u3ejr. Fkwde. 0\u3es.cnfced ^ Ins boor: *A Thousand-Mae Walk To 1h* GuT Red poioLert re-piesert towns v.s*ed bj Mini. Qfue\u3e poeTtera iapres*nl ailee to w* too ** to 901 b tew* of what Muir saw in 1867 Map by Dan Si yei. 7Z eiawa - Publ ic C» *!»d on Aug 38.2QB - Updated Mat 31 By Dan Slyer PM* Ineirtip-Will* tHrtrt»nt fftjftaaili KY Mun pasted through on 8 Septeenoir 1967 tjaraeslawn. 1H Muir passed through on 10 Seplerribe r 1887. ftnonuoirion. TH Howe ghost Irjwn Hur passed through in Che fflafleee] ol 17 Senteenbei 1967 t Kingston TN Mlui tie (Bit ten the night, of 1? Senlembar 1867 / Mull\u27. Wllle tnybesl eetlnwiion of the roule liken by John Mue wSoo ha ciassed the Cnmberland Placeau on 10. 11. and 12 Seplernoor 1867. This best eelmiatBd mule mosltp follows moderrt-datr roaoH, tot or places (a tf\u27T\u27 \u27 Blurts, rocknSut*s, natoril avclves. fpapa Cmk Sale Malum fraa 5tal* Natuul Area Jkichee and watereat* In Ihe 1356 Wwibuig (uadranuje, this lit! was called simply The Wideirwss 5 John Muir Cgmbe dand The author posted this user-created map of John Muir\u27s 1867 route through the Cumberland on Google maps. The map includes clickable points with information and photographs of places that Muir had visited. Instructions for finding this map online are included in the article. crossed the state line into Tennessee towards evening 20 on September 9. The next day, after a few miles of level ground 21 Muir walked upgrade with occasional views in which Kentucky was grandly seen 22 for six or seven hours 23 to reach the top of the Cumberland Plateau. He passed through Jamestown and as previously mentioned, spent the night with a blacksmith and his wife. On September 11 he walked a long stretch of level sandstone plateau 24 and was compelled to sleep with the trees in the one great bedroom of the open night. 25 Finally, on September 12 Muir breakfasted in Montgomery and descended the east slope of the Cumberland Mountains. He forded the Clinch 26 and reached Kingston before dark. 27 The Civil War-era maps show several routes from Burkesville to Jamestown, but the most direct route, the route that would be more in Kentucky than in Tennessee,28 the only route that would give a view north to Kentucky while climbing the plateau, and the only route that is level until one long steady climb to the top of the plateau, is the route through Albany, Kentucky and Pall Mall, Tennessee. In the author\u27s opinion, the only plausible ^oute from Jamestown to Montgomery is the Pile Turnpike. Montgomery, now a ghost town but then the Morgan County Seat, was then located on the upper reaches of Emory River, just west of Wartburg. From Montgomery to Kingston, the only practicable route is east through Wartburg, then branching southeast at Crooked Fork and proceeding northeast of Bitter Creek. This road reaches Emory Iron Works on the watercourse variously known as Emory Creek, or Little Emory Creek, or Little Emory River (its modern name). This route then descends through a gap in Wal- den Ridge on the left bank of the Little Emory, and finally fords the Emory and Clinch Rivers in the lowlands east of the plateau. In the text of A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, the eloquent... mountain stream 29 crossed by Muir on September 12 is identified parenthetically as the Emory River. However the mountain stream is unnamed in his journal. The gorge of the Emory River, as it descends from the plateau, is so rugged that no road followed it in 1867 and no road follows it even today. The author asserts that the name was inserted incorrectly either by Muir or by editor William Frederic Bade long after the trip,30 and that the eloquent mountain stream is actually the Little Emory River. JLe
Page 6 A y^/^ •&&** w \u27*ZSZ~L^M~ —S5
PAGE 7 Cystopteris (bladder fern) One of the plants mentioned by Muir From: luirig.altervista.org seat of Jamestown. Indeed, even today the telephone book shows that there are three households named Livingston in Jamestown. And all of them live near the author\u27s estimated route south of downtown Jamestown! At this point the author reached a dead end toward a solution of the blacksmith question, as many Fentress County records were lost during a 1905 courthouse fire. However, a determined seeker armed with local records and local knowledge might be able to uncover more. A visit today In his thousand-mile walk, Muir sought out the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find. 34 The geographical route Muir took is no longer particularly wild, leafy, or untrodden. Anyone wishing to recreate Muir\u27s journey will need to take side trips away from Muir\u27s geographical route to glimpse his spiritual route through the wild, the leafy, and the least trodden. John Muir\u27s Crossing of the Cumberland 35 suggests more than two dozen sites to visit, from waterfalls to overlooks to springs to virgin forests. It is interesting to note that the thousand- mile route taken by Muir is not the route taken by the present-day John Muir Trail, which runs for 42 miles in the Cumberland Plateau through Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and adjoining Pickett State Forest. Nor is it the route taken by the John Muir National Recreation Trail, which runs for 21 miles along the north bank of Hiwassee River within Cherokee National Forest in eastern Tennessee. These two trails were named to acknowledge Muir as an early naturalist walker in the area, not to recreate his precise route. Acknowledgement The author is grateful for the help of Willie R. Beaty, President of the Fentress County Historical Society in Jamestown, Tennessee, who suggested some profitable avenues of investigation. Also to Wil Reding of Kalamazoo, Michigan who with his wife Sarah Reding retraced the thousand-mile walk route on 5 May to 25 June 2006, suggested improvements to a late draft of this article. ENDNOTES 1. Digitized images of Muir\u27s notebooks are available through http://librarv.pacific.edu/ha/ digital/muiriournals/muiriournals.asp See journal number 1, images 9 through 13. 2. John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, ed. William Frederic Bade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916). Reprinted in John Muir, The Wilderness Journeys, ed. with introduction by Graham White (Edinburgh: Canon- gate Classics, 1996) 3. Ibid., (1916), p. 17; (1996), ed. White, p. 9. 4. Ibid., (1916), p. 22; (1996), ed. White, p. 11. 5. Ibid., (1916), p. 29; (1996), ed. White, p. 14. 6. Bonnie Johanna Gisel, ed., Kindred and Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), pp. 57-59. 7. Muir, op. cit., (1916), p. 15; (1996), ed. White p. 8. 8. Ibid., (1916), p. 30; (1996), ed. White, p. 15. Muir\u27s Houghton-Mifflin editor, William Frederick Bade identified the river in brackets as [Emory River]. 9. George Woolworth Colton\u27s 1869 Map of Kentucky and Tennessee (scale 1:1,584,000) is available through http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/ us states/kentuckv/index.html It shows a road running from Montgomery, Tennessee to Kingston, Tennessee, along the west bank of the Emory River. The road shown on this map supposedly crossed Obed\u27s River just before that river joins with Emery\u27s River. Modern names for these rivers are Obed River and Emory River. Modern maps show that this supposed road would have to descend a 400-foot cliff to reach the Obed and then immediately ascend a 400-foot cliff on the other side. Colton\u27s map also shows Clear Creek emptying into the Obed upstream of Daddy\u27s Creek, whereas modern maps show that the reverse is correct. No other map of that era shows this road. 10. A.J. Johnson\u27s 1866 Map of Kentucky and Tennessee (scale 1:1,521,000) is available at the same web site listed in note #9. It shows a road direct from Kingston, Tennessee to Madisonville, Tennessee. 11. http://memorv.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/ gmdhome.html 12. http://www.davidrumsey.com/ 13. http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/ historicalmaps/index.html 14. Charles E. Swann, Military Map of Kentucky and Tennessee, 1863, scale 1:350.000 Available throughhttp:// www.davidrumsey.com/maps2433.html http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3951s.cs0216800 no tonxx^A, •pa/i/tiou.- ta/ttu, -\\kia, tWtXu-, qa, unviaOG^n. Had Muirwalked this same route 143 years after he did, he would have plenty of food options. This Hardee\u27s fast food restaurant on the Knoxville Highway in Wartburg, TN is probably only a few steps off the thousand mile walk to the Gulf. (Used with permission from the Fisherman\u27s Quartet website http:// thefishermansquartet.com November 18,2010
Page 8 Schrankia, (sensitive briar) One of the plants mentioned by Muir kansasnativeplantsociety.org 15. N. Michler, Map of Middle and East Tennessee, 1862, scale 1:235,000. Available through http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/ g3962t.cws00162 16. W.L Nicholson and A. Lindenkohl, Mountain Region of North Carolina and Tennessee, 1863, scale 1:633,600. Available through http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3900.cw0053000 17. Julius Bien & Co., General Topographical Map, sheet XV, United States War Department, 1895. Scale 1:633,600. Available through http://www.davidrumsev.com/detail?id=l-l- 26982-1100281 18. These U.S. Geological Survey 30 minute quadrangles (scale 1:125,000) are relevant: Wartburg, Tennessee, Edition of Mar. 1896. Topography by A.E. Murlin. Surveyed in 1893. Briceville, Tennessee, Edition of July 1896. Topography by J.F. Knight and E.C. Barnard. Surveyed in 1888-91. Loudon, Tennessee, Edition of Oct. 1895. Topography by F.M. Pearson 1884-5. Topography by C.E. Cooke 1891. Kingston, Tennessee, Edition of Mar. 1891. Topography by F.M. Pearson. Surveyed in 1884-5. Available through http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/ us_states/tennessee/topos/30mintopos.html 19. John Muir\u27s Crossing of the Cumberland. Available through http://maps.google.com/ Search User-created maps for John Muir Cumberland. 20. Muir, op. cit, (1916), p. 15; (1996), ed. White, p. 7. 21. Ibid., (1916), 22. Ibid., (1916) 23. Ibid., (1916). 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., p. 15. 26. Ibid., 27. Ibid.. (1916), (1916), p. 16; (1996), ed. White, p. 7. p. 16; (1996), ed. White, p. 8. p. 16; (1996), ed. White, p. 8. p. 26; (1996), ed. White, p.13. pp. 29-30; (1996), ed. White, (1916), p. 31; (1996), ed. White, p.16. (1916), p. 32; (1996), ed. White, p.16. 28. About 25 miles in Kentucky and 10 miles in Tennessee, to the base of the plateau at Pall Mall. 29. Muir, op. cit, (1916), p. 30; (1996), ed. White, p. 15. 30. Although most of A Thousand-Mile Walk to The Gulf is a journal, wr
Letter from [author unknown] to John Muir, [1910 May 26].
No full textLos Angeles California.Sixth Grade, Hoover St. School,May. 26, 1910.Dear Mr. Muir,— Our teacher has just finished your story of Stickeen . The first thing that the children asked after she had finished was, Why didn\u27t Stickeen\u27s master give the dog to Mr. Muir since they was so attached to each other . There being no way of finding out except by asking you I thought I would ask of you. If not inconvenient please write in answer to this letter to Hoover St. School, Los Angeles California.Your\u27s respectfully,Wilbur Parker.04767 (8)https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/31910/thumbnail.jp
The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 2014 Special Symposium Edition
No full textPage 1 transcription missing
Page 2 (continued from page 1) was founding Director of the Edinburgh\u27s Environment Center, which pioneered environmental education in Scotland from 1979 until 2001. In the 1980s he served on the Education Committee of the John Muir Trust in Scotland and in 1986, proposed that a John Muir Award should be established by the Trust in the UK as a national scheme for people of all ages; over 150,000 people have now completed the Award in the UK. He is author/ editor of: The Scottish Environmental Handbook; The Nature of Scotland - Landscape Wildlife and People; John Muir- Journeys in the Wilderness; John Muir; From Scotland to the Sierra; Sacred Summits-John Muir\u27s Greatest Climbs. As a beekeeper and conservationist, he has devoted much of the last eight years to campaigning against the global use of neonicotinoid pesticides, widely held to be responsible for the deaths of over ten million bee colonies in the United States, and for the deaths of uncountable millions of birds, amphibians and other pollinating insects. He was very involved in the campaign to get these neurotoxic pesticides banned in the twenty- seven countries of the European Union, which came into effect in December 2013; they remain legal in the USA where they are used on over 200 million acres of corn, soybeans, canola, wheat, potatoes and fruit. 11:45 Lunch Buffet (a fee event; see registration form) 12:30 Keynote, Andrea Wulf, Cosmos, Nature and the Web of Life. Alexander von Humboldt\u27s influence on John Muir. Andrea Wulf was born India, moved to Germany as a child, and now lives in Britain. She is the author of several books. Her book The Brother Gardeners. Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award and was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, the most prestigious non-fiction award in the UK. The Founding Gardeners. The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation was published under great acclaim in spring 2011 and made it on the New York Times Best Seller List. Andrea has written for many newspapers including the Guardian, the LA Times and the New York Times. She was the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013 and a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. She is also appears regularly NPR in the US, and on radio and TV programmes on the BBC in the UK. She currently working on a book called \u27The Invention of Nature\u27 about Alexander von Humboldt and his influence on scientists, thinkers and poets (published by Knopf in late 2015). 1:30 PM Ronald Eber, The Eternal Battle - The Wilderness Legacy of John Muir. Ronald Eber is Historian for the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club. He has held many Sierra Club positions including National Campus Coordinator in 1971 and Chair and Wilderness Coordinator of the Oregon Chapter from 1980 -1985. He has written two previous essays for this conference entitled John Muir and the Pioneer Conservationists of the Pacific Northwest and Wealth and Beauty - John Muir and Forest Conservation that were published in the conference proceedings. He currently lives near Port Gamble, Washington. 2:20 Doug Scott, John Muir: Blazing the Path Toward the 1964 Wilderness Act and 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Doug Scott worked for forty years as a lobbyist and strategist persuading Congress to designate additional wilderness areas. He is proudest of his leadership role in the campaign for the historic Alaska National Interest lands Act of 1980. He is the author of The Enduring Wilderness: Preserving our Natural Heritage through the Wilderness Act (Fulcrum 2004) and Our Wilderness: America\u27s Common Ground (Fulcrum 2009), and of Wild Thoughts, a collection of excerpts of great writing about nature, wilderness, and the people who love them (forthcoming). 3:00 Stephen Holmes, Muir\u27s Cultural Legacy: Science and Storytelling from \u27The California Alps\u27 to Climate Change Communication Steven Pavlos Holmes, Ph.D., is an independent scholar of the environmental humanities, with a special interest in the emotional, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of our interactions with the natural world. He is the author of The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography (winner of the Modern Language Association\u27s Prize for Independent Scholars) and of A Healing Landscape: Environmental and Social History of Mass Audubon\u27s Boston Nature Center and most recently editor of Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming (Torrey House Press, 2013). He has taught at Harvard University and at the Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education. He lives with his partner Carlene Pavlos and their cat Millet in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. 3:45-4:30 John Muir Class University of the Pacific. Six students chosen from the twenty-six in Pacific\u27s University-level course focusing on John Muir\u27s World: the Origins of the Conservation Movement will summarize their research project connecting Muir with legacy people and places. 4:30-4:45 Wrap Up. 5:00-6:00 PM. Reception, University Library
Page 3 X Registration Form 60th California History Institute, University of the Pacific What we have seated; what we have lost: John Muir\u27s Legacy, 1914-2014 March 2122, 2014 March 21 Field Trip to Coulte nolle aid John Muir Highway with program at John MuirGeotourism Center aid lunch in Coulterville. Bus tour; 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM; Storer Coach leaves UOP Sirjimining Pool parking lot at 9:00 aid returns by 5 PM. Name Me al preference: Vegetarian Vegan Carnivore Cost 35.00 Student rate (high school or college) 25.00 Includes coffee/tea/seones; luncheon buffet; & reception (Cost at the door or after March IS will be 40; $30 for students) Name Affiliation Affiliation Address: Contact: (e mail please) Total Please send this form and a check in U. S. dollars to John Muir Center/WPC 99 University of the Pacific/Stockton/CA 95211
SIGN UP FOR THE ELECTRONIC VERSION BY CONTACTING: THE JOHN MUIR CENTER University of the Pacific 3601 Pacific Avenue Stockton, California 95211 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED -T~ ~r ~r -j. . i V rv \u3eV- ^ The John Mu Center The John Muir Center promotes the study of John Muir and environmental- ism at the University of the Pacific and beyond. Center Objectives As one of California\u27s most important historical figures, John Muir (1838- 1914) was a regional naturalist with global impact. His papers, housed in the library\u27s Holt-Atherton Special Collections, are among the University\u27s most important resources for scholarly research. Recognizing the need both to encourage greater utilization of the John Muir Papers by the scholarly community, and the need to promote the study of California and its impact upon the global community, the John Muir Center was established in 1989 with the following objectives: • To foster a closer academic relationship between Pacific and the larger community of scholars, students and citizens interested in regional and environmental studies. • To provide greater opportunities for research and publication by Pacific faculty and students. • To offer opportunities for out-of- classroom learning experiences. • To promote multi-disciplinary curricular development. Phone: 209.946.2527 Fax: 209.946.2318 E-mail: [email protected]://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1095/thumbnail.jp
The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 2015
No full textSPRING 2015 jJui JMaaaa, JL^aXAXaa, V\u3eP , THE JOHN MUIR CENTER Reflections on John Muir— One-hundred years after his death Bill Swagerty, Co-Director, John Muir Center During 2014, many institutions honored John Muir\u27s legacy with an event associated with the centennial of his death on December 24, 1914. It was also the fiftieth anniversary of passage of the Wilderness Act by Congress in 1964 and the 150th anniversary of the Yosemite Act, transferring the core of what would become Yosemite National Park from the State of California to the federal government. Pacific hosted the 60th California History Institute from March 20-22 focusing on What has been saved; what has been lost: John Muir\u27s Legacy, 1914-2014. The symposium began with a field trip to Martinez on March 20 to visit John Muir National Historic Site. Twenty-four students in the John Muir Class were joined by other Pacific students, faculty, and guests of the university. As always, rangers and interpreters opened the doors to the Strentzel-Muir-Hanna house on the hill and allowed us the privilege of seeing Muir\u27s grave- site nearby. At the gravesite, Michael Wurtz, Head of Holt-Atherton Special Collections, read a 1914 obituary from a local newspaper which included mention of those who attended Muir\u27s funeral. On March 21, another field trip by bus took students and guests to Coulterville along the route that Muir walked in 1868 on his first trip to Yosemite. Ken Pulvino, founder of the John Muir Geotourism Center, joined the bus in Modesto and explained Muir\u27s stop at Horseshoe Bend, where he made an elaborate sketch of the landscape. Educator Monty Thornberg, current Director of the Center gave a presentation at lunch in the Hotel Jeffery on the activities of the Center, which promotes tourism and environmental education along the John Muir Highway. The Jeffery dates to 1851 and was a stagecoach stop for Yo- semite-bound passengers, as well as a resting place and reprovisioning opportunity for pedestrians like Muir on his long walk to the Valley. Bill Jeffery, husband to Pacific\u27s Pamela Eibeck, explained his family\u27s likely connection with the original builders. Unfortunately, after our field trip, the hotel experienced a major fire in the middle of the night on November 14, 2014, forcing closure. By 1889, it had burned three times, so this was the fourth structure-fire, but fortunately did not consume the entire building, which is currently undergoing restoration as a National Historic Landmark. We also saw the result of the Rim Fire, started by a hunter who set an illegal campfire on August 17, 2013 in Stanislaus National Forest. Named for the Rim of the World vista point on Highway 120 as it heads into Yosemite, the fire consumed 257,314 acres making it the third largest wildlife on record in the Sierra Nevada and costing around 25 or more were invited to attend the Spring Gathering. Donors in the John Muir Heritage Society (with annual gifts of 1,000 or more) were invited to attend a special dinner on Saturday night and additional activities on Sunday. For more information on Yosemite Conservancy, please call 800.469.7275. 6th Annual John Muir Festival May 16, 2015 The John Muir Geotourism Center in Coulter- ville, CA presents the 6th Annual John Muir Festival. A family friendly event! Experience All Things Muir when you visit and learn about Muir\u27s travels along the historic Muir Route along J132 to Yosemite. Meet other John Muir enthusiasts, experts and representatives from the John Muir Geotourism Center, Yosemite National Park and surrounding Yosemite region. On May 16, historic Coulterville celebrates John Muir\u27s historic walks to Yosemite before Yosemite became a National Park. There are multiple venues for family fun—all within the Main Street area of Coulterville. Entertainment, activities and food in Coulterville Park, John Muir Geotourism Center and the Coulter Cafe. Enjoy the historic Yosemite Tapestries exhibit, created by Miriam McNitt, commissioned by Yosemite National Park in 1967 and displayed in the Park for over 40 years. These tapestries depict the natural history of Yosemite as well as panoramic views of the Park\u27s wonders. Entrance is FREE. Festivities began at 10 am and go until 4 pm. John Muir Birthday-Earth Day Celebration *% Saturday, April 18th 2015 4202 Alhambra Avenue (at Highway 4) in Martinez FREE admission! 10 am - 4 pm nd the National Park St-rvice Come rain or shine! Presented by tbe John Muir Association a: r Keynote Speaker Beth Pratl-Bergstrotn, California Director of Ihe National Wildlife Federation Original east members to perform songs from the play,Mountain Days Meet John Mull and the Giant Sequoia he planted 130 years ago Exhibits and activities for everyone Live music And silent auctions John Muir\u27s 1882 Victorian home and orchards John Muir Conservation Awards presented Youth Activities with National Park Service rangers Food and beverages are available for purchase Join the National Park Service to celebrate John Muir\u27s 177th birthday during the annual Birth - day-Earthday event on Saturday, April 18, 2015 from 10 am to 4 pm at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, CA. Participate in fun activities for all ages to commemorate Muir\u27s legacy. Special guest speaker Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, California Director of the National Wildlife Federation, will give the keynote address. The Celebration, held rain or shine, features family-oriented activities, food for sale, live music including a bagpipe band, song performances by original cast members of the play Mountain Days, and displays by national parks and local environmental organizations. Parking and admission are free. National Park Service Ranger Frank Helling will portray John Muir and recount some of Muir\u27s many wilderness adventures. Visitors can enjoy self-guided tours of Muir\u27s historic Italianate Victorian home where he wrote about protecting nature, as well as bid in two silent auctions. Proceeds benefit the John Muir Association, the nonprofit organization hosting the event in partnership with the National Park Service. The Association will also present the 37th annual John Muir Conservation Awards. For more information, please visit www.nps.gov/ jomu/planvourvisit/ directions.htm
PAGE 5 Shanna Eller Muir Center Staff Reorganization Since August, 2011, the Office of the President of University of the Pacific has supported an Office of Sustainability, housed within John Muir Center in the College. This past fall Shanna Eller, Director of Sustainability, was named Co-director of Muir Center by Dean Rena Fraden. In addition, Kendra Bruno, M.A., was hired as Sustainability Coordinator. A native of Kansas, Eller has lived in Portland most recently and holds a bachelor\u27s degrees in the History of Art and Architecture, as well as Journalism from the University of Kansas. She earned her master\u27s degree in Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a doctorate in Urban Studies from Portland State University, where she was Director of Community Environmental Services before joining Pacific. Bruno is a graduate of the University of the Pacific with a joint major in International Studies and Spanish. She earned a master\u27s degree in Natural Resources and Peace from the University for Peace, Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. Both Eller and Bruno work closely with administration, faculty, staff, a cadre of students on campus, making Muir Center a lively hub for anything green on the Stockton campus. They co-taught a Pacific Seminar for freshmen in 2014 on the topic of Fair Trade. The Office of Sustainability coordinates, advances and manages sustainability efforts on all three campuses of the University. Activities of the office are described separately in this newsletter. Muir Center continues to sponsor interns and has work-study assistance from undergraduates. David Sriboonreuang, a sophomore English major Kendra Bruno who is also minoring in Religious Studies and Ethnic Studies, has worked in the Center for the past three semesters and is digitizing the slide collection. He has also completed an inventory of the library and the video collection and is one of the chef-demonstrators at the University\u27s new Kitchen Co-op. Recently he showed participants how to make macarons. David Sriboonreuang WkZ •& sa WILDS SCENIC - ^//^^;- A WILI jENIG festival A WILD LIFE Wednesday April 8, 2015 University of the Pacific 3401 Kensington Way, Stockton, CA Biological Sciences Building, Room 101 Free and open to the public * 7:00 pm - 7:30 pm reception with filmmaker Matt Black • •7:30 pm - 8:45 pm films • •Q&A with Matt Black and intermission* •9:15 pm -10:00 pm films • j patagonla Orion ?^-^ Jjjgg 0EARTHJUSTICE U&H
Page 6 Things Cooking in the Co-op by Kendra Bruno New at Pacific this year, the Pacific Kitchen Co-op has created quite a stir! Beginning this Spring term, Pacific students, faculty and staff have been able to join as Co-op members allowing them to access a fully equipped kitchen, furnished dining area and delicious classes! The Pacific Kitchen Co-op is a place where members can go to cook their own meals, have a club meeting, have dinner with friends, bake some cookies and simply just enjoy themselves over some delicious home cooked meals. Want to make a cake, but do not have any of the kitchen gadgets needed to do so? The Pacific Kitchen Co-op does - all you have to do is bring your ingredients! Easy to join, the Kitchen Co-op is 35.00 (or iffijJM mu.V; \u27 .; k ■•.\u27- .\u27■. » H»\u27\u27|FkftjfeB i.uiiWK TAP i HOI st 1 \u3e- jl£X a LifililAaaia Patch BDH ■ ■ -A Clarksburg f\u27.li 4 Mues |\u3e.r\u3c| i \u27\u27*B^BI 1 giMU »\u3e»K , \u27 -■ \u27J kj, IM:W \u27 jJ&T %is««ii^fHB^ 3 Signs near Freeport
Page 8 John Muir Journal Transcription Project Picking Up Steam In the wake of the 100th anniversary of John Muir\u27s death on December 24, 2014, The Record (Stockton) ran an article - front page above the fold - about the Special Collections effort to crowdsource the transcription of the John Muir journals. The story was picked up by other newspapers and a couple of television stations, and it was tweeted copiously over the next few weeks. The publicity brought in over 30 new transcribers who dove into Muir journals with the same drive that Muir sojourned in the Sierra. Nearly 100 images have been transcribed, which means that well over half the 3000 images in the journals are now keyword searchable. The transcribers are devoted Muir enthusiasts digging for new inspirational quotes, long time hikers curious about Muir\u27s wanderings on their favorite paths around the world, and grade school students who giggle when Muir discusses the naked rocks, but were awestruck when he pondered the value of scientific inquiry. The long term value to harvesting Muir\u27s words in the journals will boost the discovery of the famous naturalist\u27s ideas and thoughts in their initial observational form. The project continues. If you would like to take a crack at connecting with Muir, there are still plenty of pages to go. Visit go.pacific.edu/ muirwords and get started.
has served the Special Collections for 10 years and has worked at Pacific since 1999. Nicole Grady is our newly minted Special Collections Librarian after serving three years as a temporary librarian. Nicole will continue to process collections, create exhibits, and
John Muir Newsletter, Summer 1995
No full textJohn Muir Newsletter summer 1995 university of the pacific volume 5, number 3 JOHN MUIR AND THE VAN DYKE RANCH: INTIMACY AND DESIRE IN HIS FINAL YEARS By Peter Wild (Editor\u27s note: Well-known author, poet, biographer and nature writer, Peter Wild is Professor of Modern Language at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The following paper is an outgrowth of his recent research on the Muir family in the Southwest. Part Two will be published in the next issue.) PARTONE When occasional gunfire erupted in the town, it could be heard at the nearby desert ranch, but that didn\u27t seem to bother Helen Muir. This is a beautiful day full of sunshine, and I am feeling sunshiny, too, Helen reassured herfather, John Muir (January 8,1908).\u27 I was very glad to get your all-well letter today, Muir responded from Martinez, at his orchard home in the San Francisco Bay area (January 9, 1908). Not many days before, Helen\u27s bout with pneumonia took a sharp turn for the worse, and Muir had made a desperate rush south with Helen in hopes that the warm, dry air of the Mojave desert would put his pallid daughter back on the path of recovery. Now the crisis, in an age when people regularly died of respiratory problems, seemed to be passing. Helen\u27s health would always be of concern, but in the main she grew ever more robust as the days passed into months. She came to love her new desert surroundings and eventually married a local rancher\u27s son. Such an upbeat exchange between father and daughter as marked the early correspondence of their separation beginning early in 1908 would be repeated overthe sixyears until Muir\u27s death in 1914. Duringthat time, Muir would take the train south to visit Helen, bounce his grandsons on his knee, regale the cowboys at the desert ranch with tales spun in his charming Scottish brogue and hand out boxes of pineapples, peaches, and cigars.2 Yet such happy letters often let slip hints of other, less pleasant matters churning under the surface of the hopeful Victorian prose flying between father and daughter. The truth is that Muir\u27s closing years were the most tumultuous of his mature life, and to probe such issues through letters and other documents gives a good measure of Muir both as a public figure and a private man. They show him to be a person, indeed, as his popular image suggested, rising with heroic strenuousness to wrestle with the national environmental problems of the day, writing doggedly in his final years to produce books that still stir nature lovers after almost a century, yet, less known, getting mired in the mundane afflictions that assail us all. Essentially, the problem was that Muir was getting old, and the cantankerous world was changing. Rude reality refused to conform to his bright vision of what it should be. Yet despite the pain and frustration this caused him, the dramatic loss of the biggest conservation battle of his life, the depths of his private loneliness for all his public acclaim, he would die a happy man, the comfort of any expiring writer, the manuscript of his next book nearly completed and laying beside him. Before that happened, unhappiness crept into Muir\u27s life. In 1905, he was living happily enough, surrounded by his wife, Louie, and his two daughters, Helen (continued on page 4)
1996 MUIR CONFERENCE PLANNING CONTINUES Be sure to mark your calendars for the special conference, John Muir in Historical Perspective, to be held April 18-21,1996. The planning committee is working on a three- day event, each day in a separate location to take advantage of the variety of Muir-related sites in Central California. Below is the tentative schedule: Thursday evening, April 18: Reception at John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez Friday morning, April 19: Academic sessions, John Muir National Historic Site Friday afternoon: Tours of Strentzel-Muir home, Muir Cemetary Saturday morning, April 20: Academic sessions, University of the Pacific, Stockton Saturday afternoon: travel to Yosemite National Park Sunday morning, April 21: Academic sessions, Yosemite Institute, Crane Flat Sunday afternoon: tour of Muir sites in Yosemite Valley Participants and guests will be invited to stay overnight at Martinez on Thursday. After Friday morning sessions and tours, they will travel to Stockton and stay overnight there. On Saturday afternoon, after morning sessions and a visit to the Holt-Atherton Library, home of the Muir Family Collection, the conference will recess so that participants may travel to Yosemite and spend the night at the Yosemite Institute in Crane Flat. On Sunday, following a morning academic session, they will have opportunity to visit several Muir sites in the Valley, and still have free time to enjoy the Park. The deadline for proposals is November 15. Tentative plans and locations may change, depending on the program committee\u27s recommendations and the success in developing the local arrangements. Outside funding will be essential. Any contributions, suggestions or comments will be most welcome and may be forwarded to: CHI96, John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211. The conference invites proposals on any aspect of the theme. Proposals for papers and sessions should be forwarded, along with a brief resume, to the CHI 96 Program Committee, in care of its Co-Chairs, Professors Sally Miller and Ron Limbaugh, Department of History, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 by November 15,1995. Phone (209)946-2145;fax(209)946-2318. ELECTRONIC LETTERS Date: Wed, 31 May 199510:21:00 +0900 Subject: Muir and Buddhism To: [email protected] In the Spring 1995 issue of the John Muir Newsletter. Michelle L. Dwyer argues persuasively that Muir\u27s experience of and writings about Nature show strong affinities to Zen Buddhism. As I argued in my contribution to John Muir, Life and Work, I don\u27t think there can be any doubt about this point. Muir\u27s essential perception of reality is in conformance with the basic perceptions of Zen. This perception of Oneness, of undifferentiated existence, is basic not just to the three sects of Zen, but to Buddhism as a whole. Indeed, such identification with nature is at the heart of many spiritual traditions. Thoreau, even as early as his stay at Walden Pond, was experiencing such perceptions and identifying them, correctly, as common both to the Vishnu Purana and the sufi philosophy of Kabir. William James detailed many such ideas in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Certainly, as Ms. Dwyer says, Muir had no systematic knowledge of Zen, since the first glilmpse of Zen teachings didn\u27t reach America until the World Parliament of Religions atthe Chicago World\u27s Columbian Exposition in 1892. Most of Muir\u27s published work seems to be based closely on diaries written long before Zen could possibly have influenced him. But he was exposed much earlier to Vedic and Sufi influences through his Transcendentalist contacts. But there is no need to posit a direct teaching influence. These ideas are freely available within the mind and appear periodically in most or all religious traditions. Don Weiss, Ryozenji, Temple l.Bando 126, Oasa-cho, Naruto City, Tokushima-ken, JAPAN 779-02, e-mail PXQO [email protected] JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. V, NUMBER 3 SUMMER 1995 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff © Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper.
BOOK Mori no seija: Shizenhogo no chichi John Muir [A Saint in the Forest: The Father of NatureProtection John Muir]. ByKatoNoriyoshi. Yama-to-keikokusha. (Tokyo: 1995) 279 pp. ¥1600. Reviewed by KozyAmemiya, Sociologist Kato Noriyoshi, the author of this book, abandoned a publishing career in order to live in the mountains, and he now writes on the subject of nature while running a lodge. He visited the Giant Forest in the Sequoia National Park in the winter of 1992 when he was inspired to learn more about John Muir, who has been little known in Japan. The result is this book, written as an introduction for the Japanese audience to Muir, the father of wilderness protection. It is not easy to write a book on Muir in such a way that would make sense to a Japanese audience unfamiliar with American history and geography. Mr. Kato takes up this task by narrating Muir\u27s life in chronological order against the historical backdrop supported by geographical descriptions, and succeeds at least in painting an overall picture of Muir\u27s accomplishments. Kato reconstructs Muir\u27s life around several external factors. First is Muir\u27s childhood in Scotland, especially his strolls in the field with his grandfather, to which Kato attributes Muir\u27s love of nature. Secondly, attendance at the University of Wisconsin provided Muir with basic scientific training and life-long mentors. The third and most significant factor is his accidental arrival in Yosemite whose magnificent beauty enraptured Muir. His glacier theory as to the creation of the Yosemite Valley is the fourth factor and the highlight of Muir\u27s career as a Yosemite specialist. Muir\u27s married life and his political campaigns for congressional protection of Yosemite and other wilderness areas are the last factors considered. Muir is depicted as a fiercely independent individual who wholeheartedly devoted himself to the wilderness and to his family. Muir is also contrasted with nature philosophers of the East Coast elite and with scientists in academic institutions. Notwithstanding all this, the picture of Muir, the man, remains superficial and does not fully come to life. The problem is that Kato\u27s description of Muir often falls into a trite portrait of an eccentric. As a result, Muir\u27s personal and professional lives are not integrated into the larger cultural context. Nor does Kato discuss Muir\u27s ideas about nature in depth and in what way they are related to the various ideologies of the environmental protection movement. For a Japanese reader to understand Muir, it is important that an author provide a basic grasp of American ideas about nature and wilderness as well as an exploration of how they might differ from Japanese ideas. For example, did Muir regard nature as basically at odds with human beings and in need of human protection? Were Muir\u27s ideas about nature and wilderness in line with or REVIEWS different from that of American mainstream thinkers? Does nature mean the same as shizen, a favorite concept of the Japanese? How does wilderness, to which the Japanese language has no exact equivalent, differ from nature? Without thinking about these questions, it will be difficult for a Japanese to understand the social and cultural meaning of national parks in the American context and to appreciate Muir\u27s work. This book explores John Muir\u27s achievements. Without discussions of Muir\u27s ideas on the relationship between nature and human beings, however, it does not sufficiently explain what propelled Muir in his pursuits. As the Japanese take more interest in the environmental protection movement in the United States, they will demand a book to help them understand Muir in greater depth. Until then, this book will serve as a fair introduction to Muir. Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County Since World War II. Edited by Rob Kling, Spencer Olin and Mark Poster. (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1995) (paperback). Reviewed by Roy Childs, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of the Pacific (Editor\u27s Note: The John Muir Newsletter, with its focus on Muir and the environment sometimes finds that important work on urban and suburban developments merit attention. An example is the book considered below.) As this title suggests, the authors in this collection see the emergence of an urbanized Orange County late in the twentieth century as a phenomenon distinctly different in its spatial, economic and social patterns from urban centers which developed earlier. The resulting multinucleated metropolitan region may superficially resemble the stereotypical twentieth century suburb, but the reality is quite different. Hence, they apply the term \u27postsuburban\u27 to urbanized Orange County. The chapters in the book discuss the rise of Orange County\u27s postsuburban form as an element of post-industrial society, explain the economic forces responsible for this form, examine the resulting socioeconomic, occupational, and lifestyle consequences, and discuss the political dynamics, more or less in that order. The volume has value as a case study of Orange County and the kind of urban area it seems to epitomize, but has at least equal value as a discussion of contemporary urban theory. For, to make the argument that Orange County represents a new phenomenon, Kling, Olin, Poster and other contributing authors must critique existing theory as it applies to the Orange County case, and attempt new paradigms to frame the data they present. These discussions may prove as useful to the serious reader as the case study itself. (continued on page 6)
(continued from page 1) and Wanda, while managing the extensive orchards in Martinez. In June, however, Helen became seriously ill, and Muir\u27s life took a turn for the worse. Together with her elder sister, Wanda, Muir took Helen to Arizona to benefit from the bright sunshine and high desert air. Barely settled there, the three received word that Louie also was seriously ill. John Muir and Wanda rushed back to Martinez, only to stand by helplessly as Louie died in August. Now the family not only was weakened but split, with Helen remaining in Arizona because of her illness, while John and Wanda took turns traveling back and forth to stay with her. To complicate matters, Wanda married in 1906. Thereality of Muir\u27s vision of a stable Victorian home was disintegrating.3 For the rest of his life he would battle to shore up what had, to a large degree, already fallen apart. In his last extant letter to Helen, Muir was still lamenting: If I could only have you and Wanda as in the lang syne ... (Decembers, 1914). Adding to his woes, the growing city of San Francisco stepped up plans to enlarge its water supply. This would mean invading Yosemite National Park to create a reservoir inHetch-Hetchy Valley, one of the loveliest of the Sierra\u27s jewels. Bad enough in itself, this could be an alarming precedent, a license to violate other national parks for the real or imagined needs of an expanding economy. In response, Muir rallied the incipient conservation movement, rousing the nation to protest the invasion. Yet, despite years of exhausting activism and several near successes, Muir discovered that it was not enough to be on the side of the angels. Bankrolled by the proponents of growth, the politicians won out. Another battle lost.4 In short, during the closing years of his life, Muir was a torn man. As a youth exploring the Sierra in the 1870s, he may have been possessed by a genuine inner calm, but now in his seventies, he sat on his estate in sometimes foggy and chill Martinez, grieving for his lost wife and deceased friends, and depressed with loneliness.5 Usually not a man to complain, on February 13,1913, Muir wrote openly to James Whitehead. Briefly catching up his boyhood friend on the events of the decades, Muir concluded that his wife had died ... long years ago ... and that his two daughters were married. That left him ... alone in a large house with only books and hard literary work for companions. Feeling at loose ends as he shuffled around the big, empty house, he fretted over Helen\u27s health, while the hounds of the Hetch-Hetchy conflict constantly bayed, reminding him that what he had accomplished for wilderness preservation might be undone in one swoop. In the midst of this, plagued now by his own coughing assaults, he struggled to rouse himself, to find the energy and mental clarity to write what he knew would be his final books. At one point his friends saw illness and depression looming so large about him that a worried J. E. Calkins discussed Muir\u27s condition at length with fellow Sierra Club member A. H. Sellers. Calkins feared that ... we shall never have much more writing... from Muir before he ... crosses the Great Range (March 23,1908). One thing brought Muir through, and if to our far more skeptical age it smacks of cliche, it brought him through nonetheless. Time and again, when the Hetch-Hetchy affair looked bleak or when Helen again had a brush with death, Muir\u27s nineteenth-century optimism rescued him. It blended two impulses. Along with other Christians of the day weary of a constantly chiding and scowling God, Muir defanged his earlier Christianity of its hellfire and spun his beliefs into a rosy gauze, the generalized hope for abetter life now assured by a vague but avuncular Providence. Reinforcing this optimism was the transcendentalism popularized by the writings of Emerson and Thoreau. Again conveniently vague, making up with good feelings what it lacked in bothersome specifics, the attitude placed faith in intuition as the means to truth. It was an effervescent approach to nature-decades before Muir had called nature the great book full of priceless knowledge (September 13,1865). In this yeasty view, to study a leaf or to revel in the grand prospect of snowy peaks was to catch glimpses of nothing less than the face of God. Thus, taking all this together, Muir gives solace to a recent widow that her beloved husband now is in ... abetter world ... (ca. May 26,1914). MuirwritestheHookerfamily,rejoicingthatthey have found refuge in the ... healing, soothing mountains (June 13,1911). In fact, nature could be so efficacious that he urges Helen to leave home for a while and ... camp out under the pines ... as a cure for her baby\u27s teething (June 15,1911). And even when the Hetch-Hetchy battle is all but lost-and at the same time, the Kaiser\u27s army is marching roughshod across Europe-Muir consoles former Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson that though things may look bleak now, ... we are making some slight progress heavenward ... and someday ... man to man the worldo\u27er shall brothers be... (September 17,1914). Not that John Muir was a fool. A realistic businessman when need be, he could cut a sharp deal with a publisher or honestly best his fellow orchardists in Martinez. During harvest time, a train stopped at the local station and in the twilight hours dropped off packing crates for the growers. On such days, Muir rose early, to be sure he\u27d be first at the platform and get his pick of the best boxes. However, despite the practicality, Muir also had the good fortune of a salving, overarching philosophy to get him through his nights. Not that those nights were all dark. Muir was swamped with letters begging for photographs and autographs and assaulting him with their authors\u27 poetic efforts, conferring honorary degrees on him, inviting him to speak at this confab and that. Mail from admirers to their wilderness hero often began with high praise, then quickly shifted into requests for advice about intimate personal problems explained in pages of painful detail. Or they reminisced about meeting Muir briefly on the trail decades before. None of that shillyshallying, whining, or lightly veiled ingratiation for John M. Pfautz, a robust fan writing from Lisbon, Iowa. Leaving his rival eulogists far behind, he opened directly
with In my eyes you are Gods [sic] beloved Apostle ... (undated; ca. 1914). The naive and unrestrained adoration might have chafed a more sophisticated and less patient man but, taking it all with cheerful appreciation, Muir penned gracious responses. Then, too, on the positive side, if his writing was coming hard, nonetheless it was coming along. The sales of My First Summer in the Sierra, for example, proved so lucrative that publishers were vying for his next book, which of course delighted Muir (June 25,1911). Even Helen\u27s illness, dire affliction that it was, had unforeseen benefits. Muir tended to be a cave bear when he wrote. While the Bay fog swirled around the big house in Martinez, he holed up in his study, for weeks on end fussing to turn his mass of irascible notes into polished prose. Helen\u27s illness got Muir out, forcing him to travel south. There, he renewed old friendships and made new ones among the heady literati typified by Southwestern booster Charles F. Lummis. Particularly important in this regard was the city of Pasadena, then a cultural center in Southern California, with Vroman\u27s bookstore on 60 East Colorado Street serving as a lively gathering place.6 Representing the cream of the intellectual set there was Muir friend Adam Clark Vroman himself, a bibliophile and pioneer photographer of Southwestern Indians.7 Rather different and mildly eccentric was Muir\u27s fellow conservationist-at-arms Theodore P. Lukens. A pioneer in successful reforestation but also an enthusiast for some ill- fated adventures--be they mastering the intricate evils of learning to drive a car8 or trying to make twisting eucalyptus trees defy their nature and grow into a crop of future telephone poles\u27—Lukens nevertheless prospered, becoming the mayor of Pasadena and leading the charge against Hetch- Hetchy from the southern part of the state. Not that Muir\u27s joy was unadulterated. Helen developed typhoid and, though eventually she regained her strength, for a while she was dangerously ill in a Los Angeles hospital (April 2,1909). Addingto the mountaineer\u27s worries at the time was a sleazy game played by Geo
The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 2013
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PAGE 2 F o Andrea Wulf unding Garden Speaks e r s AT o N P A C I F I C On February 27, prize-winning author Andrea Wulf spoke on the subject of Founding Gardeners: How the Revolutionary Generation Created an American Eden. The talk was sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, the University Library, and John Muir Center and attracted more than eighty faculty, staff, students, and community members, many of the latter members of Master Gardeners. Born in India of German parents on assignment to the equivalent of our own Peace Corps, Wulf grew up in Germany and earned her first degree in Cultural Studies and Philosophy at the University of Luneburg in 1996. Since then, she has made Britain her home, earning a second advanced degree in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2005, she published This Other Eden, Seven Great Gardens and Three Hundred Years of English History, co- authored with Emma Biegen-Gamal, released by Little Brown and adapted into a six-part mini-series on BBC radio. In 2008, Brothers Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession was released by William Heinemann in the UK and by Alfred Knopf here in the United States in 2009. It won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award and was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Price, the most prestigious non-fiction award in theU. K. In 2011 she published Founding Gardeners: How the Revolutionary Generation Created an American Eden, again through Heinemann in the U. K. and Knopf here in the U.S. It not only made the New York Times Best Seller List, but was described by a reviewer in the Times as an illuminating and engrossing new book by the Washington Post as lively and deeply researched history. Last year, Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens appeared in seven languages. Described by the Boston Globe as a book both astrophysicists and poets can understand, Wulf retells the story of scientists and philosophers following the infrequent transit of Venus in modern times. She has received a number of prestigious fellowships in the past decade, including three years at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello; a White House History Fellowship through the Organization of American Historians and the White House Historical Association. Currently she is the Eccles British Library Writer-in- Residence and lives in London. Her most recent project and the reason she came to Pacific is her interest in John Muir. She is Andrea Wulf at Pacific on February 27,2013 currently working on The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt\u27s New World, to be published by Knopf in 2015. Von Humboldt\u27s influence on John Muir will be a chapter in this book. The talk on Founding Gardeners focused on the impact of John (1699-1777) and son William Bartram (1737-1823) as seed and plant collectors on better known political figures from the Revolutionary generation; notably Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, and James Madison. Described by famed Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus as the greatest natural botanist in the world, John Bar- tram\u27s garden within the city of Philadelphia provided Europeans and Americans with seeds from North American species. Wulf argues that gardening was much more than just a hobby for the four political giants in her study. Planting American species, the design of landscapes, and attitudes about green space generally reflect an Americanized approach quite different from the formal gardens of England and the continent. Connecting the Revolution with ideas of the founding fathers on the ideal farm and garden, Wulf concludes that democracy and an appreciation of American forests and wilderness are part of the formula that evolved through the process and practice of planting colonial and early National gardens. Wulf will return in 2014 to present on Alexander von Humboldt\u27s influence on John Muir.
Page 3 Archivist Sea R C H I N RIGHT Muir J T R A N S C Pro s Corner G FOR THE word: O U R N A L R I P T I O N J E C T By Michael Wurtz , Archivist Holt-Atherton Special Collections University of the Pacific Library Have you ever wanted to probe deep into the mind of John Muir? Read his own thoughts immediately after he conjured them? How about search his thoughts to see if he ever wrote about bears or avalanches? The staff of Holt- Atherton Special Collections, the home of The John Muir Papers, has started a project to transcribe the Muir journals so we can get in his mind. For years we have been able to read his thoughts in his books which have been edited and polished for public consumption. The Sierra Club transcribed those books into their website so researchers can read the books online or search for words in the text. Researchers can find this sort of search functionality in Google Books as well. In 2008, the staff of Holt-Atherton Special Collections had John Muir\u27s correspondence transcribed and scanned for the world to read. The letters are closer to Muir thoughts than the books. The transcriptions not only help with legibility issues of reading Muir\u27s ideas, but also make them searchable for keywords. A year earlier in 2007, the staff scanned Muir\u27s 78 known journals and put them online too. They were not transcribed, since they consisted primarily of faded pencil and cursive writing, and were occasionally written out in many directions on a single page. Only the most devoted Muir fans and researchers were ready to decipher his writing. Stephanie LeMenager, Associate Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, recently took an interest in Muir\u27s journal documenting his trip Tunf»* Mj-ch l*H. QMwqiM Prnom*UOmM The glofr i( ^| la everywhere How could Moses uks the cetelast Shoh ii8 t^y Glory ~D1sm1 Swamp\u27 no suet, place in net Sweeps a» peopled with plants CE the purest beajty s glow in their darkest heei ;he across the Isthmus of Panama in 1868. She meticulously transcribed the 8 pages of Muir\u27s almost illegible writing (the transcription can be found in these pages two years ago). Then we took her transcription and added it to the online journal scans. Now researchers wondering about Muir\u27s mention of God in his journals can find, The glory of God is everywhere. How could Moses make the request, \u27show me the glory.\u27 Earlier, the director of the John Muir Center, Bill Swagerty, worked with students to transcribe for publication the World Tour journals. Although these were only 5 journals of 78, we took it as a beginning. Fortunately, between Muir\u27s early biographers, William Bade and Linnie Marsh Wolfe, many of Muir\u27s journals were transcribed- obviously not with a computer, but with a typewriter. Bade took some editorial liberties, and Wolfe would sometimes only transcribe bits and pieces of journals, but their intentions were good, and those journal transcriptions were much more legible and accessible for reading and eventual publication. The Bade and Wolf transcriptions have formed the core of a long-term transcription project that the staff of Holt-Atherton Special Collections has started. With the aid of student workers, we are entering the transcriptions into the online journals. Over the last couple of years, we have added legible and word- searchable text to almost 20 Muir journals. What can you do to help transcribe the rest of the journals? Visit go.pacific.edu/ specialcollections, navigate to Muir\u27s journals, choose a page - any page - of untranscribed journal, and take a crack at it. There is a comments link at the bottom of each page to which you can add your new found text. If you feel more comfortable with email, send us what you have along with the journal and page number, and we will add your transcription to our online journals. The value of this kind of project is the expanded access to Muir\u27s thoughts as he first experienced them, and to make them word searchable. Join us! ex stepping an ants [5«ol i.a n-rt cruet tn s-i ill if} over Che great \u3e i Little of its Burfarre t : - \u27 i qoinq in the forests ■ Side-by-side, the legible and word searchable text and a scan of a page from Muir\u27s 1868 journal describing his trip across the Isthmus of Panama. John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust.
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page 5 younger years.18 As Muir grew older, however, his dream now became a resolve: a long botanical ramble through...to South America. 19 Journals of his travels to Chile and Zimbabwe are emotionally engaged in a way that makes clear how rewarding he found these travels. 20 After his last journey through those mysterious and exciting countries, Muir himself considered it among the most important [trips] of his life and the fulfillment of a dream of decades. 21 It was not until the last years of his life that Muir could make his dreams come true and travel to his long sought-after destinations. In Chile, Muir\u27s main goal was to find the rare monkey puzzle tree. In Santiago, he went to the botanical gardens to search for information concerning Araucaria imbricata.22 In the middle of November, Muir was taken to the forests [he had] so long wished to see by a kind American sawmill owner.23 Once he was among the forests of the A. imbricata that he had so long dreamed of, it seemed familiar. 24 . th Muir had dreamed of the monkey puzzle tree for so long that once he saw this forest of them in Chile, they seemed familiar. November 1911-March 1912, Trip to South America, Part III, and Trip to Africa, John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust. There were various reasons Muir wanted to travel to Africa some of which were to tour one of the only parts of the world he had not yet visited; to observe native African flora; to see the wildlife of the central African plains; and, to reach the headwaters of the Nile. 25 Although there were many reasons to visit the huge continent, Muir\u27s main mission was to find the enormous Adansonia digitata, better known as the African baobab, which he longed to see.26 Zimbabwe gave Muir the opportunity to see this magnificent tree in person. The day he found the tree was a wonderful day, wonderful in many ways; one of the greatest of the great tree days of my lucky life. 27 For Muir, the chance to see such rare and glorious trees was reason enough to travel across the world. Another tree that Muir had longed to see was the Baobab. One of the greatest of the great tree days of my lucky life. November 1911- March 1912, Trip to South America, Part III, and Trip to Africa. John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. ©1984 Muir-Hanna Trust. Muir wanted to observe the creations and landscapes made by God and he traveled and grew stronger and richer in the knowledge of God\u27s earth in each journey he made.28 His main goal in life was to see, learn, and appreciate all of Nature\u27s creations until his dying day. Since God allowed him to regain his vision after the accident in 1867, he spent the rest of his time seeing the truth and beauty inherent in the world. 29 Although his travels had scientific, political, and literary purposes, his journeys were all spent seeking the pleasures one finds in the cathedrals of God. Ariadna Hernandez was born in Guanajuato, Mexico as the eldest of three daughters. At the age of three her family migrated to the United States. Her father was a field worker and was greatly interested in nature. He transferred his passion of all living creatures to her as a young girl, as well as a love for reading. She graduated from Lincoln High School in Stockton, CA and is now a 3rd year Environmental Science major here at the University of the Pacific.
Page 6 ENDNOTES 1. Donald Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 377. A map of Muir\u27s global travels is found in Gretel Ehrlich, John Muir: Nation\u27s Visionary (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2000), pp. 18-19. 2. Michael Branch, John Muir\u27s Last Journey (Washington DC: Island Press, 2001) p. xxviii. 3. ibid., p. xxix. 4. Letter from John Muir to Jeanne Carr, 1867 May 2. John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections © 1984 Muir Hanna Trust. 5. John Muir, Travels in Alaska (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1915; 1998 edition) p. 3. 6. Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 247. 7. Muir, Travels in Alaska, p. 110. 8. ibid., p. 246. 9. Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 377. 10. John Muir, World Tour, unpublished journals transcribed by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, edited by W. R. Swagerty, John Muir Papers, Holt- Atherton Special Collections © 1984 Muir Hanna Trust, Published in the John Muir Newsletter, 6 parts, 2005-2008. See Part I. 11. World Tour, Part I. 12. ibid. 13. Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 380. 14. Muir, World Tour, Part V. 15. Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 383. 16. Muir, World Tour, Part V. 17. Muir references these two explorers in Story of My Boyhood and Youth (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, c. 1912, 1916 ed.), p. 207. Park (1771-1806) was a Scottish surgeon who in 1795 was supported by the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior of Africa to discover the course of the River Niger. His book, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa was published in 1799 and was widely read. On Humboldt\u27s influence on Muir and others, see Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006), especially chapters 8-9. Also see Michael Branch, John Muir\u27s Travels to South America and Africa, in John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, ed. Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), pp. 249-65. 18. This story is repeated by Muir and his editor, William Frederic Bade in Story of My Boyhood and Youth, pp. 360ff; and in Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1916), pp. 143-68. 19. Branch, John Muir\u27s Last Journey, p. xxix. ibid., p. 102. ibid., p. xxiii. p. 110. p. 114. p. 115. p. 129. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. ibid., ibid., ibid., ibid., ibid. ibid., p. 147. Muir, World Tour, Part III. Worster, Passion for Nature, p. 112. SAVE THE DATE John Muir Symposium, March 21-22, 2014 Join us on the 150\u27\u27 anniversary or the Yosemite Grant, tne 100* anniversary or Muir\u27s death, ana the 50\u27\u27 anniversary or the passage or the Wilderness Act to revisit John Muir\u27s lire and legacy. University oi the Paciiic -will host the 60** Caliiornia History Institute on the Stockton campus irom Friday, March 21, through Saturday, March 22. Expect to hear papers by new Muir scholars currently working Muir\u27s legacy, as well as several ramiliar names \u27who have become regulars at Muir symposia. Plenary sessions and keynotes will be given by three scholars now living in the U. K.: Terry Girrord, Graham White and Andrea Wulr. A special exhibit on the history or the Muir Papers and their present locations is planned, as well as coordinated rield trips berore and alter the symposium. Ir interested in presenting or attending the conrerence, please contact : wswagertv (Sparine. edu
Page 7 Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Fest at Pacific Hosted by Sustaining Pacific & John Muir Center Thursday, April 11th, 2013 6-8:30PM rsily ol ihe Pacific, 3601 Pacific Avenue, Wendell Phillips Cenltr \u3et _ 6:00-6:30 PM Reception ■ 6:30-7:30 PM Films - Intermission 7:45-8:30PM Films Free and Open to the Public SfemCkib • Group patattoni Cevth Omy FutVeJ Baggi Tract Community nvm Dr. Shanna Eller, Director of Sustainability at Pacific and Lucy Kramer, an Environmental Studies major at Pacific, together with W. Swa- gerty of Muir Center, recently applied for a grant to host an environmental film festival through the South Yuba Citizens\u27 League (SYRCL) of Ne vada City, CA. Supported by Patagonia, CLIF Bar, Mother Jones, and Sierra Nevada Brewing, partners with Pacific include Friends of the Lower Calaveras, The Delta-Sierra Group within the Sierra Club, Stockton Earth Day Festival, and the Boggs Tract Community Farm. Exhibits will be mounted by partners in WPC\u27s courtyard and films selected by students from an available list of over sixty documentaries will be shown in WPC 140 on campus on Thursday, April 11 from 6 PM to 8:30 PM. The films are all short and range from following The Man Who Lived on His Bike across an entire year to a biography of Georgena Terry, founder of Terry Bicycles, who revolutionized that industry by creating a frame specific to a woman\u27s body; to an Afghan-produced film, Skateistan, highlighting co-educational opportunities for learning to skateboard in that part of the world; to Timber, a film by Adam Fisher on responsible versus irresponsible use of natural resources; to The Way Home, a journey in Yosemite National Park with the Amazing Grace 50+ Club of Los Angeles; to Chasing Water, a film based on photographer Pete McBride\u27s attempt to follow irrigation water from his family\u27s Colorado ranch down to the sea along the Colorado River. The event is free and open to the public with refreshments provided. ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL 9
SIGN UP FOR THE ELECTRONIC VERSION BY CONTACTING: THE JOHN MUIR CENTER University of the Pacific 3601 Pacific Avenue Stockton, California 95211 ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED ~T~ ~r ~r -j. . i V rv \u3eV- v\u3e The John Mu Center The John Muir Center promotes the study of John Muir and environmental- ism at the University of the Pacific and beyond. Center Objectives As one of California\u27s most important historical figures, John Muir (1838- 1914) was a regional naturalist with global impact. His papers, housed in the library\u27s Holt-Atherton Special Collections, are among the University\u27s most important resources for scholarly research. Recognizing the need both to encourage greater utilization of the John Muir Papers by the scholarly community, and the need to promote the study of California and its impact upon the global community, the John Muir Center was established in 1989 with the following objectives: • To foster a closer academic relationship between Pacific and the larger community of scholars, students and citizens interested in regional and environmental studies. • To provide greater opportunities for research and publication by Pacific faculty and students. • To offer opportunities for out-of- classroom learning experiences. • To promote multi-disciplinary curricular development. Phone: 209.946.2527 Fax: 209.946.2318 E-mail: [email protected]://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1094/thumbnail.jp
John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1993
No full textJohn Muir Newsletter spring 1993 university of the pacific volume 3, number 2 1993 EARTH DAY CELEBRATES TH MUIR IMAGE by Janene Ford On a clear, sunny spring day the Earth Day Conservation Fair in Sacramento attracted thousands of people including large groups of school children. Sponsored by the California Department of Conservation, many organizations were invited to participate by setting up booths in front of the Capitol showing various aspects of recycling, alternative energy, conservation, and other reflections on The Muir Image. The University of the Pacific, the John Muir National Historical Site, the Sierra Club and a number of government agencies such as the California Conservation Corps and Cal Trans were represented. Two staff members of the UOP Library, this author and Rachel Fenske, set up a display on The John Muir Papers and answered questions for visitors and distributed a handout. Their interaction with the younger students revealed that several children thought that John Muir invented Earth Day. Many visitors expressed great interest in the photographs of pages from Muir\u27s journals, sketches, and correspondence, People seemed fascinated with the photographs of two of Muir\u27s inventions, the bed and study desk. Many of John Muir\u27s great-grandchildren and a few of the great-great-grandchildren were present and received framed proclamations and attended a family picnic. Allison Lincoln, thirteen year old daughter of Lynne Hanna Lincoln of Dixon, wrote a poem about her grandfather and how he might feel about the earth today; it was read by Bill Hanna of Napa during the mid-day ceremony. Some of the crowd wore T-shirts with the words The Muir Image emblazoned on their backs. Entertainment, music, jugglers, and happy children carrying give-away shoe strings, pencils, tree seedlings, business cards, pamphlets, bags, and key rings marked the day. It is heartening to know that the Muir Message is not only still relevant, but is especially thriving in California. Those of us who work intimately with Muir\u27s original journals, books and other papers on a daily basis see serious scholars, authors, and students undertaking research, but seldom see young children or have the opportunity to show them the wealth of materials that are in our keeping. Extra copies of the handout are available. If readers would like one, please send a stamped self-addressed envelope to the Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Libraries, Stockton, CA 95211. CONTRIBUTIONS WANTED FOR THE NEWSLETTER As in earlier issues of this Newsletter, the staff wishes to invite its subscribers and readers to submit news, announcements, reviews and information to the Newsletter for consideration for publication. It is the goal of this Newsletter to keep its readers informed of all environmental news so that we can be as aware of relevant activities as possible. Please share your information with us so that we can spread the word. The editor welcomes your submissions and will determine whether they may be published in a forthcoming issue.
Nature\u27s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, by William Cronon. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991, xxiii + 530 pp., maps, illus., bibl., index. Reviewed by Roderick Frazier Nash, [Editor\u27s note: With this issue, we inaugurate a policy of occasionally reprinting book reviews of noteworthy books dealing with the environment. The following review is reprinted from the American Historical Review with the kind permission of the Review and of the book reviewer. It appeared in the AHR 97 (June 1992): 939.] In Nature\u27s Metropolis William Cronon continues a scholarly career dedicated to demonstrating what history can learn from ecology. Cronon\u27s first major book, the celebrated Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (1983), examined environmental modification immediately before and after the initial contact of European settlers with the northeastern coast. Here, and in the present volume, Cronon points out that what we call nature is a complex mosaic of original and constructed, people-caused conditions. Obviously original or, in Cronon\u27s terms, first nature (p. 264), determined the pre-human environment. But thereafter, the most powerful force shaping the ecosystem derived from human ambition and human ingenuity. Cronon\u27s goal for environmental history is very close to that of ecology: understanding the interrelationships between mankind and the natural world. In the book at hand. Cronon shifts his focus several centuries later and several thousand miles westward from colonial New England. His narrative revolves around the city of Chicago, but his thesis is neither this metropolis nor any city can be understood apart from its environmental and economic hinterland,. In the case of Chicago, that region was nothing less than a huge slice of North America extending from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains - the Great West. Cronon takes pains to tell the city-country story as a unified narrative (p. xiv). Ecology-like, he integrates rather than separates. Constantly he emphasizes that urban and rural areas are parts of an interconnected landscape and share an interconnected history. The environment, Cronon argues, is not jut nature. Environmental historians must study urban and economic developments as well. History, like ecology, should strive for seamlessness. So, Cronon writes, The history of the Great West is a long dialogue between the place we call the city and the place we call the country (p. 54). Today, as the centennial of his controversial essay on the American frontier approaches in 1993, Frederick Jackson Turner has apparently become the whipping boy of every Western historian. Cronon is gracious about it, but he follows suit. His principal complaint is that Turner persuaded several generations of Americans that the frontier, way out there, had nothing to do with the urban civilization thousands of miles to the east. The frontier was the new world, and by the time cities appeared it had vanished. Cronon does not see it this way. The frontier, or as he calls it the country, is linked commercially and, in a real sense ecologically, to the city. For Turner, in other words, the isolation of the frontier explained American development. For Cronon the frontier was never isolated. The West was not a wilderness but part of an urban empire. Nature\u27s Metropolis sweeps from the 1830s, when Chicago (the place of wild garlic) took shape as a white community, to 1893 when the city on the lake hosted the World\u27s Fair (at which, parenthetically, Turner delivered his famous frontier address). As might be expected in this kind of integrative book, Cronon writes about a wide range of subjects. Most of them have been treated in more detail by others, but Cronon\u27s forte is synthesis. We learn in his book about railroads, reapers, refrigerated meat cars, grain elevators, credit and bankruptcy networks, and futures market. These chapters are organized around specific resources: grain, lumber and beef. In each case Cronon shows how the chains of causation that altered, and he is frank to point out, devastated some environments, extend from the frontier through Chicago to Eastern European markets. The buffalo gave way to cows, the native prairie grasses to wheat, and the majestic white pine to the desolate Cutover Lands. Cronon is sensitive to the liabilities as well as the (continued on page 6) JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. Ill, #2 (NEW SERIES) SPRING, 1993 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff © Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper.
A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, by Clive Ponting. New York: St. Martin\u27s Press, 1991, i-xiv + 432 pp., maps, graphs, bib., index. Reviewed by Dan Flores, Hammond Professor of History, University of Montana Clive Ponting\u27s A Green History of the World sets a challenging task for itself — to tell in a single 400 page volume the environmental history of our planet from the spread of gathering-hunting societies across the globe 25,000 years ago through the pressing environmental issues of the late twentieth century. John Muir, were he alive today, would find this book valuable but perhaps too utilitarian in focus, too short on values and soaring inspirational language. Aldo Leopold, I suspect, would react very favorably to Ponting\u27s effort at a global and holistic treatment including his heavy reliance on statistical data — but like Muir might wonder what role an environmental ethic (particularly the Land Ethic) plays in Ponting\u27s story. The answer is: not much. Looking at the sweep of human history, Ponting sees the accelerating press of human population and major technological ratchet- effects like the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution as far more central to the real story of environmental history. In sharp contrast to books like Clarence Glacken\u27s Traces on the Rhodian Shore, Roderick Nash\u27s The Rights of Nature, Max Oelschlaeger\u27s The Idea of Wilderness, or J. Baird Callicott\u27s various articles exploring comparative environmental ethics and values, Ponting appears to believe that the various ways humans have thought about nature have really made previous little practical difference on the long-term story of environmental history. After digesting the mass of data in this book, I think that he may well be right. Without being preachy or heavy-handed about it, A Green History of the World takes readers into the heart of the historical debate about humans and the planet. Is there an evolving environmental crisis? The trends of history suggest that, while many of the specific issues we face are nothing new, there is a long-term, unfolding crisis. Viewing the arguments of scholars like Lynn White, Jr., who suggests that the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition are the cause, Barry Commoner\u27s idea that the new technology is the culprit, and Paul Erhlich\u27s belief that the swelling human population is the problem, Ponting seems to rank White\u27s causation a distant third. about nature — the animism of primary cultures, the various Far Eastern religions, Judeo-Christian traditions, the Scientific Revolution, capitalism, or Marxism — have not influenced the nuances of the human/environment relationships. They have, and in ways that are important to the quality of both the environment and of human life. But the fact is that despite the wide range of values and beliefs that these ways of thinking represent, history provides examples of societies adhering to all of them that have destroyed nature and undermined themselves. Animistic beliefs did not prevent the Paleolithic hunters, the residents of Easter Island, the Maya or the Sumerians from bringing their worlds crashing down on them. Nor have Taoism or Buddhism prevented large-scale environmental devastation in China or India, any more than Christianity, capitalism, or Marxism have in the modern West. What Ponting\u27s examination of la longue duree demonstrates instead is that since gathering-hunting societies filled up the available space on the planet by about 10,000 years ago, the press of human population has fostered an efflorescence of ethnological fixes to enable more and more of us to survive. It took roughly two million years to build up a planetary population of four million of us at the climax of our lives as gatherer-hunters. Agriculture boosted that population to 200 million within just 8,000 years. For 1500 years after Christ, the exchange of epidemic diseases between formerly isolated human gene pools kept the world\u27s population from mushrooming. But as populations genetically resistant to those diseases have evolved, and as the Industrial Revolution and a global economy have accelerated the pace of technological innovation, the human population has inundated the Earth like a spreading mold, fouling water, air, and land in a process that 10,000 years of history has long since internalized. The human population reached the one billion mark in 1825. Within a century there were two billion; by 1960, three billion; by 1975, four billion. We humans surged to more than five billion by the later 1980s. Faced with such a scenario, Ponting asserts, modern environmental legislation has been little more than cosmetic (p. 400). While this book provides us with no reason to be optimistic, it does seem to clarify a few important issues. One is that our nostalgia for an environmental Golden Age is misplaced unless we are willing to reach 10,000 years into the past for a global model. The second is that reducing the human population by the 99 % that the model would require is, frankly, an ecological and certainly a moral impossibility. It seems to me that Ponting is suggesting that the technology that ratcheted us here is now probably our only hope for saving our skins. It is not that the diverse range of human belief systems
JOHN MUIR IN NEW ENGLAND by Ron Limbaugh (Editor\u27s Note: Following the death of his father-in- law, John Strentzel, and the reorganization of the family orchard business in the Alhambra Valley of California, John Muir made plans for a European trip that would revive his creative energies. His wife Louie encouraged him; she would stay home with the two children while he and his Scottish friend William Keith, the San Franciso landscape painter, would revisit the Scottish moors they had last seen nearly a half-century before. In the spring of 1893 they made plans to travel separately to New York, then rendezvous there and sail jointly to Liverpool. The plans went awry, however, when Muir reached the East Coast. Robert Underwood Johnson, associate editor of Century and Muir\u27s acting literaiy agent, wanted to introduce him to the eastern literary establishment. The result was a whirlwind tour that dazzled Muir but delayed his departure for Europe. Tire following is an excerpt from a forthcoming book entitled John Muir and Stickeen: the Evolution of a Dog Story. It is used by permission of the author.) Muir\u27s eastern visit was intended as a brief stop en route to Europe. But Johnson converted it into a six- weeks celebrity tour, with Muir as the reluctant debutante. With Johnson opening doors and directing the agenda, Muir found himself the center of attention, a backwoods rustic with a repertoire of colorful anecdotes. He performed dutifully, meeting the social and intellectual elite, stuffing himself at banquets, and telling stories. A visit with John Burroughs was one of the first items on Muir\u27s agenda. Only a year older, yet in 1983 much better known than Muir, Burroughs was late- nineteenth century America\u27s most popular nature writer.1 He was a hesitant host, but at Johnson\u27s insistance he agreed to meet the visiting naturalist at Slabsides, Burroughs\u27 rustic home near Esopus, New York. Later known by their mutual acquaintances as The Two Johns, Burroughs and Muir became fond friends despite their contrasting personalities. Muir was an incessant talker whose wiry frame seemed to thrive on nervous energy in contrast to the portly Sage of Slabsides, who had acquired more conventional sleeping and eating habits.2 At their first meeting Burroughs was condescending, describing Muir as an interesting man with the Western look upon him, but a tiring conversationalist. You must not be in a hurry, he wrote, or have any pressing duty, when you start his stream of talk and adventure. Ask him to tell you his famous dog story ... and you get the whole theory of glaciation thrown in. 3 Moving north to Brahmin country, Johnson and Muir spent several days in and around Boston. They had a delightful day in the company of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, famed Civil War colonel of a black regiment, author and advocate of women\u27s rights. He escorted them on a Cambridge cultural tour which included the homes of James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both poets Muir knew well from the books in his personal library. At Harvard Muir was introduced to a number of prominent faculty, including Josiah Royce, the California philosopher, and Francis Parkman, prominent American historian whose books Muir read avidly. But the writer whose work he knew best was Charles S. Sargent, Director of the Arnold Arboretum and author of the multi-volume Silva of North America. At his home in nearby Brookline Sargent hosted a banquet with Muir the honored guest. Writing his family later, Muir said he had to repeat the dog story I don\u27t know how often .4 More banquets and story-telling followed. At a dinner party in Manchester, New Hampshire, wrote Muir, Sarah Orne Jewett was there, and all was delightful. Here, of course, Johnson made me tell that dog story as if that were the main result of glacial action and all my studies, but I got in a good deal of ice-work ... and never had better listeners. 5 A quick pilgrimage to Concord highlighted Muir\u27s New England visit. Johnson took him to all the shrines: Concord Bridge, Hawthorne\u27s Old Manse, the Alcott residence, the graves of Emerson and Thoreau on Author\u27s Hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, and, of course, Walden Pond, an easy saunter from town. After a delightful P.M. with Emerson\u27s son Edward Waldo and his father-in-law Judge John S. Keyes, where the dog story doubtless surfaced again, the two visitors caught the night train back to Boston.6 The New England tour concluded, Muir and Johnson returned to New York, where a final round of parties and story-telling delayed his departure for Europe. At Gramercy Park Muir dined at the family estate of Gifford Pinchot. In a letter home he described the scene: Here and at many other places I had to tell the story of the minister\u27s dog. Everybody seems to think it wonderful for the views it gives of the terrible crevasses of the glaciers as well as for the recognition of danger and the fear and joy of the dog. I must have told it at least twelve times at the request of Johnson or others who had previously heard it.... When I am telling it at the dinner-tables, it is curious to see how eagerly the liveried servants listen from behind screens, half-closed doors, etc. 7 The six weeks Muir spent in the East ended with his departure for Europe late in June, 1893—without William Keith, who had tired of waiting and sailed alone. But Muir could look back with no small satisfaction: he had mingled with some of the best minds of the continent; he had come as a stranger and had been (continued on page 7)
JAPANESE JOURNALIST RESEARCHES MUIR\u27S LIFE AND WORK Shigeyuki Okajima, Deputy Directory of the Commentary Department for The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan\u27s (and the world\u27s) largest daily newspaper, was in the United States recently on an Eisenhower Fellowship as special correspondent for global environmental issues. This was a return trip to this country; in the early 1980s he spent a year in the U.S. as visiting scholar at the University of Washington. On his latest trip he toured American archival institutions and visited environmental organizations to learn about this country\u27s green movement, and in particular, to study the life and work of John Muir. A recipient of the Global 500 Award from a United Nations agency in 1988, he is a counselor for the Nature Conservation and Wild Bird Societies of Japan, and a committee member of the Japanese Alpine Club. In 1990 he published a Japanese-language history of the American environmental movement, and a year later wrote Only One Earth, an English-language textbook for Japanese high school students. His recent tour included a visit to the Holt-Atherton Library at UOP, where he discussed Japan\u27s environmental movement and his special interest in Muir\u27s contributions to the concept of a global environmental ethics. He presented the library with a copy of his book and with copies of several environmental articles he has published in American- language newspapers. The green movement in Japan, though still in its formative stages, is gathering momentum and will soon be a major force on the international environmental scene. NEWS NOTES Richard F. Fleck, well-known for his work on Thoreau and Muir, has recently edited a book on Native American writings, soon to be published by Three Continents Press. Entitled Critical Perspectives on Native American Fiction, it presents essays on six Native American novelists who have emerged as internationally acclaimed writers. The editor, formerly with Teikyo Loretto Heights University in Denver, in July will become Dean of Denver\u27s Community College. Oxford University Press is publishing a reference book for young adults, Earthkeepers: Observers and Protectors of Nature. Scheduled for publication in the fall of 1993, it will include an article on Muir and a photo from the Holt-Atherton Library. John Muir T-Shirts are available from the John Muir Memorial Association. Depicting Muir leaning on a hiking stick, the T-shirt project is a fund-raiser to support the work of the John Muir National Historic Site. A shirt can be purchased with a check for $14,00, made out and sent to the John Muir Memorial Association, c/o Dianna Ceballos, 2220 Spring Lake Drive, Martinez, CA 94553, (510) 680-7561. Another movement is afoot to Save Mount Shasta. This has long been a goal of environmental activists who recognize the need for saving Shasta\u27s biodiverse habitat from further urban-industrial encroachment. John Muir was one of the first to publicize Shasta\u27s natural treasures, a
The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 2007/2008
No full textMuir SLETTEB YfeRSnY OF THE PACIFIC, STOCKTON, CA Volume 18, Number 1 Winter 2007/20081 John Muir\u27s World Tour (part VI) Introduction by W.R. Swagerty Director, John Muir Center In this, the sixth and final segment of John Muir\u27s World Tour, 1903-1904, we complete his journey from March 2 to May 27, 1904 from open waters in the Tasman Sea to San Francisco. Muir continues writing in his Collin\u27s Paragon Diary, 1904, purchased in Australia and reflecting the calendar for the Southern Hemisphere. This form of journal allowed the author to enter one page per day. If he needed more space, he had to poach empty lines from the previous day or the one that followed. With such tight restrictions and weary from his near- year long travels, Muir\u27s final leg is best described as one of economy of entries, often merely listing the temperature at daybreak and the condition of the skies, with very brief reflection on what has transpired that day. On occasion, there is no entry for a day or so, indicating little of consequence transpired. March 2, 1904: Muir is in rough seas between New Zealand and Australia, having engaged passage on the Zealandia on February 29; most of the passengers suffering from seasickness, ship both pitching and rocking, he notes the following day. Landing in Sydney on March 4, Muir secured a ticket for home via Hong Kong and the Philippines. He then eagerly returned to his favorite haunt, the Sydney Botanical Gardens, where he spent several days botanizing and collecting many specimens to take home to California, some of which he planted on the grounds of his Martinez home; others dried for study and for science. By March 11, Muir was on the road again by stage and by rail in the forests around Sydney, taking in all of the trees, some up to 100 feet high, which caught his attention. Araucaria and Eucalyptus forests, as well as Bunya, some 200 feet tall made for exciting walks in forest, home to enormous spiders and webs and stinging ants, he tells us. Back in Sydney on March 18, Muir labored to dry his plant specimens for the next ten days, nearly all exotic to him prior to this trip. At sea again aboard the Empire, Muir wrote on March 31, Glad to go homeward at last. Passing Brisbane and now in the tropics, Muir observed passing the first of many low coral islands on April 6, observing the atolls and reefs between the outer Great Barrier Reef and the inner fringing reefs as the Empire slowly made her way through these picturesque but dangerous shoals. Once in the Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea, Muir\u27s power of observation turned skyward once again, taking in the constellations of the southern skies, and especially the Southern Cross, which shone with beautiful green and blue light on April 9. Rounding the tip of Australia, the Empire docked at Port Darwin on April 11. Always the opportunist, Muir stepped ashore and quickly gathered plants in park and roadside as well as in the Darwin Botanic Garden for the next two days, bringing aboard a large collection of additional specimens. On to Indonesia and the port of Dili in East Timor, a very old Portuguese town dating back to 1520, and noted for its fine groves of Cocoa. Figs, bread fruit, and banian were added to his herbarium prior to (Continued on page 5) r page 1
NeWs & Mot The Old Tramp in New Show John Muir is Back - and Man! Is he Ticked Off! He enters the stage grumbling - mumbling incoherent strings between huffs and puffs - something about incorrigible politicians and unforgivable misdeeds. John Muir is back - and he\u27s more than simply disappointed. Renowned actor Lee Stetson performs this show in Yosemite Valley in his 2601 professional year with a spell-binding, one-man performance as California\u27s best known conservationist, John Muir. In a unique medley of his famous scripts, Stetson blends stories of Muir\u27s adventures in wild America- from Alaska to his beloved Sierra Nevada. Weaving hilarious tales from bear encounters to icy glacier-treks, Stetson spins a yarn like no other. He portrays Muir\u27s deep compassion for the tree- people and his tireless efforts to conserve wild places in America and throughout the world. His normal, animated and happy story-telling is intermittently interrupted by the expressive realization that Lord Man has failed to heed his precautionary words. In this new script, Stetson portrays a sometimes angry and frustrated Muir. His patience is tried and his nerves are tender. He has spent his life battling dams and deforestation. He laments the ruthless extinction of nature\u27s perfect assemblage of glorious species. He puzzles about tourism and hiking as gross distortions of his ideas on how to most purely experience nature\u27s most grand wonders. He rails against the politicians and those who would be swayed by money and power - those who would slay forests and passenger pigeons for the almighty dollar. The conservation movement lives on in this often hilarious and sometimes passionate plea to keep the spirit of John Muir alive. Nature\u27s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir\u27s Botanical Legacy by Bonnie J. Gisel with images by Stephen J. Joseph Foreword by David Rains Wallace Heyday Books, November, 2008 Hardbound, ISBN: 978-1-59714-106-2, 45.00 286 pages (9 x 12), with over 150 images John Muir\u27s inordinate fondness for plants... As a young boy growing up in Wisconsin, John Muir faithfully recorded in his journal that the pasque-flower was a hopeful multitude of large, hairy, silky buds about as thick as one\u27s thumb, and that the lady\u27s slipper orchid in nearby meadows caught the eye of all the European settlers and made them gaze and wonder like children. Muir was blessed early on with a love and aptitude for botany, a field of study that helped him become one of the most influential environmentalists in the world. One realizes, in reading Nature\u27s Beloved Son, how much Muir\u27s successes as an adventurer, writer, and environmental advocate were driven by his belief in nature\u27s irresistible, divine beauty. Surprisingly, little has been written about John Muir the botanist. Environmental historian Bonnie J. Gisel takes us through Muir\u27s evolving relationship with the natural world, touching on his childhood in Scotland and Wisconsin, his sojourn in Canada, his thousand-mile walk from Louisville, Kentucky, to the Gulf of Natures -Belovei 1 Son■ . •■ :»j a -IV ■ 1 1 Mexico, his ecstatic travels in California\u27s Sierra Nevada, and his thrilling exploration of Alaska. Photographer Stephen J. Joseph\u27s breathtaking prints of Muir\u27s botanical specimens related correspondence are artfully presented in this book and provide the backdrop for the story of Muir\u27s great passion for the natural world. About the Author and Photographer: Bonnie J. Gisel is an environmental historian and the curator at the Sierra Club\u27s Le Conte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite National Park. She is the editor of Kindred and Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (University of Utah Press, 2001) and Nature Journaling with John Muir (Poetic Matrix Press, 2006) and she has lectured extensively and published articles on John Muir as well as issues of environmental literacy. Stephen J. Joseph has been a photographer for more than forty years. His work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum, the San Francisco Legion of Honor, the Ansel Adams Gallery, and elsewhere, and he has been the Centennial Photographer for the Muir Woods National Monument and an artist in residence for Yosemite\u27s LeConte Memorial Lodge. Source: Heyday Books Fall & Winter 2008 Catalog. (Continued on page 4) The John Muir Newsletter Volume 18, Number 1 Winter 2007/2008 Published Quarterly by The John Muir Center for Environmental Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 ♦ STAFF ♦ Director W.R. Swagerty Editor W.R. Swagerty Production Assistant Marilyn Norton Unless otherwise noted, all photographic reproductions are courtesy of the John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections University of the Pacific Libraries. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper page 2
The Unfinished Story of Annie L. Muir By Michael Wurtz Holt-Atherton Special Collections University of the Pacific Library John Muir\u27s sister Annie L. Muir was born on October 5, 1846. Annie and her twin sister Mary were the last of the Muir children to be born in Scotland, and were followed only by Joanna who was bom in 1851 in Wisconsin. Although one of the youngest, Annie was the first of the Muir siblings to die when she passed away in 1903 at the age of 56 in Portage, Wisconsin. She was also the only Muir child never to have married. From reading the correspondence in the John Muir Papers either to or from Annie it becomes evident that she was a prolific letter writer. It is clear, however, that some of her letters were never saved and added to the Papers. For example, she writes to John in the spring of 1862 or 1863, I hardly know how to answer your question, but I suppose our heads were made so that they would not ache when we are in the under side of the globe. If that is not the reason please tell me when you write next. The collection does not include the letter that contained John\u27s original question or the follow-up reason letter either. Annie would almost harangue her friends and family into writing her letters. After she had spent almost four years in Martinez with John, Louie, and the children in the mid-1880s, she writes from the train on her way back to Portage, Please let me find a letter awaiting me there for I long for news of you all and especially of the little girls of whom I find myself.. .thinking of very often. Less than two months after she left the Alhambra Valley, she writes punitively to Wanda and Baby Helen that she did not really think that two-year-old Helen would be writing to her, but expected that seven-year-old Wanda would have made an effort - spelling errors and all. Their mother sheepishly writes back that she is utterly ashamed that she had not written and that Wanda must have forgotten all her letters - about literally. Annie\u27s life is elusive at best. She was probably named for her mother, Ann Gilrye Muir, and may have been part of the motivation for John to name his first daughter Annie Wanda Muir. There is no indication of what the L of her middle name stood for and she is addressed as Annie, Ann, and Anna throughout the letters. In the biographies and writings of John Muir, there are specks of her life. In Linnie Marsh\u27s Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir, Annie and her sister Mary are referred to mostly as the twins. The twins celebrated their third birthday while crossing the Atlantic Ocean on their way to America. The twins were launching forth as teachers. Marsh also reveals that Annie suffered from consumption, and that it had been the reason for her extended trip to Martinez from 1884 to 1888. Other writings about Muir bring up perhaps John\u27s most pointed letter to his twin sisters. In November of 1860 he wrote to them about when he was forced to meet them as newborns, I am sure I would have rather gone to school and got whipt on both hands, but I had to go and kiss them. O my! Kiss such soft, red looking things! But the sun rose sometimes and set sometimes, and things are changed. The relationship between John and Annie is hardly explored more than in that 1860 letter. Also in that letter he specifically addresses Annie and writes, you scolded [me] too, but you did not exhort so much, and I used to scold you more and exhort you more, but I don\u27t think I\u27ll scold you any more. John confides in Annie and her sisters in his letters home while he was living in Canada. He relates a story of when he returned from meeting one Sunday morning and witnessed a cat catch a bird in the house. He chased the cat all over until he caught it with the bird still in its mouth. He tried to save the bird by choking the cat, but I choked her and choked her to make her let it go until I choked her to death, though I did not mean to. He waited and hoped for the next of her nine lives, but to my grief I found that I had taken them all. And the bird did not survive either. When the others returned to the house that afternoon they said, Now John is always scolding us about killing spiders and flies but when we are away he chokes the cats. Annie never left home and lived principally with her mother until she died in 1896. Her father had left the family to pursue a religious group in the early 1870s and died in Kansas City in 1885. Annie was frequently not well. The first documentary evidence of her illness in her letters appeared in the early 1880s when she was preparing to visit the Muirs of the Alhambra Valley, but could not muster the strength to do so. When she did go, it appears that it was mostly for health reasons. In a February 1884, she describes a lung examination that she had. Lower lobe of the right was entirely consolidated, or hepatized [a sign of \u27 pneumonia] ... have coughed more, and the cough hurt me more than before, and I have been raising a little blood. After her visit to California, see stopped by to visit her physician brother Daniel. Wben I was in Lincoln [Nebraska], Dan examined my lungs and throat. He agrees with the San Francisco Physician in saying that my lungs are entirely well. But he seemed to be surprised at the condition of my throat -which he says is very bad indeed. He looked into the upper part of my throat and found the mucus membrane much thick and swollen from chronic inflammation. And the condition farther down is no better. In 1901, Annie shared the house for a while with Dr. West and his family. West, an osteopath ( Osteopathy is not well known here now as it will be in a few years - or perhaps - months. ) gave her free treatment that she thought helped. In October of 1902 she writes, My health is better this year than last. In fact, I scarcely consider myself an invalid now (although I still cough some every day). John Muir wrote to one of his cousins in January 1903, Our sister Anne, one of the twins, died at her home in Portage on the 15th of this month, of Apoplexy, after a week\u27s illness. Only Daniel was there. John continued, I think poor Anne often overtasked herself in church work, in which she was very zealous. These clues of Annie\u27s life hint at much more. There are mentions of her teaching and running a store with her mother. After her return from California in 1888, she was studying phonography (a type of shorthand) so she could be a reporter. It appears that Annie\u27s exploits in California are mostly undocumented. A researcher could attempt to fill in Annie\u27s story and her influence on John Muir by reading what others wrote about her - especially a deeper look into letters between John and his brother Daniel, presumably Annie\u27s doctor, would shed some light on those times. page 3
With Xmas Greetings to Mary, fromTwinnie A-, writes Annie Muir on the back of this photograph from Portage, Wisconsin sometime in the 1890s. Annie suffered from chronic illness, never married, and died at 56, Her letters in the John Muir Papers offer a fleeting glimpse into her life and relationship with her brother. (Fiche 27-1483 John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust) *1* *£* vl* v\u27- ■».!* *i* *£* *1* *_* %I\u3e *_^ *|\u3e *i* *_* *_* *A* *I* *1* *1* *1* *L* *1* *i* *!• *£* *&* \u3e1* vL* »I* vL* «J\u3e \1* *-!\u27 *!* *i* ^f* JS *J\u3e ^j* rtS *f* *|s ^J\u3c *r* ^J^*J% *j* *j* *^ #^ *y* *J» *J* *J* «^ *y* *j^ #J^ (continued from page 2) NEWS & NOTES A Passion for Nature The Life of John Muir by Donald Worster Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-516682-8 512 pages, 30 halftones, 5 maps Available October 2008 34.95 I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer, John Muir wrote. Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. My own special self In Donald magisterial Muir\u27s special explored, as is ability, then and see the sacred world. A is the most the great founder of the written. It is the is nothing. Worster\u27s biography, John self is fully his extraordinary now, to get others to beauty of the natural Passion for Nature complete account of conservationist and Sierra Club ever first to be based on Muir\u27s full private correspondence and to meet modem scholarly standards. Yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War One. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir\u27s passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth and political influence. A man for whom mountaineering was a pathway to revelation and worship. For anyone wishing to more fully understand America\u27s first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster\u27s biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed. About the author: Donald Worster is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas. His books include The Wealth of Nature, Under Western Skies, and the Bancroft Prize-winning Dust Bowl. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas. What Would John Muir Say? Edited by Bernice Basser Turoff with photographs by David Best John Muir was truly a Renaissance man. Scientist, poet, ardent conservationist, inventor, political activist, and tramp— he casts an enormous shadow over the environmental movement he helped to form in his adopted California. His many achievements include founding the Sierra Club, and influencing the formation of our National Park System. His last big battle, to preserve Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, was sadly lost with the construction of O\u27Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. What Would John Muir Say? takes you on a visual journey through John Muir\u27s beloved natural landscapes. It examines the possibility of restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, and explores some of Muir\u27s insightful thoughts and observations about the glorious world he loved and celebrated. With 82 oversized pages of stunning photographs, this book offers a wonderful introduction to the humorous, poetic musing of this great American hero. For further information: David Best 5909 E. Armstrong Road Lodi, CA 95240 209 368 2378 panoramaman@earthlink. net www.panoramaman.net page 4
John Muir\u27s World Tour (Continued from page I) setting out through the Sulu Strait for Manila, which was reached on April 20. Three more days of visiting government forest operations and botanizing added yet more specimens to Muir\u27s baggage as the Empire steamed on to Hong Kong, arriving on the 25*. One last chance to visit a formal botanical garden and then a change of ships, Muir sailed upriver, bound for Canton, through numerable islands which he compared with the Alexander Archipelago of Alaska. Now aboard the coal-fired mail packet, S. S. Siberia, courtesy of railroad tycoon and philanthropist Edward Harriman, the journey took Muir to Shanghai then on to Nagasaki, arriving on May 5. Cultural excursions to a Shinto Temple and walks through Japanese gardens introduced Muir to yet another main tree, the Camphor, which he described as noble, with its impressive girth of 3 to 8 feet in diameter, 4 feet above ground. On to Kobe, via the Inland Sea, every feature glacial, Muir notes. Impressed with the cleanliness of towns having no squalor, unlike much of Asia that he had seen, as well as the beauty of water features, tea gardens, and hillsides, Japan made a favorable and lasting impression on Muir. Once, in Yokohama, he reacquainted himself with the crew of the Bayern, my first home after escaping from the hardships and privations of Russian travel on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, months earlier. Leaving Yokohama on May 12, wet weather and rough seas left everybody with colds, writes Muir. Ten days later, the Hawaiian Islands came into view. A stop in Honolulu allowed Muir a brief visit to Pali, the Bishop Museum and Oahu College, where Muir had acquaintances from years prior. Sorry to leave this charming island, Muir reluctantly reboarded ship on Sunday, May 23, spending the next few days drying yet more plant specimens from Hawaii, a place where he keenly noted, many introduced plants were in process of replacing native vegetation. A week later, Muir was home, docking in San Francisco on May 27, exhausted but energized by his many new botanical discoveries and the cargo of seeds, dried specimens, and publications he had acquired during his World Tour, near-a-year in the field. Once home, we assume Muir had intentions to write up his year-long tour, but he never carved out time to do so. On June 4, Muir wrote C. Hart Merria
The John Muir Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2011/2012
No full textFall/Winter 2011/2012 ; LA--/*. ; oJW J\\AAAA, uLwtiAjU)OlGA, THE JOHN MUIR CENTER SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST: The present is the key to the past. Muir would apply geological formation and specifically the action of glacial ice to the handiwork of God. Muir chose to live to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. In the beginning and to the end botany was the foundation upon which Muir\u27s work as a preservationist grew and glacial studies were seamlessly connected to his study of plants. An Essay P h e n o m on John E N A L S C I Muir E N C E IN THIS ISSUE An Essay on John Muir\u27s Phenomenal Science by 1 Bonnie J. Gisel 59th California History Institute to focus on . Women as History- Makers in California John Muir Class Visits A Walk in the Wild and the Muir House By Bonnie Johanna Gisel Curator, LeConte Memorial Lodge, Yosemite National Park Author, Nature\u27s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir\u27s Botanical Legacy I. Origins of Muir\u27s Scientific Self The world John Muir sauntered through was one in which the distribution of erratics was attributed to a diluvial theory, a wave of sea ice due to catastrophic sudden and violent floods released from the interior of the Earth or caused by the upheaval of -^F * \u3e mountains. This diluvial theory gave way to a theory that provided a more rational explanation to account for the appearance of erratic boulders, and that theory was that erratics had been moved by vast sheets of moving glaciers. A debate—sea ice vs. land ice-remained a feature of geological discussion until about 1902. As well Muir found himself inquiring into the inner workings of science when fossil remnants—relicts of a world of unusual and exceptional creatures and plants, and the study of strata, continued to expand upon what James Hutton of Edinburgh regarded as an Earth im- James Hutton From http://etc.usf.edu/ clipart/60973/60973James hutton.htm mensely older than the thousands of years allowed by the chronology of the Old Testa- ment.1 Then, too, up from the sod of science, a Scotsman, uniformitarian, and friend of Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, who parented modern geology, examined an inorganic Earth in perpetual change, eroding, and reforming. He explained the former changes of the Earth\u27s surface by reference to causes now in operation. The present, he would say, is the key to the past. While a student at the University of Wisconsin, Muir was introduced to Lyell\u27s Principles, perhaps the 1853 ninth edition which created quite a sensation. Lyell banished any doubts about a glacial epoch, fully supporting the work of Louis Agassiz, an expert on fossil fish and the preeminent glaciologist, who happened to be an unabashed catastrophist. Disagreement would erupt over the rate of environmental change between those who supported change gradual and uniform, uniformitarians, of which Muir was one, and those who supported intermittent cataclysm, catastrophists. There was also Lyell\u27s Elements of Geology, published in 1838- the first modern textbook of geology, a systematic treatment based on the assumption that all the phenomena of geology can be explained naturally and discussed scientifically. In Yosemite, in 1872, Muir would request that Jeanne Carr send a copy of Lyell\u27s work. He would have opened the familiar volume to the frontispiece-a diagram of a vertical section through a volcanic island surrounded by sea and showing dia- grammatically how the four great classes of rocks were produced.2 Muir would apply geological formation and specifically the action of glacial ice to the handiwork of God. An exaggerated theory of a single polar cap, an Ice Age traveling from the North Pole over the northern hemisphere, was the brain-child (continued on page 3)
PAGE 2 59th California H To focus on Women in Calif I S T O R Y I N S T I T U T E A S H I S T O R Y ■ M A K E O R N A ?» R S On March 23, 24, students, faculty and guests of the University will gather for the 59th California History Institute. This year\u27s theme focuses on women who continue to be history- makers. Highlights include a field trip to the California State Museum by coach from Stockton on March 23 to two exhibits: Women and the Vote, and Notable Women in California History, the latter featuring 120 individuals. Papers and panels on March 24 will focus on the historiography of women\u27s history in the Golden State; the role of Latina, Filipina, Asian, and Native American women; women of note in Stockton\u27s own history; women\u27s organizations at Pacific; and a panel on women and environmental justice and activism. The luncheon keynote will be delivered by Judy Yung, Professor Emerita, U. C. Santa Cruz, whose publications include : Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (1995); Chinese American Voices; From the Gold Rush to the Present (2006); and (with Erika Lee) Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (2010). For more information and to register for the symposium please contact Juliann Hilton i [email protected] or call Muir Center and leave a message at 209 946-2527. JOHN MUIR C WILD lass Visits A Walk and the Muir House IN THE On January 19, twenty- one students in Pacific\u27s John Muir and the Rise of the Conservation Movement class visited the Oakland Museum of California and John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez. In Oakland the class toured the exhibit, A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir\u27s Journey. Cu- rated by Dorris Welch, the exhibit focused on John Muir and science, using original materials from the John Muir Papers as well as furniture and artifacts from various institutions and family members. While there the class met John Muir Reid, the great-grandson of Margaret Muir-Reid, one of Muir\u27s older sisters. Reid is a professional artist who reports he has painted with the great- grandson of Muir\u27s close friend and fellow Scotsman, William Keith. His watercolors focus on landscapes of the Delta, Sierra, and Bay, as well as Yosemite, scenes that would be familiar to John Muir. In Martinez, Park Guide Daniel Prial gave the group an inspired talk and a memorable tour of the Muir House. Prial focused on Muir\u27s interest in bringing Nature into his residence, rather than keeping Nature out. The interpretation helped all to understand the rationale for planting trees exotic to the Alhambra Valley (including the famous redwood in front of the house), the large number of William Keith landscapes in the house, as well as architectural features incorporated by Muir into the house after it was remodeled, post-1906 San Francisco earthquake. These include the large modified central fireplace where he could burn logs instead of coal. Each student is researching one aspect of Muir\u27s life from the Muir Papers and all are following one major contemporary environmental issue keeping the class up-to-date on current events that relate to Muir\u27s legacy. This trip was made possible through a generous grant from Holt-Atherton Special Collections. John Muir Class, 2012, in front of the Muir House, Martinez, CA Photo by Bob Dash
PAGE 3 (continued from page 1) ;■;;,\u27.: -•• c, i; o i. o c; v. CatlU.Ee LYt.I.l. IWJ LDKbON ILIeJUT, Al.aHUAHl.C STULCr. kea.uiH^ Elements of Geo/ogy From: library.sc.edu/spcoll/nathist/ darwin/darwin5.html J\Luvid, IXoAidXic iawcneAt heaian an JtLiah (DViaet in UunhaA,, &cottand in a aaAden ad, much lihe, &acn an, of Louis Agassiz; and, in 1840, he published his definitive work on glaciers, Etude sur les Glaciers. Agassiz believed that not books but experience was wherein the answers to scientific inquiry resided. To this end and to his credit, he undertook the empirical study of glaciers, establishing a camp on a glacier of the Aar. God\u27s great plough, he called them. The glacial period was for Agassiz, a magnificent demonstration of the power of God in causing catastrophic Louis Agassiz From: www.eoearth.org/article/Agassiz_Louis events that wiped out life and replaced it with new flora and fauna—in this he disagreed with Darwin\u27s theory of natural selection. At the University of Wisconsin Muir studied Agassiz\u27s work with Ezra Carr. Carr ventured with students out into what he called Nature\u27s basement rooms, out over the glaciated landscape around Madison, equating the love of nature with the love of God. He reminded students to touch with something of reverence, the hem of that marvelous robe of living green, the Forests. Muir spoke of Carr as having been the first to place before him the Book of Nature. Later, Agassiz would speak of Muir as the first to have an adequate concept of glacial action. A world not for the faint of heart, Muir was resilient. Struggle and change were everywhere. A Civil War (that Muir referred to as unchristian), was followed by tense, ambitious, and controversial mending of a nation that drove Joseph and John LeConte, respectively, geologist and physicist, from Georgia and South Carolina to California and the burgeoning University of California. There was a quickening professionalization of science and competition between scientists on the east and west coasts of America. Muir was drawn into the fray over the fair apostles-Flora.3 Muir\u27s floristic journey began on High Street in Dunbar, Scotland in a garden as much like Eden as possible, and blossomed into an enthusiasm for botany during the nineteenth century\u27s flurry of amateur plant collecting and as botany took on the mantle of a professional science. With the aid of Alphonso Wood\u27s Class- Book of Botany, in which Wood suggested that the study of plants held higher purpose expanding the soul through beauty, purity, and wisdom, Muir became skilled at identifying plants and their habitats. He would agree with Wood, to study plants was to see God\u27s plans unfold. Through plants Muir gained an inordinate sense of the complexity of life and found that when he picked out anything by itself, it was hitched to everything else in the universe. Were not, he thought, all plants beautiful? Or in some way useful? Would not the world suffer by the banishment of a single weed? We encounter a faithful Muir drafted like so many others—among them his colleague and friend Joseph LeConte-into the Age of Darwin\u27s Origin of Species by Natural Selection, published in 1859. Darwin had not intended to argue either for or against God; nonetheless, he concluded there was no need for divine creation, and there was no divine goal-natural selection took care of everything-was responsible for the gradual but steady emergence of organisms. His theory destroyed for some, dampened or attempted to awash the sea of Christian faith for others, and crippled natural theology, provoking a major philosophical and theological debate that outlived the century. Muir read Darwin while in Yosemite.
Page 4 Joseph LeConte From: www.sierraclub.org/history/ leconte II. California: Perfect Pitch Arriving in California, in 1868, Muir was not more than a footstep behind the California Geological Survey under the direction of Josiah Whitney. The Survey was under funded, under appreciated, and under terrible constraints given the size and terrain of California. Support would wane for a variety of reasons. In part Whitney was opinionated, arrogant, and stubborn, and legislators believed too much emphasis had been placed on fossils and flowers. Legislative action was taken to shift focus to mineral resources, though Whitney never envisioned the survey as a prospecting party.4 Muir continued to study botany and took up the study of mountains. Influenced by Agassiz he would stress the role of glaciers in the formation of the Sierra and Yosemite Valley. Muir found deposits of glacial silt and striations etched into the granite walls and outlined the routes that carried the glaciers that shaped and scoured the Valley. It was not long before he professed to anyone who would listen that the Valley had been formed by glaciers and that there were living glaciers in the High Sierra.5 Whitney, a graduate of Yale, spoke of Muir as uneducated, called him that shepherd, an ignoramus, and of Muir\u27s findings, considered them a personal affront—given that his conventional geological wisdom held that the floor of Yosemite Valley had subsided during a series of cataclysmic events—a view he would never change. Muir\u27s disclosure of living glaciers, as well, struck scorn with both Whitney and Clarence King, who regarded the fields Muir saw as nothing more than snow. Upon graduation from Yale\u27s Sheffield Scientific School, King joined the Whitney Survey as a volunteer geologist in 1863. He soon found evidence in 1864, like Muir\u27s, (differing only in degree), that Yosemite Valley had been formed by glaciers. While Whitney initially published King\u27s findings in the first volume of the Geological Survey in 1865, he retracted when he published The Yosemite Guide-Book in 1869— noting there was insufficient evidence that the Valley had been formed by glacial action. King publicly supported Whitney. Acatastrophist, like Whitney, King, like Agassiz, disagreed with natural selection. King, essentially, towed the party- line.6 Picturing himself the quintessential field- geologist and mountaineer, King dismissed Muir as an ambitious amateur suggesting that he divert his enthusiastic love of nature into a channel, if there is one, in which his attainments would save him from hopeless floundering. Impatient with Muir\u27s poetic sensibilities and rhapsodizing without restraint, King thought Muir lacked seriousness—writing about dreaming and sleeping with glaciers with adjectives obstructing science. A writer himself, King suffered from long periods of self-doubt and leaned to exaggerate his mountain exploits. Perhaps there was proprietary jealousy and while Muir may have been poetic, King relied on hyperbole. King first serialized his adventures as a survey scientist for The Atlantic Monthly.7 Muir disagreed with King\u27s ambition to conquer the Sierra or any mountain. Mountains could and should, he thought and knew from experience, be climbed by acting in harmony with them. The harmony King lacked, had, Muir believed, contributed to his inability to reach the summit of Mount Ritter; and it was well known that King had a particular genius for climbing the wrong mountain. Muir succeeded where GEllLrWIiAl. Si till Df CAl.iritatMA. J. 1\u3e. fj —L.«iur. YOSEMITE GUIDE-BOOK: DFKOKiiTmx riv tins VtfcXRKfTE vau.v.v ASIr flit; .\u27.!\u3e\u27A8 HIS 9 v V;;. .vim. ANlr OK THE IttG TKEBS W \u3c\UmHlM.I. ILLUSTRATED 8Y MfcP9 AMD WOOOCU T?i. ^Kx\u3eUTi/tcM4iA could and dhauld...he, climhed hu aeXina, in hoAnvanu vliXh them.... Whitney\u27s Yosemite Guide-Book From: openlibrary.org/works/0L7026039W/ The-Yosemite Guide-book IThUSIlKli r.i .\i ii-M\u27irr.- iit Tin: LMUioomiltr: lSil\u27.r.
PAGE 5 The California Geological Survey, December 1863. From left: Chester Averill, assistant; William M. Gabb, paleontologist; William Ashburner, field assistant; Josiah D. Whitney, State Geologist; Charles F. Hoffmann, topographer, Clarence King, geologist, and William H. Brewer, botanist. (Bancroft Library) From www.yosemite.ca.us/library/the_yo semite-book/ Clarence King From: www.yosemite.ca. us/library/up _and_down_ california/5.1.html King failed, and he was not above reprisal, publicly lashing out with his pen at King in an attempt to embarrass. I am sure, scoffed Muir, in an article for The Overland Monthly, that the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne may be entered at more than fifty different points along the walls by mountaineers of ordinary nerve and skill. On reading King\u27s account of his Mount Tyndall climb, Muir wrote: He must have given himself a lot of trouble. When I climbed Tyndall, I ran up and back before breakfast. 8 In a climate brimming with scientific elitism and academic arrogance, Muir went about beholding to his stories of beloved glacial ice. He may not have kept to the conventions of scientific writing, but he observed geological processes at work, and interpreted a complex pattern of phenomena with insight that emerged as characteristically his own. His method of study, patient observation and constant brooding above the rocks, lying upon them as the ice did, remaining winter and summer to arrive at the truths which were graven upon them, aware there was virtually no documentation to substantiate his theories.9 Whitney and King found Muir and his ideas unkempt, and it is true that he lacked advanced academic scientific training, however, these were not barriers to scientific truth. Muir\u27s theories—the glacial formation of Yosemite Valley and the living glaciers in the High Sierra were more nearly correct than any geologist of his time.10 III. Does Ice A Scientist Make? Punctuating a Leap of Faith Whitney, who had been in Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne in 1863, knew that glaciers had played a significant role in the formation of the High Sierra. There was no disagreement with Muir on this. Whitney wrote to a colleague, G. J. Brush, July 10,1863: We are in the midst of what was once a great glacier region, the valleys all about being most superbly polished and grooved by glaciers, which once existed here in a stupendous scale having a thickness, in the Tuolumne Valley, of a thousand feet.11 Members of the Whitney Survey, however, were seemingly unaware that the snow bank upon which they climbed on Mount Lyell was actually a modern glacier. It was noted that there were no living glaciers in the Sierra Nevada. In 1872, Joseph LeConte observed the Lyell Glacier with Muir, but from a distance. He reported that such a glacier was neither true nor typical—but in some sense a glacier. Muir
Page 6 thought LeConte had made no effort to acquire adequate data—he had not seen glacial ice because he had not gone into the depths of the glacier.12 Muir poured his soul into the writing of a series of articles entitled Studies in the Sierra for The Overland Monthly that appeared in 1874—abridged for the national scientific community. Illustrated with his own drawings, the articles were intended to win converts to his theory on the glacial action at work in the formation of the Sierra and Yosemite Valley. For all the scientific truth borne of Muir\u27s empirical studies, the thread that held his glacial canon together was his faith. He found in the glacial tome answers to a deep theological need. Drawn to glaciers as the plows of God, Muir stood upon them and then within a glacial Shrund, a stranger in a stranger land, as near to the heart of the world as he could—a chamber hung with clustered icicles, subdued light, and solemn murmurs.13 God\u27s handiwork, Muir believed. Surely he had found Him in the act of creating, wielding tools, slowly shaping the Earth. There was the glory. For skeptics, here was the proof. Illuminating the indwelling of God in Creation yet being made, Muir offered up mountain bread to his readers. He hath builded the mountains... .The Master Builder chose for a tool the tender snow-flowers, noiselessly falling through unnumbered seasons, the offspring of the sun and sea. 14 IV. Where Science Ends & Faith Was Always There. Who created that tangled bank? That natural selection resulting from competition between organisms for survival, could produce human beings along with the higher flora and fauna but toward no goal, was the most disturbing of Darwin\u27s theory of evolution. Evidence pointing to evolution, including the evolution of Homo sapiens, had been accumulating for decades but had taken evolution to be a plan present from the beginning and a goal directed process.15 In 1909 during three day\u27s spent with French Strother at the Strentzel-Muir ranch in Alhambra, Muir reflected upon the meaning and purpose of evolution. Evolution, they say brought the earth through its glacial periods, caused the snow blanket to recede, and the flower carpet to follow it, raised the forests of the world, developed animal life from the jelly-fish to the thinking man. 16 But what caused evolution? To my mind, Muir noted, it is inconceivable that a plan that has worked out, through unthinkable millions of years, without one hitch or one mistake, the development of beauty that has made every microscopic particle of matter perform its function in harmony with every other in the universe—that such a plan is the blind product of an unthinking abstraction. No; somewhere, before evolution was, was an Intelligence that laid out the plan, and evolution is the process, not the origin of the harmony. You may call that Intelligence what you please. I cannot see why so many people object to call it God. For Muir Darwin\u27s evolutionary theory reduced mystery, yet, did not destroy the idea of God\u27s designing presence in Nature. What remained was one infinite mystery of existence, of every phenomena of Nature, and that Muir left to God. In the world view Muir endowed, scientific inquiry was ignited by faith, culture, and imagination from which it was birthed as well as by the truth that it sought. For him the journey was always about wildness and would endure to find the means to save parts and parcels of it. Turning always to plash in the divine light of the natural world in nature\u27s own reserve, he chose to live to entice people to look at Nature\u27s loveliness. Seeking the curious magical qualities of each present being, Muir was impelled to the life of lonely wandering solely by the love of God\u27s Earth and eternal, immortal Beauty. Eyes were important to Muir. With them he pursued the phenomena of science to solve puzzles that deepened his faith as he turned to share with others a world they could only half see. With eyes open to God\u27s
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