9,649 research outputs found
Travels in Alaska
No full textThe Riverside Press Cambridge.This book is part of the Natural History Collection, a book collection which supports the James Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World.Prepared for publication by Mrs. Marion Randall Parsons.Illustrations: Alpenglow on summit of Mt. Muir, Harrison Fiord, Prince William Sound -- Hanging Valley and waterfall, Fraser Reach -- Lowe Inlet, British Columbia -- Indian canoes -- Alaskan hemlocks and spruces, Sitka -- Old chief and totem pole, Wrangell -- Admirality Island -- The Muir Glacier in the seventies, showing ice cliffes and stranded icebergs (from a photograph owned by Mr. Muir) -- Stranded icebergs, Taku Glacier -- Vegetation at high-tide line, Stika Harbor -- Ruins of buried forest, east side of Muir Glacier (from a photograph owned by Mr. Muir) -- Floating iceberg, Taku Inlet. Except where otherwise indicated the illustrations are from photographs by Herbert W. Gleason. The colored half-tone which appears on the cover is from a painting of the Muir Glacier by Thomas Hill, owned by Mr. Muir.Part I. The Trip of 1879. Puget Sound and British Columbia -- Alexander Archipelago and the home I found in Alaska -- Wrangell Island and Alaska summers -- The Stickeen River -- A cruise in the Cassiar -- The Cassiar Trail -- Glenora Peak -- Exploration of the Stickeen Glaciers -- A canoe voyage to northward -- The discovery of Glacier Bay -- The country of the chilcats -- The return to Fort Wrangell -- Alaska Indians. Part II. The Trip of 1880. Sum Dum Bay -- From Taku River to Taylor Bay -- Glacier Bay -- In camp at Glacier Bay -- My sled-trip on the Muir Glacier -- Auroras -- Index -- Glossary of words in the Chinook jargon
Letter from B. F. Thomas to John Muir, 1912 Jul 30.
No full textHARVARD CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCOB. F. THOMAS, SECRETARY216-228 SUTTER ST.SAN FRANCISCO. July 30, 1918.Mr. John Muir,Martinez, Cal.My dear Mr. Muir:The Harvard Club of San Francisco requests the pleasure of your company at dinner at the University Club, California & Powell Sta., on Monday evening, August 5th, at seven o\u27clock. The occasion is in honor of Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, who will then be passing through San Francisco on his way home.Trusting that it will be convenient and possible for you to be with us on this date, I am,Yours very truly,Secretary, Harvard Club of San Francisco.[ILLEGIBLE]https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/33077/thumbnail.jp
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Structural and dynamical features of inteins and implications on protein splicing (Journal of Biological Chemistry (2014) 289 (14506-14511))
No full textStructural and dynamical features of inteins and implications on protein splicing (Journal of Biological Chemistry (2014) 289 (14506-14511)). (Erratum). Volume 289, Issue 28, 11 July 2014, Page 19278. Authors: Ertan Eryilmaz, Neel H. Shah, Muir, Thomas W. (Muir,Tom), and David Cowburn.[No abstract available
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, Summer 2002
No full texto NEWSLETTER John Muir\u27s Aunt Mary by Roberta M. McDow ost people acquainted with the life of John Muir are probably aware that his father Daniel and Daniel\u27s sister Mary were orphans. In 1885, John wrote in his obituary for his father: His mother was English, his father Scotch and he was born in Manchester, England in the year 1804. When he was only six months old his mother died and he lost his father also a few months later when an elder sister became a mother to him and brought him up on a farm that belonged to a relative in Lanarkshire, Scotland... While yet more boy than man he suddenly left home to seek his fortune with only a few shillings in his pocket, but with a head full of romantic schemes for the benefit of his sister and all the world besides.1 Although John mentioned Margaret, his maternal aunt, in his autobiography, he didn\u27t write again about his father\u27s sister. His aunt Margaret, he wrote, had a precious lily-bed in the corner of the Muirs\u27 Dunbar garden that the future naturalist loved to visit.2 His father\u27s sister lived in Lanarkshire, too far away to see often. In fact, it is probable that John never saw his aunt Mary while he lived in Scotland. John\u27s first biographer, William Frederic Bade, quoted extensively from Daniel\u27s obituary in The Ancestral Background, the first chapter of his two-volume work.3 He relied on the knowledge and memories of John\u27s family and friends to expand on the details given in the eulogy. By March 1920, a little over five years after John\u27s death, Bade had finished the draft of the first chapter. . . .but I am leaving it open for the discovery of new matter, 4 he wrote to John Hills from whom he hoped to learn more about the naturalist\u27s maternal ancestors. Sarah Galloway, John Muir\u27s sister and David Galloway\u27s widow, was one of Bade\u27s valuable resources. I have looked carefully over the paper you have sent me and find little I could change, she wrote to him in 1922. A change she did suggest concerned Daniel\u27s age at the time of his mother\u27s death. . . .he was nine months old you have it six, 5 she corrected. Another interesting exchange occurred between the biographer and Sarah in May 1923. A careful researcher, Bade consulted her about a scrap of paper he had found in the family documents on which the surname of Daniel and Mary\u27s mother had been written Hague, not Higgs. 6 The maiden name of our father\u27s mother was Sarah Higgs, she replied. In my school girl days I wrote the name Hague because I liked it better, but that is not the name. 7 At the time of this exchange, Sarah was eighty-seven years old. Bade was able to obtain information from a family member who was even older. She was an aged daughter of Mary Muir, Grace Blakeley Brown. 8 Bade does not say how he obtained this data, but it is from her that he learned the Scottish farm to which Daniel and Mary were taken was situated at Crawfordjohn, about thirty-five miles southeast of Glasgow. \u27 A better picture of the Muirs\u27 ancestry was emerging. Bade concluded that the naturalist\u27s name appears to have [been] taken from his paternal grandfather, a Scotchman by the name of John Muir. But beyond that it may be doubted whether a search of Scotch parish records. . .would reveal more than another bare name. 10 The elder John Muir, a soldier, married Sarah Higgs, an English woman. Two children were bom to them, the younger in 1804. Sarah died when the younger was nine months old, Bade wrote, here deviating from the obituary and accepting Sarah Galloway\u27s correction. Three months later, the elder John died and the children went to a farm that belonged to a relative in Lanarkshire, Scotland. Bade mentioned an allegation that the farm was owned by a relative of Sarah\u27s, but he did not agree or disagree with this assertion.12 Although the naturalist was the subject of the biogra- (continued on page 5) U IM EVER S I TFftTif- OR page 1 E=» /V O I R I C
7 News & Notes John Muir\u27s art collection set for Saint Mary\u27s College exhibit by Steve Pauly Beginning August 17, Saint Mary\u27s College in Moraga, will exhibit many of the twenty-two paintings John Muir displayed in the Martinez Ranch House. His collection included twenty William Keith paintings and two Thomas Hill paintings. All but four are mountain landscapes. The collection began with Muir\u27s mother-in-law and father-in- law, Louisiana and John Strentzel, who received a Keith painting from Mrs. Jeanne Carr. Over the years, Muir added paintings of his favorite mountain scenes. Images of Tuolumne Meadows, Mt. Shasta, Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls, Mt. Rainier and Muir Glacier (Alaska) graced the walls of the mansion along with portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Strentzel, a charcoal sketch of Muir\u27s younger daughter Wanda and a sketch of Santa Barbara Mission. The exhibit runs through February 23, 2003. John Muir and William Keith first met in Yosemite Valley in 1872. An instant and life-long friendship was bom between the two who both were bom in Scotland in 1838. Muir guided Keith to Sierra, Cascade, and Alaska mountains and urged Keith to make true-to-life paintings of the landscape. The Muir collection was first seen by Keith biographer Brother Fidelis Cornelius, F.S.C., during a 1908 visit to Muir\u27s Martinez home. At the time, Cornelius was a novitiate at the Christian Brother\u27s Martinez Seminary and was interested in art. The twenty Keith paintings in the home convinced Brother Cornelius of Keith\u27s genius, and he made Keith the subject of much of his life\u27s work while director of Saint Mary\u27s Art Department. The extensive Keith collections at Saint Mary\u27s Hearst Gallery and at the Oakland Museum are the direct result of Cornelius\u27 persuasion and tenacity. After his death, the art collection was divided among Muir\u27s descendants and now is in the hands of his family and several private collectors. ******** In the Winter 2001/2002 issue (Vol. 12, No. 1), The John Muir Newsletter ran a piece on John Muir\u27s Telephone Number by Harold Wood. According to Charlene Perry of the Martinez Historical Society, it was not Muir but Dr. John Strentzel who installed the telephone in what became the John Muir National Historic Site. In was installed, in fact, much earlier than the listing in the 1897 State Telephone Directory — it was operating in 1884! The Contra Costa Telephone Company in that year reported it owned 54 miles of telephone lines and 34 instruments, after three years of operation. One mile of that line served the railroad, while one and a half miles gave Dr. John Strentzel contact with the downtown from his new home, now the John Muir National Historic Site. (Source: A Look Back 100 Years by Charlene Perry, Martinez Historical Society, Martinez News-Gazette, December 28, 1983). ******** Mountain Days, the John Muir Musical, has just completed a very successful month-long run at the John Muir Amphitheater in Martinez, CA. Preceding the performances, a series of talks was held, many of which were given by old friends who have written for the John Muir Center\u27s publication program. They included Ross Hannah (grandson of John Muir), Ron Good (of Restore Hetch Hetchy), Harold W. Wood (of the Sierra Club), and Muir scholars Barbara Mossberg, Michael Branch, Steve Pauly, and Chris High- ■ land. All readers should plan to attend the play and the programs beforehand next summer. * * * * * * * * There will be a November treat for Muir fans in Northern California! On November 2 at Dominican University in San Rafael, at 7 p.m. an exciting benefit has been planned for the Restore Hetch Hetchy project. Lee Stetson, the well- known actor who depicts John Muir throughout the country will give a performance, as will Alisdair Fraser, a fiddler specializing in Scottish and Gaelic music. His stories and songs will introduce the audience to themes of Scottish culture, so much a part of Muir\u27s world. For information on tickets and directions, call (925) 933-4489. ******** ill NEWSLETTER Volume 12, Number 3 Summer 2002 Published quarterly by The John Muir Center for Environmental Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 ♦ Staff ♦ Editor Sally M. Miller Production Assistants .. . Marilyn Norton, Pearl Piper 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. i page 2
John Muir In The Central Valley: An Ecological Perspective by Howard R. Cooley John Muir, California\u27s most famous naturalist, crossed the Central Valley of California each time he traveled between the Bay Area and the Sierra. In one of his earliest published articles, Rambles of a Botanist, (1872),\u27 he describes how most travelers remember the valley as a scorched and dust- clouded waste. But Muir was always eager to speak in its praise, all the more because its plant inhabitants are so fast disappearing beneath gang-plows and trampling hoofs of flocks and herds. This of course has come to pass. The significance of Muir\u27s insight has increased with time as the Valley\u27s remaining native plants and animals are threatened by widespread urban development. Early explorers like Jedediah Smith, John Charles Fremont, John Bidwell, and William Brewer, recorded some scenery and plants, but John Muir is the only known early writer to chronicle the full range of habitats in an undeveloped Central Valley. He later wrote that when California was wild virgin wilderness The Great Central Plain of California. . .was one smooth, continuous bed of bloom. . .marvel- ously rich. . .from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles. 2 When Muir first arrived in California in the spring of 1868, he headed for Yosemite by way of Pacheco Pass in the Coast Range east of Gilroy. From the summit, the uncor- rupted view of the Central Valley, he later said, was like a lake of pure sunshine. . .one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae. 3 And to the east rose the Sierra Nevada mountains, clear and bright as a new outspread map. 4 Many a Muir disciple in recent times has sought that shimmering view only to be confronted by a curtain of smog. ■ •■. After crossing Pacheco Pass and descending the eastern foothills of the Coast Range, Muir passed the San Louis Gonzaga Ranch. This was part of the widespread ranchos of Francisco Pacheco, where San Louis Creek flowed east to the San Joaquin River.5 The old St. Louis Ranch was located near the headwaters.6 Writer Edgar Kahn quotes Andrew Hillsdale (circa 1850) as saying that there were no towns, villages, or settlements between San Jose and the St. Louis Ranch, and no human life between there and the San Joaquin River.7 Today much of the former Rancho is flooded under the San Louis Reservoir to add to southern California\u27s water supply. Ganzaga Road leads to the dam. Continuing across the valley, Muir also described the level plain as an ocean of flowers. 8 In July, he wrote a letter to his friend Jeanne Carr of Madison, Wisconsin, stating, Florida is indeed a land of flowers, but. . Here, here is Florida!9 There is ample evidence to confirm the Central Valley\u27s former floral diversity and abundance. Fremont (March 1844), after traversing the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains, entered the Central Valley near the confluence of the American River with the Sacramento. The landscape was a vast waving parkland of tall green grass, huge valley oaks up to eight feet in diameter, and gushing streams. The grasslands were mixed with broad patches of yellow mustard, and miles of yellow and white poppies. The Coast Range was clear and blue on the western horizon. Fremont also recorded herds of deer, huge flocks of ducks • and geese, quail, magpies, and meadow larks. A few weeks later Fremont and his troops headed south, evading Mexi- can-Califomio soldiers by staying on the east side of the Central Valley, crossing the Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, San Joaquin, Kings, and Kern rivers, all in flood from snowmelt in the Sierra, and as much as three hundred feet across. Wild berries and grapes were found growing along the banks, and dense groves of valley oak and interior live oak were seen among endless fields of poppies. Fremont wrote, A showy Lupinus adorned the banks of the river. . .The hills were purple and orange, with unbroken beds. 10 They also saw vast herds of deer, pronghorn, and tule elk, as well as wild horses and cattle from the Mexican Ranchos, more ducks and geese, bears, wolves and coyotes. In April they moved into the Tehachapi Mountains and over Oak Pass. Pioneer John Bidwell wrote in 1841 that Never did I expect to see the earth so beautifully arrayed in flowers as it is here. But even as early as the time of John Muir\u27s arrival, plows and sheep had caused a noticeable effect on the natural spread of wildflowers. As Muir later reminisced about his 1868 trek across the Central Valley, he wrote down various aspects in several accounts. In his 1894 book, The Mountains of California, he also told of abundant wildlife including small bands of antelopes. . .almost constantly in sight. 12 And in his personal narrative he recalled, Plovers in great numbers and of several species. . .with snipes and geese and swans. 13 Today in California pronghorn antelope are restricted in their range to Modoc Plateau in the northeastern portion of the state\u27s boundaries. Several wildlife and waterfowl areas are found between Pacheco Pass and the San Joaquin River, watered in part by overflow from San Luis Reservoir. The various species of bees Muir noted as a method for writing about the flowers are now endangered from pesticides and other ecological imbalances.14 After his first short visit to Yosemite in April-May 1868, Muir returned to the Central Valley to find work. Hired by Pat Delaney to tend a flock of sheep, he was allowed a shanty for a home. Foremost on his mind was returning to the Sierra Mountains when he earned enough for supplies, but he knew he must also learn how to keep himself fed as there would be no outposts on which to rely. In a now well-known story from the sheep camp, Muir wrote in his journal in December, 1868: I filled the big cylindrical pot with dough and applied hot coals on the hearth, trusting the result might be bread, but. . .innocent of yeast. . .was found to be black and hard. . .and perfectly solid. It became extremely hard in cooling. . .1 began to hope that like Goodyear I had discovered a new article of manufacture. . .1 told my troubles to a neighboring shepherd, and he made me wise about sourdough ferment, and henceforth my bread was good.15 Once the Central Valley was a land of extensive prairies, composed mostly of perennial bunch grasses, now replaced by old-world annuals. The grasslands were dotted page 3
I scrub, and vernal pools spread over the floor of the (fey in all directions. Spring wildflowers bloomed precisely. The native grasslands and floodplains were a sanctuary for a great variety of wildlife. At Twenty Hill Hollow, between Snelling and La Grange, John Muir had a chance to study this environment in detail from November, 1868, to May, 1869. Here, he again saw antelope and waterfowl, as well as coyote, jackrabbit, ground squirrel, golden eagle, blue heron, house finch, and numerous reptiles and insects. He listed these in his journal, and added, . . .countless forms of life thronging about me. 16 In his journal he also listed a variety of fems, wild parsleys and mustards, violets, geraniums, buttercups, primroses, buckwheat, borage, poppies, gilia, plantain, lilies, and several other flowers including yellow starry Composita. . .the glorious sheet-gold. . .like a sea. 17 When the rains came he reveled in discovering wetlands: January 1, 1869. Every groove and hollow, however shallow, has its stream — living water is sounding everywhere. January 4. Dry Creek. . .overflows in the rainy season. . .In the course of a few hours after the close of a rain, it will retire within its banks, leaving many flat, smooth fresh sheets of sand. January 11. . .all the ground is covered by a film of water. . . January 30. The whole face of the plains is brilliantly mirrored with pondlets. . . February 10. . .the plain in soak— one shallow lake.18 The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in their natural state, before dams and artificial levees, flooded annually, and massively about every five years. Sediments deposited during millennia of flood stages produced a natural levee about ten to twenty feet high and out to a mile from each bank. During winter and spring rains these rivers would overflow their banks, supplying rich silt and nutrients to adjacent floodplains up to 25 miles from either side of the banks of the rivers. Floodwater from several prominent floodplains could not drain back over the levees to the river and would remain throughout the summer, or all year. These freshwater wetlands, occupied by water-adapted plants, attracted huge flocks of migratory waterfowl. In an essay entitled Twenty Hill Hollow, Muir described observing a distant view of the grand Sierra. . .along the plain. . .the white row of summits pointing to the heavens. 19 Muir\u27s observations of the floodplain ecology culminated in January, 1875, from the heights of the Sierra. After exploring the geology and topography of the basin of the Feather River, Muir came to the edge of the main forest belt, where revealed before him was, as he notes in The Mountains of California: . . .a beautiful section of the Sacramento Valley some twenty or thirty miles away, brilliantly sun- lighted and glistening with rain sheets as if paved with silver. . .The blue Coast Range was seen stretching along the sky like a beveled wall, and the somber Marysville Buttes [Sutter Buttes] rose impressively out of the flooded plain like islands out of the sea.20 In September, 1877, Muir was a guest at the ranch of California pioneers General and Mrs. John Bidwell on the Upper Sacramento River near Chico. After he expressed his inclination to explore the river, the general had a worker build a raft in which Muir soon set off. Dense riparian forests of willow and cottonwood lined the river banks. Extending out along the margins of streams- and river bottoms grew great forests of cottonwood, willow, ash, sycamore, alder, and box elder, with a lush understory of elderberry, blackberry, wild rose, wild grape, and native grasses. Almost a century later, by 1960, 99 percent of this riparian forest had been destroyed, and replaced with piles of stone to channel flood waters and to curb erosion once checked by the trees\u27 network of roots. Farther back from the river\u27s edge were widespread valley oak woodlands. Low shrubs and herbaceous plants flourished in the shade beneath the dense canopy. Most of these oak forests have also been cut away to allow fruit and nut orchards. On his rafting trip down the Sacramento, Muir observed, Great numbers of birds. His journal lists herons, geese, ducks, shorebirds, .. .pelicans in large flocks. . ., osprey, bald eagle, beaver; and, Salmon in great numbers. Plants listed include buttonbush (Cephalanthus), wild grape (Vitus californica), and a huge old arching sycamore. 21 Muir took a side trip to the Sutter Buttes: six miles to the base, 1,950 feet to the summit, down again to the base, and six miles back to the river — in seven hours! After a brief visit to the Kings and Kaweah basins, where he quickly climbed a 5000 foot canyon wall, Muir built another skiff and rowed down the lower Merced to the San Joaquin and, . . .thence down the San Joaquin, flowing freely in that pre-dam era, past Stockton and through the rule region into the bay near Martinez. He then climbed Mount Diablo.22 And though he does not explicitly say so, we can assume he enjoyed another wonderful vista of the Central Valley, with the bright Sacramento pouring through the midst of it from the north, the San Joaquin from the south, and their many tributaries sweeping in at right angles from the mountains, dividing the plain into sections fringed with trees. 23 Later, of course, he would live in Martinez with his wife and daughters, and often gaze upon Mount Diablo\u27s mass of purple in the morning, 24 or its winter dusting of snow. In 1888, Muir began editing Picturesque California, compiling a series of essays by several contributing authors. It included a prophetic article on the Delta by San Francisco journalist, Charles Howard Shinn. The Delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers converge in a lacework of channels, is a vast continuation of the once extensive Central Valley rule marshes. With an area of 625 square miles, the Delta originally had native riparian habitat along its waterways with its marshes populated by millions of migratory waterfowl. In his essay, Shinn predicted that, All that now appeals most to the visitor will have disappeared. . .and no Califor- nian of the present time would recognize it. 25 The transfor- (continued on page 10) page 4
7 ^n Muir\u27s Aunt Mary by Roberta M. McDow (continued from page i) phy, Bade also recorded data about John\u27s aunt Mary. When she became a mother to her orphaned brother, she was not a grown woman. She was about eleven years older than Daniel.13 Since the siblings went to Scotland about nine to twelve months after Daniel\u27s birth, Mary would have been about twelve years old when she assumed the role of mother to Daniel. In the course of time, Bade continued, . . .Mary married a shepherd-farmer. . .by the name of Hamilton Blakley, whereupon her new
Jeff Thomas: Working Histories
No full textEssay in a catalogue of an exhibition held at Gallery 44, Toronto, May 6-June 5, 2004. Exhibition description: Frustrated in his search for archival testimonies of aboriginal experience, Thomas turned to historic studies produced by white photographer Curtis and ethnographer Knowles as sources for discoursing with history. A Study of Indian-ness is based upon fictive conversations between the artist and these historic persons.reviewessayfinal article publishe
Letter from Thomas W. Ball to John Muir, 1897 Apr 28.
No full textHARPER & BROTHERSFRANKLIN SQUARE,NEW YORKART DEPARTMENTApril 28, 1897.Dear Sir:--\u3eThe illustration of your article on The national Parksand Forest Reservations, is referred to me.Before using any of the illustrative material, which you kindly sent us, it will be necessary to get the photographers\u27 consents to use their pictures. Will you kindly procure this for us, or else send us their addresses which are not given on the photographs, so that we say communicate directly with them?In addition to the photographs you inclose to us three clippings from some publication. We would prefer the original photographs from which these were taken, but if this should not be possible we would have to get the consent of the papers(if they are the owners of the negatives) or of the photographers before we could utilize them. The list of pictures is as follows: Echo Rock on Mt.Wilson, Photo. by Hill Looking west down grand canon from side of Mt Lowe, Photo. by Hill In the Yosemite Nat\u27l.Park, Photo.byFiske.In the Mt. Rainier Forest Reserve.In the Yosemite Forest Reserve, Photo. by FiskeIn the Sequoia Groves of the Sequoia Nat\u27l. Park.Yours truly,[illegible]John Muir, Esq.,Martinez, Cal.[illegible]02280https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/25470/thumbnail.jp
Thomas W. Talley, circa 1940
No full textThomas W. Talley (1870-1952), Class of 1890, was a biologist, chemist, folklorist, and author of Negro Folk Rhymes (1922)
Letter from W[illiam] B[elmont] Parker to John Muir, 1910 May 31.
No full textPUBLISHING DEPARTMENTTHE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.33-37 E. 17TH ST. NEW YORK.May 31st, 1910Mr. John Muir,Martinez, Cal.My dear Mr. Muir,My friend, Mr. Thomas Price, who, as you will remember from an earlier letter, is now living next door to me, tells me that you are considering, or have considered, taking the animal stories out of your autobiography and making a separate book of them. If you were to do so and should feel disposed to let me see that book, I should be greatly obliged for an opportunity to consider publishing it.Yours faithfully,[illegible]08537https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/31925/thumbnail.jp
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