Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains. He concluded that all life forms have inherent significance and the right to exist. Year by year the remnant is growing smaller before the axe and fire, while the laws in existence provide neither for the protection of the timber from destruction nor for its use where it is most needed. Muir served as the club's president until his death in 1914, and today, the Sierra Club boasts more than 3 . Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. This book deals with both of these key issues. Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park. Many of the miners find that timber is already becoming scarce and dear on the denuded hills around their mills, and they too are asking for protection of forests, at least against fire. John Muir. Under the timber and stone act, of the same date, land in the Pacific States and Nevada, valuable mainly for timber, and unfit for cultivation if the timber is removed, can be purchased for two dollars and a half an acre, under certain restrictions. He played a significant role in preserving and protecting important areas of our country. See also: no. To the southward stretched dark, level-topped cypresses in knobby, tangled swamps, grassy savannas in the midst of them like lakes of light, groves of gay sparkling spice-trees, magnolias and palms, glossy-leaved and blooming and shining continually. Accordingly, with no eye to the future, these pious destroyers waged interminable forest wars, Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end So far our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will, depending on their inexhaustible abundance, Emerson says that things refuse to be mismanaged long. Under these circumstances, the bawling, blethering oratorical stuff drowns the voice of God himself. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe These forests were composed of about five hundred species of trees, all of them in some way useful to man, ranging in size from twenty-five feet in height and less than one foot in diameter at the ground to four hundred feet in height and more than twenty feet in diameterlordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. Nor will the woods be the worse for this use, or their benign influences be diminished any more than the sun is diminished by shining. There is none to say them nay. U.S. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. Uncle Sam is not often called a fool is business matters, yet he had sold millions of acres of timber land at two dollars and a half an acre on which a single tree was worth more than a hundred dollars. Muir's conservation efforts saved many forests and natural areas for all of us. After several legal battles, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890 in order to protect thousands of acres of forest land from further destruction. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. Born April 21, 1838, Muir has become America's most famous naturalist and conservationist. T he Mountains of California, published in 1894, is John Muir's first book. Sheep-owners and their shepherds also set fires everywhere through the woods in the fall to facilitate the march of their countless flocks the next summer, and perhaps in some places to improve the pasturage. Many of his ideas merely echoed the thoughts of earlier deists and Romantics, especially Thoreau, but he articu- lated them with an intensity and enthusiasm that commanded widespread attention. Savage's men fired indiscriminately into the Ahwahneechee camp, a people who had called this valley their home for centuries. Any fool can destroy trees. Of course a way had to be cleared through the woods. As soon as a redwood is cut down or burned it sends up a crowd of eager, hopeful shoots, which, if allowed to grow, would in a few decades attain a height of a hundred feet, and the strongest of them would finally become giants as great as the original tree. John Muir. It is a compilation of his own accounts of his travels and journeys, and his explorations and examinations, of the mountain ranges of California, in particular the Sierra Nevada, during the late 1860s to the early 1870s, a time when the wild places in the State where . Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. the glory of the world! To show the results of the timber-planting act, it need only be stated that of the 38,000,000 acres entered under it, less than 1,000,000 acres have been patented. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. Last summer, of the unrivaled redwood forests of the Pacific Coast Range the United States Forestry Commission could not find a single quarter-section that remained in the hands of the government. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky. By the act of June 3, 1878, timber can be taken from public lands not subject to entry under any existing laws except for minerals, by bona fide residents of the Rocky Mountain States and Territories and the Dakotas. travel our way. But light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? In their natural condition, or under wise management, keeping out destructive sheep, preventing fires, selecting the trees that should be cut for lumber, and preserving the young ones and the shrubs and sod of herbaceous vegetation, these forests would be a never failing fountain of wealth and beauty. John Muir wrote a great essay, known as the "The American Forest" which spoke about the great beauty of nature and Chief Seattle gave a great speech known as the " Environmentalist Statement" which spoke about sustainability and the respect we need to provide and invoke. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. But timber-thieves of the Western class are seldom convicted, for the good reason that most of the jurors who try such cases are themselves as guilty as those on trial. Under the act of June 3, 1878, settlers in Colorado and the Territories were allowed to cut timber for mining and agricultural purposes from mineral land, which in the practical West means both cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere, for any purpose, on any sort of public land. Thus, with abundance of fuel, shelter and comfort by his own fireside are secured. John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold todaythat much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. Shirley Sargent. John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. The Russian government passed a law in 1888, declaring that clearing is forbidden in protection forests, and is allowed in others only when its effects will not be to disturb the suitable relations which should exist between forest and agricultural lands.. According to the everlasting laws of righteousness, even the fraudful buyers at less than one per cent of its value are making little or nothing, on account of fierce competition. Worn out from this devastating loss, Muir retreated from political life and spent his remaining years writing and spending time with his family.John Muir died in December, 1914. The wonderful advance made in the last few years, in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair of blankets, a sack of flour, a few pounds of coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, the shake-maker ascends the mountains to the pine belt where it is most accessible, usually by some mine or mill road. Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike - John Muir, 1869. Thence still westward swept the forests to right and left around grassy plains and deserts a thousand miles wide: irrepressible hosts of spruce and pine, aspen and willow, nut-pine and juniper, cactus and yucca, caring nothing for drought, extending undaunted from mountain to mountain, over mesa and desert, to join the darkening multitudes of pines that covered the high Rocky ranges and the glorious forests along the coast of the moist and balmy Pacific, where new species of pine, giant cedars and spruces, silver firs and sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like grass in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky three hundred feet above the ferns and the lilies that enameled the ground; towering serene through the long centuries, preaching Gods forestry fresh from heaven. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. Every one of the frail shake shanties is a centre of destruction, and the extent of the ravages wrought in this quiet way is in the aggregate enormous. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. It has, therefore, as shown by Mr. Pinchot, refused to deliver its forests to more or less speedy destruction by permitting them to pass into private ownership. The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest and most influential conservation organization in the United States. For years, the conservationists, who wanted to protect the awesome valley in its natural setting, were pitted against the Californians who wanted to dam the valley to create a new and reliable drinking water reservoir. Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal and stakes it out on the meadow. My Account | A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. These two sequoias are all that are known to exist in the world, though in former geological times the genus was common and had many species. On the contrary, they are made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. As for reservation and protection of forests, it seems as silly and needless to them as protection and reservation of the ocean would be; both appearing to be boundless and inexhaustible. Taking from the government is with them the same as taking from nature, and their consciences flinch no more in cutting timber from the wild forests than in drawing water from a lake or river. The redwood is restricted to the Coast Range, and the big tree to the Sierra. An exception would seem to be found in the case of our forests, which have been mismanaged rather long, and now come desperately near being like smashed eggs and spilt milk. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. He returned with the famous story. "The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted." He described trees with a diameter of twenty feet as "lordly. Drought and barrenness would follow. Anyhow, these vigorous, almost immortal trees are killed at last, and black stumps are now their only monuments over most of the chopped and burned areas. But when the steel axe of the white man rang out in the startled air their doom was sealed. Muir, John, 1838-1914 Publication date 1901 Topics National parks and reserves -- United States, Yosemite National Park (Calif.) Publisher Boston, New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Company Collection cdl; americana Digitizing sponsor MSN Contributor University of California Libraries Language English About | Any fool can destroy trees. Its a mighty good business, and youre your own boss, and the whole things fun.. Bright seas made its border with wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and plains; while lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and openings, and happy birds and beasts gave delightful animation. Hence they went wavering northward over icy Alaska, brave spruce and fir, poplar and birch, by the coasts and the rivers, to within sight of the Arctic Ocean. Only the lower, perfectly clear, free-splitting portions of the giant pines are used, perhaps ten to twenty feet from a tree two hundred and fifty in height; all the rest is left a mass of ruins, to rot or to feed the forest fires, while thousands are hacked deeply and rejected in proving the grain. Likewise many of natures five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields. FAQ | John W. Winkley, M.A., D.D. Wide-branching oak and elm in endless variety, walnut and maple, chestnut and beech, ilex and locust, touching limb to limb, spread a leafy translucent canopy along the coast of the Atlantic over the wrinkled folds and ridges of the Alleghanies, a green billowy sea in summer, golden and purple in autumn, pearly gray like a steadfast frozen mist of interlacing branches and sprays in leafless, restful winter. After the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia had been mostly cleared and scorched into melancholy ruins, the overflowing multitude of bread and money seekers poured over the Alleghanies into the fertile middle West, spreading ruthless devastation ever wider and farther over the rich valley of the Mississippi and the vast shadowy pine region about the Great Lakes. Our National Parks, by John Muir (1901, c. 1909) - The Writings of John Muir - John Muir Exhibit (John Muir Education Project, Sierra Club California) Our National Parks by John Muir Contents List of Illustrations Preface The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West The Yellowstone National Park The Yosemite National Park 331-[365]; no. Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure. John Muir, The American Forests. In its calmer moments in the midst of bewildering hunger and war and restless over-industry, Prussia has learned that the forest plays an important part in human progress, and that the advance in civilization only makes it more indispensable. University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate College 2016 Three men in the wilderness: Ideas and concepts of > They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. you may Download the file to your hard drive. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) According to Muir, The trees are felled, and about half of each giant is left on the ground to be converted into smoke and ashes; the better half is sawed into choice lumber and sold to citizens of the United States or to foreigners . In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded Gods trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get rid of. Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on unchecked like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too late, though it is high time, for the government to begin a rational administration of its forests. Over nearly all of the more accessible slopes of the Sierra and Cascade mountains in southern Oregon, at a height of from three to six thousand feet above the sea, and for a distance of about six hundred miles, this waste and confusion extends. -John Muir The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The abstract is typically a short summary of the . In the settlement and civilization of the country, bread more than timber or beauty was wanted; and in the blindness of hunger, the early settlers, claiming Heaven as their guide, regarded Gods trees as only a larger kind of pernicious weeds, extremely hard to get rid of. A part of the John Muir Exhibit, by Harold Wood and Harvey Chinn. A Wind-Storm in the Forests. In decrying the destruction of woodlands by loggers, settlers, and industrialists, Muir, the father of Americas conservation movement, advanced the notion that natural resources ought to be preservedan idea that spawned vast new parks as well as the creation of the U.S. Forest Service. In the nature of things they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness. Muir's nature was a pristine refuge from the city. But there is not a single specimen of the redwood in any national park. The American Forests Appendix Index List of Illustrations Sequoias, Mariposa Grove [bigger] Like 0. There will be a period of indifference on the part of the rich, sleepy with wealth, and of the toiling millions, sleepy with poverty, most of whom never saw a forest; a period of screaming protest and objection from the plunderers, who are as unconscionable and enterprising as Satan. Author: SAISD Created Date: 06/16/2016 20:10:00 Last modified by: SAISD That a change from robbery and ruin to a permanent rational policy is urgently needed nobody with the slightest knowledge of American forests will deny. 234. The effect of the present confused, discriminating, and unjust system has been to place almost the whole population in opposition to the government; and as conclusive of its futility, as shown by Mr. Bowers, we need only state that during the seven years from 1881 to 1887 inclusive the value of the timber reported stolen from the government lands was $36,719,935, and the amount recovered was $478,073, while the cost of the services of special agents alone was $455,000, to which must be added the expense of the trials.

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