Muir strategically uses God to appeal to the readers of the time. John Muir was one of the countrys most famous naturalist and conservationist and Muir Woods, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is named in his honor. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes. A few bolts from the same section that the shakes were made from are split into square sticks and built up to form a chimney, the inside and interspaces being plastered and filled in with mud. American forests! Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. The Civil War had just ended. FAQ | Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their talk is interesting. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. Old grizzlies I despise, they want cannon to kill em; but the blacks and browns are beauties for grease, and when I get em just right, and draw a bead on em, I fetch em every time. Another said he was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as soon as the rains set in, hitch them to a gang-plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin plains for wheat. Listen to the trailer for. He was a strong voice in preserving the area known today as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. In 1879, Muir made the first of his seven trips to Alaska, where he risked his life exploring the glaciers in Glacier Bay to find evidence of glacial activity. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. In "The American Forests", John Muir's purpose is to reveal the disloyalty that Americans have towards their agriculture. The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread. Author: SAISD Created Date: 06/16/2016 20:10:00 Last modified by: SAISD Muir walked through these groves of giant sequoias and thought them to be among the most fascinating of ecosystems certainly worth whatever protection humans could afford them. John Muir (1838-1914), the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, has long been a favorite of mine. I was consequently keen to read his short essay "Save the redwoods" when it popped up as an LOA story-of-the-week three weeks ago. Visit the John Muir National Historic Site, located in Martinez, California. Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. "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. The closing chapter reviews American forests broadly, and utters an ardent plea for their preservation. 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. David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Now it is plain that the forests are not inexhaustible, and that quick measures must be taken if ruin is to be avoided. See All test questions. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations. It seems, therefore, that almost every civilized nation can give us a lesson on the management and care of forests. John Muir was one of the country's most famous naturalist and conservationist and Muir Woods, part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, is named in his honor. The redwood is one of the few conifers that sprout from the stump and roots, and it declares itself willing to begin immediately to repair the damage of the lumberman and also that of the forest-burner. 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. > The big tree is also to come extent being made into lumber. These residual forests are generally on mountain slopes, just where they are doing the most good, and where their removal would be followed by the greatest number of evils; the lands they cover are too rocky and high for agriculture, and can never be made as valuable for any other crop as for the present crop of trees. Muir enumerates the forest regulations of the principal countries of the world, and then reviews the abuses this country has allowed, detailing the fraudulent methods used by the timber thieves to gain title to thousands of forested acres. In its reading, one must keep in mind that compared with today, very little was known about glacial activity. 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. . About. Theres always a market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. O ver 150 years ago, John Muir set out on a thousand mile journey across the US, from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, on foot. Enthralled by nature from a young age, Roosevelt cherished and promoted our nation's landscapes and wildlife. There is no real sky and no scenery. 1) The Sierra Nevada. John Muir Lesson for Kids: Facts & Biography 2022-10-26. The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. Of the total area of government forests, perhaps 70,000,000 acres, 55,000,000 acres have been brought under the control of the forestry department, a larger area than that of all our national parks and reservations. 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. Armed with a plant-press and a blank notebook, Muir wandered for weeks at a time, through the mountains that would later be Yosemite National Park. Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nathaniel Cowper. Visit the parks associated with John Muir! It is not generally known that, notwithstanding the immense quantities of timber cut every year for foreign and home markets and mines, from five to ten times as much is destroyed as is used, chiefly by running forest fires that only the federal government can stop. At university, Muir focused his studies on chemistry, geology and botany. John Muir. By such methods have our magnificent redwoods and much of the sugar-pine forests of the Sierra Nevada been absorbed by foreign and resident capitalists. Thus, the prospector, the miner, and mining and railroad companies are allowed by law to take all the timber they like for their mines and roads, and the forbidden settler, if there are no mineral lands near his farm or stock-ranch, or none that he knows of, can hardly be expected to forbear taking what he needs wherever he can find it. And in the fullness of time it was planted in groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest, most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the world. > Even the fires of the Indians and the fierce shattering lightning seemed to work together only for good in clearing spots here and there for smooth garden prairies, and openings for sunflowers seeking the light. To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, He was 29. John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. They might run into the adjacent forests and burn the timber from hundreds of square miles; not a man in the State would care to spend an hour in fighting them, as long as his own fences and buildings were not threatened. Thus for nearly thirty-seven million dollars worth of timber the government got less than nothing; and the value of that consumed by running fires during the same period, without benefit even to thieves, was probably over two hundred millions of dollars. He played a significant role in preserving and protecting important areas of our country. 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. This can be in the form of setting aside tracts of land for protection from hunting or urban development, or it can take the form of using less resources such as . by man, must have been a great delight to. The slow-going, un-thrifty farmers, also, are beginning to realize that when the timber is stripped from the mountains the irrigating streams dry up in summer, and are destructive in winter; that soil, scenery, and everything slips off with the trees: so of course they are coming into the ranks of tree-friends. John Muir's 1897 Case for Saving America's Forests - The Atlantic August 1897 Issue Explore Technology The American Forests "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease,. In his article "The American Forests", John Muir discusses the beauty of the American forests along with their being easy targets for unwise people destroying them for their egoistical purposes. But this priceless land has been patented, and nothing can be done now about the crazy bargain. The most significant battle that Muir and the Sierra Club ever fought was over the damming of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley. The prospector deliberately sets fires to clear off the woods just where they are densest, to lay the rocks bare and make the discovery of mines easier. 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. 237, pp. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. Home | A large portion of the best timber is thus shattered and destroyed, and, with the huge knotty tops, is left in ruins for tremendous fires that kill every tree within their range, great and small. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. Muir fell in love with the immense beauty of the mountain landscape. HASC - Digital Archives They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. 357-[393]. The settlement laws, under which a settler may enter lands valuable for timber as well as for agriculture, furnish another means of obtaining title to public timber. 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. He wrote many magazine articles and books, inspiring other people to love nature and drawing attention to the need to protect the environment. Muir emigrated from Scotland with his family to Wisconsin in 1849. A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. In 1903, Roosevelt spent four days in Yosemite with Muir, camping with him and learning about the value of the untamed land. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. 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. Another of the company, a bushy-bearded fellow, with a trace of brag in his voice, drawled out: Bird business is well enough for some, but bear is my game, with a deer and a California lion thrown in now and then for change. 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