With such variety, harmony, and triumphant exuberance, even nature, it would seem, might have rested content with the forests of North America, and planted no more. Happy robbers! . John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, whose main goal was to "do something for nature and make the mountains glad.". Sapling poles form the frame of the airy building, usually about six feet by eight in size, on which the shakes are nailed, with the edges overlapping. (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. An extension of this law by the passage of the act of March 2, 1831, provided that if any person should cut live-oak or red cedar trees or other timber from the lands of the United States for any other purpose than the construction of the navy, such person should pay a fine not less than triple the value of the timber cut, and be imprisoned for a period not exceeding twelve months. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. Of all the destroyers that infest the woods the shake-maker seems the happiest. 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. 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. In "The American Forests", John Muir's purpose is to reveal the disloyalty that Americans have towards their agriculture. The axe and saw are insanely busy, chips are flying thick as snowflakes, and every summer thousands of acres of priceless forests, with their underbrush, soil, springs, climate, scenery, and religion, are vanishing away in clouds of smoke, while, except in the national parks, not one forest guard is employed. As is shown by Mr. E. A. Bowers, formerly Inspector of the Public Land Service, the foundation of our protective policy, which has never protected, is an act passed March 1, 1817, which authorized the Secretary of the Navy to reserve lands producing live-oak and cedar, for the sole purpose of supplying timber for the navy of the United States. Only the forests of the West are significant in size and value, and these, although still great, are rapidly vanishing. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyedchased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woodstrees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Muir fell in love with the immense beauty of the mountain landscape. They have so long been allowed to steal and destroy in peace that any impediment to forest robbery is denounced as a cruel and irreligious interference with vested rights, likely to endanger the repose of all ungodly welfare. 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. 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. 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. He played a significant role in preserving and protecting important areas of our country. They have disappeared in lumber and smoke, mostly smoke, and the government got not one cent for them; only the land they were growing on was considered valuable, and two and a half dollars an acre was charged for it. Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into manageable dimensions with gunpowder. He also realized how fragile nature was; how peoples impact on the land, through grazing, lumbering and commercial developments, was slowly destroying all the beauty in the wilderness. Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their talk is interesting. No other route on this continent so fully illustrates the abomination of desolation. Such a claim would be reasonable, as each seems the worst, whatever route you chance to take. Its a mighty good business, and youre your own boss, and the whole things fun.. 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. The feudal lords valued the woodlands, and enacted vigorous protective laws; and when, in the latest civil war, the Mikado government destroyed the feudal system, it declared the forests that had belonged to the feudal lords to be the property of the state, promulgated a forest law binding on the whole kingdom, and founded a school of forestry in Tokio. It grows sturdily on all kinds of soil and rocks, and, protected by a mail of . John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838, as the oldest son in religious shopkeepers family. Back at the turn of the 20th Century Gifford Pinchot and John Muir had radically contrasting views of how to manage . The two most fascinating questions about extraterrestrial life are where it is found and what it is like. It has been shown over and over again that if these mountains were to be stripped of their trees and underbrush, and kept bare and sodless by hordes of sheep and the innumerable fires the shepherds set, besides those of the millmen, prospectors, shake-makers, and all sorts of adventurers, both lowlands and mountains would speedily become little better than deserts, compared with their present beneficent fertility. But when the steel axe of the white man rang out in the startled air their doom was sealed. Humans, Muir decided, are no greater or lesser than other forms of life. 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. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christs timeand long before thatGod has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from foolsonly Uncle Sam can do that. But in the Rocky Mountains and California and Arizona, where the forests are inflammable, and where the fertility of the lowlands depends upon irrigation, public opinion is growing stronger every year in favor of permanent protection by the federal government of all the forests that cover the sources of the streams. 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. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. not unlike those which confront us now. 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. All the pine needles and rootlets and blades of grass, and the fallen decaying trunks of trees, are dams, storing the bounty of the clouds and dispensing it in perennial life-giving streams, instead of allowing it to gather suddenly and rush headlong in short-lived devastating floods. 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. In India systematic forest management was begun about forty years ago, under difficulties presented by the character of the country, the prevalence of running fires, opposition from lumbermen, settlers, etc. 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. Any fool can destroy trees. The blackness is perfect. Under the timber and stone act of 1878, which might well have been called the dust and ashes act, any citizen of the United States could take up one hundred and sixty acres of timber land, and by paying two dollars and a half an acre for it obtain title. Here the forests reached their highest development. In "The American Forests", John Muir's purpose is to reveal the disloyalty that Americans have towards their agriculture. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn." John Muir, The Mountains of California tags: energy , mountains , nature 1227 likes Like Gold, gold, gold! The half dozen transcontinental railroad companies advertise the beauties of their lines in gorgeous many-colored folders, each claiming its as the scenic route. The route of superior desolation the smoke, dust, and ashes route would be a more truthful description. President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal and stakes it out on the meadow. Our National Parks, by John Muir (1901, c. (1901)) - John Muir Writings . 1) The Sierra Nevada. Critics including the . 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. All sorts of local laws and regulations have been tried and found wanting, and the costly lessons of our own experience, as well as that of every civilized nation, show conclusively that the fate of the remnant of our forests is in the hands of the federal government, and that if the remnant is to be saved at all, it must be saved quickly. 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. Not only do the shepherds, at the driest time of the year, set fire to everything that will burn, but the sheep consume every green leaf, not sparing even the young conifers when they are in a starving condition from crowding, and they rake and dibble the loose soil of the mountain sides for the spring floods to wash away, and thus at last leave the ground barren. Its focus is the general geology and characteristics of the Sierra Nevada. The forests of America, however slighted. Savage's men fired indiscriminately into the Ahwahneechee camp, a people who had called this valley their home for centuries. John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. Twenty-First Century Books, New York, New York. A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. And when he was tired wading in the sloughs and touched with rheumatiz, he just knocked off on ducks, and went to the Contra Costa hills for dove and quail. About | It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world. During the course of his political term, Roosevelt set aside 148 million acres of forest reserves, created 50 regions for the protection of wildlife, founded 16 national monuments and established 5 new national parks. The legitimate demands on the forests that have passed into private ownership, as well as those in the hands of the government, are increasing every year with the rapid settlement and upbuilding of the country, but the methods of lumbering are as yet grossly wasteful. 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. University Libraries In 1903, Roosevelt spent four days in Yosemite with Muir, camping with him and learning about the value of the untamed land. After several legal battles, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890 in order to protect thousands of acres of forest land from further destruction. John Muir remains worthy of honor and respect as a person who studied, recorded, and shared the natural areas of the United States and the world, and the role of humans within the environment. During a mans life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees tens of centuries old that have been destroyed. by man, must have been a great delight to. To prepare the ground, it was rolled and sifted in seas with infinite loving deliberation and forethought, lifted into the light, submerged and warmed over and over again, pressed and crumpled into folds and ridges, mountains and hills, subsoiled with heaving volcanic fires, ploughed and ground and sculptured into scenery and soil with glaciers and rivers, very feature growing and changing from beauty to beauty, higher and higher. Starting in the i87os, Muir made exploring wilderness and extoling its values a way of life. John Muir (1838 - 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. By looking at their views and uses of language we can gain a better understanding of the environmental movement both during their lifetimes and as it . A proprietor who has cleared his forest without permission is subject to heavy fine, and in addition may be made to replant the cleared area. Thoreau, when contemplating the destruction of the forests on the east side of the continent, said that soon the country would be so bald that every man would have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness, but he thanked God that at least the sky was safe. John Muir in Yosemite. The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and stars, is simply blotted out. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. Born April 21, 1838, Muir has become America's most famous naturalist and conservationist. In his article, "The American Forests," John Muir describes the issues with the Timber and Stone Act of 1878. Madison Grant's nature was the last redoubt of nobility in a levelling and hybridizing democracy. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth. Restless to explore more of the country, he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness. Of course a way had to be cleared through the woods. 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. Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old. They went to the woods to escape aspects of. He was 29. 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. you may Download the file to your hard drive. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is wrong to steal government timber. From an early age, Muir was fascinated by nature and was eager to learn about his environment. He educated Americans about the value of the countrys wilderness, inspiring generations of wilderness advocates. 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. Still, in the long run the world does not move backward Light is surely coming, and the friends of destruction will preach and bewail in vain. There is none to say them nay. My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir's reverent acclamation of the beauty of the wilderness and particularly the Yosemite Valley in California, is a dated journal account of . Since then, critics both international and domestic, but mostly from within the environmental movement, have criticized the idea of wilderness. The outcries we hear against forest reservations come mostly from thieves who are wealthy and steal timber by wholesale. During heavy rainfalls and while the winter accumulations of snow were melting, the larger streams would swell into destructive torrents; cutting deep, rugged-edged gullies, carrying away the fertile humus and soil as well as sand and rocks, filling up and overflowing their lower channels, and covering the lowland fields with raw detritus. 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 . Twenty or thirty years ago, shakes, a kind of long boardlike shingles split with a mallet and a frow, were in great demand for covering barns and sheds, and many are used still in preference to common shingles, especially those made from the sugar-pine, which do not warp or crack in the hottest sunshine. Word Count: 490. 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. For many a century after the ice-ploughs were melted, nature fed them and dressed them every day; working like a man, a loving, devoted, painstaking gardener; fingering every leaf and flower and mossy furrowed bole; bending, trimming, modeling, balancing, painting them with the loveliest colors; bringing over them now clouds with cooling shadows and showers, now sunshine; fanning them with gentle winds and rustling their leaves; exercising them in every fibre with storms, and pruning them; loading them with flowers and fruit, loading them with snow, and ever making them more beautiful as the years rolled by. 331-[365]; no. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California, have been read by millions. 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