Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. 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. It is not a book of forestry, but the forest is the most . The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest and most influential conservation organization in the United States. The big tree is also to come extent being made into lumber. 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. 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. There is no real sky and no scenery. They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. As the title suggests, this essay is a study of the glaciers found in the region of the ensuing Yosemite National Park. Free shipping for many products! Both environmentalists were great activists that informed the . And you are your own boss in my business, too, if the bears aint too big and too many for you. 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. 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. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. 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. Each article originally printed in this magazine is available here, complete and unedited from the historical print. the glory of the world! In no other way than under some one of these laws can a citizen of the United States make any use of the public forests. HASC - Digital Archives In particular, from our Earth-based vantage point, we are keen to know where the closest life to us is, and how similar it might be to life on our home planet. The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. Railroad tracks were just . 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. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. 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. Chuck Roe -A Sesquicentennial Account of John Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk - A review of the landscape 150 years after Muir's walk, with a focus on the progress of land conservation and identification of the many publicly-accessible, protected natural areas now located immediately along Muir's route. Roe's intent was to observe and describe the publicly accessible parks, nature preserves, forests . > The forest service does not rest satisfied with the present proportion of woodland, but looks to planting the best forest trees it can find in any country, if likely to be useful and to thrive in Japan. A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. Theyre good as hog hams any day. 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 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 Word Count: 490. He was a Scottish-American environmentalist, naturalist, and writer who is best known as the founder of the Sierra Club and one of the earliest promotors of the national parks. After several legal battles, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890 in order to protect thousands of acres of forest land from further destruction. The abstract is typically a short summary of the . A Wind-Storm in the Forests. 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. John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Wisconsin as a young boy. 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. 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. The gigantea attains a greater girth, and is heavier, more noble in port, and more sublimely beautiful. 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. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are required. . Only by gift or purchase, so far as I know, can the government get back into its possession a single acre of this wonderful forest. John Muir (1838-1914), the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, has long been a favorite of mine. The sempervirens is certainly the taller of the two. Even lumbermen in these regions, long accustomed to steal, are now willing and anxious to buy lumber for their mills under cover of law: some possibly from a late second growth of honesty, but most, especially the small mill-owners, simply because it no longer pays to steal where all may not only steal, but also destroy, and in particular because it costs about as much to steal timber for one mill as for ten, and therefore the ordinary lumberman can no longer compete with the large corporations. 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. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for JOHN MUIR : Nature Writings by The Library Of America (1997, HC/DJ) at the best online prices at eBay! 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. Theres big money in it, and your grub costs nothing. The annual appropriation for so-called protection service is hardly sufficient to keep twenty-five timber agents in the field, and as far as any efficient protection of timber is concerned these agents themselves might as well be timber. President Roosevelt's concern for the environment was influenced by American naturalists, such as John Muir, and by his own political appointees, including Gifford Pinchot, Chief of Forestry. Within the pantheon of environmental greats, few match the stature of John Muir. Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal and stakes it out on the meadow. Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. On the contrary, all the brains, religion, and superstition of the neighborhood are brought into play to prevent a new growth. Thence westward were oak and elm, hickory and tupelo, gum and liriodendron, sassafras and ash, linden and laurel, spreading on ever wider in glorious exuberance over the great fertile basin of the Mississippi, over damp level bottoms, low dimpling hollows, and round dotting hills, embosoming sunny prairies and cheery park openings, half sunshine, half shade ; while a dark wilderness of pines covered the region around the Great Lakes. > Its focus is the general geology and characteristics of the Sierra Nevada. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. Muir became politically active to protect Yosemite from being threatened by commercial developments. 2) Yosemite Glaciers. Then he strikes off into the virgin woods, where the sugar-pine, king of all the hundred species of pines in the world in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory. Likewise many of natures five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields. Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. 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. 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. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. In the East and along the northern Pacific coast, where the rainfall is abundant, comparatively few care keenly what becomes of the trees as long as fuel and lumber are not noticeably dear. John Muir; At Home in the Wild. Its a mighty good business, and youre your own boss, and the whole things fun.. He was a strong voice in preserving the area known today as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. 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 Any fool can destroy trees. Had he gone West he would have found out that the sky was not safe; for all through the summer months, over most of the mountain regions, the smoke of mill and forest fires is so thick and black that no sunbeam can pierce it. 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. 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. Then he advertises, in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy of access and cheap. Thence still westward the invading horde of destroyers called settlers made its fiery way over the broad Rocky Mountains, felling and burning more fiercely than ever, until at last it has reached the wild side of the continent, and entered the last of the great aboriginal forests on the shores of the Pacific. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. John Muir was born on April 21, 1838 in the small rural town of Dunbar, Scotland. 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. Thus every mill is a centre of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from use. 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. 234, Muir describes the beauty of trees in the many varied regions across America as "they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness." He wrote many magazine articles and books, inspiring other people to love nature and drawing attention to the need to protect the environment. Muir served as the club's president until his death in 1914, and today, the Sierra Club boasts more than 3 . -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. But not one denuded acre in a hundred is allowed to raise a new forest growth. (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. Read more from, Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. 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. President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most powerful voices in the history of American conservation. 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. 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 forests of America, however slighted. I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. To the northward, over Maine and the Ottawa, rose hosts of spiry, rosiny evergreens, white pine and spruce, hemlock and cedar, shoulder to shoulder, laden with purple cones, their myriad needles sparkling and shimmering, covering hills and swamps, rocky headlands and domes, ever bravely aspiring and seeking the sky; the ground in their shade now snow-clad and frozen, now mossy and flowery; beaver meadows here and there, full of lilies and grass; lakes gleaming like eyes, and a silvery embroidery of rivers and creeks watering and brightening all the vast glad wilderness. But the felled timber is not worked up into firewood for the engines and into lumber for the companys use; it is left lying in vulgar confusion, and is fired from time to time by sparks from locomotives or by the workmen camping along the line. 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. Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nathaniel Cowper. Muir constantly brings up the burning of the forests. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California, have been read by millions. Upon this old law, as Mr. Bowers points out, having the construction of a wooden navy in view, the United States government has to-day chiefly to rely in protecting its timber throughout the arid regions of the West, where none of the naval timber which the law had in mind is to be found. John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838, as the oldest son in religious shopkeepers family. Accessibility Statement, John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes, Holt-Atherton Special Collections homepage. Born April 21, 1838, Muir has become America's most famous naturalist and conservationist. The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. 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. In the administration of its forests, the state righteously considers itself bound to treat them as a trust for the nation as a whole, and to keep in view the common good of the people for all time. 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. Flying Spur Press, Yosemite, California. 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. Muir's nature was a pristine refuge from the city. In the clearings of one of the largest mills on the coast we found thirty men at work, last summer, cutting off redwood shoots in the dark of the moon, claiming that all the stumps and roots cleared at this auspicious time would send up no more shoots. 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. Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. Ginger Wadsworth. 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. For it must be told again and again, and be burningly borne in mind, that just now, while protective measures are being deliberated languidly, destruction and use are speeding on faster and farther every day. Listen to the trailer for. 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 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. John W. Winkley, M.A., D.D. They went to the woods to escape aspects of. John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time-and long before that-God 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 fools,-only Uncle Sam can do that.''. 'Yes, John Muir; and you know I promised to return and visit you in about twenty-five years, and though I am a little latesix or seven yearsI've done the best I could . 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. travel our way. An 1867 accident caused him to abandon an industrial career and devote himself to nature. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. The volume is from the press of Houghton . "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. As a boy, Muir was "fond of everything that was wild" (My Boyhood and Youth 30) and took great pleasure in the outdoors. He played a significant role in preserving and protecting important areas of our country. The provisions of the code concerning private woodlands are substantially these: No private owner may clear his woodlands without giving notice to the government at least four months in advance, and the forest service may forbid the clearing on the following grounds: to maintain the soil on mountains, to defend the soil against erosion and flooding by rivers or torrents, to insure the existence of springs and watercourses, to protect the dunes and seashore, etc. 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. Yet the dawn of a new day in forestry is breaking. But, busied with tariffs, etc., Congress has given no heed to these or other appeals, and our forests, the most valuable and the most destructible of all the natural resources of the country, are being robbed and burned more rapidly than ever. During his lengthy wanderings, Muir contemplated man's relationship to nature. The American Forests In decrying the destruction of woodlands by loggers, settlers, and industrialists, Muir, the father of America's conservation movement, advanced the notion that. 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. Through his book Travels in Alaska, I learned about the formation of Glacier Bay and Muir's exploration of that twinned body of water I called home for two summers. The Forests of the Yosemite Park . He concluded that all life forms have inherent significance and the right to exist. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christs time and long before that God 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 fools, only Uncle Sam can do that. John Muir. One of the reasons why John Muir and other naturalists would have believed that the grandeur of Western America was shaped entirely by natural forces is that they had no idea how many Native. 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. About seventy million acres it still owns, enough for all the country, if wisely used. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. The most significant battle that Muir and the Sierra Club ever fought was over the damming of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley. He would later be called the godfather of the American environmental movement. Listen to the trailer for. John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes Now it is plain that the forests are not inexhaustible, and that quick measures must be taken if ruin is to be avoided. 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. The same thing is true of the mines, which consume and destroy indirectly immense quantities of timber with their innumerable fires, accidental or set to make open ways, and often without regard to how far they run. Land commissioners and Secretaries of the Interior have repeatedly called attention to this ruinous state of affairs, and asked Congress to enact the requisite legislation for reasonable reform. 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. The Mountains of California, his first book, was published in. 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. 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. 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. Visit the John Muir National Historic Site, located in Martinez, California. The closing chapter reviews American forests broadly, and utters an ardent plea for their preservation. The plan was usually as follows: A mill company desirous of getting title to a large body of redwood or sugar-pine land first blurred the eyes and ears of the land agents, and then hired men to enter the land they wanted, and immediately deed it to the company after a nominal compliance with the law; false swearing in the wilderness against the government being held of no account. On the contrary, they are made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. 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. . Of all the destroyers that infest the woods the shake-maker seems the happiest. 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,. 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