the american forests john muir summary

Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. A famous quotation where Muir refers to the Sierra as the "Range of Light" is found within this chapter. The great naturalist also visits the. 1) The Sierra Nevada. He came to the San Francisco area in 1868 and there he discovered the Sierra Mountains. Still, in the long run the world does not move backward. Chapter 2: How is Sustainability a Political Issue? 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. 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. Part One, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Starting in the i87os, Muir made exploring wilderness and extoling its values a way of life. the glory of the world! 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. '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 . John Muir, Naturalist: A Concise Biography of the Great Naturalist. They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise with no forbidding angel either from Washington or from heaven. Once, in a company of this kind, I heard a man say, as he peacefully smoked his pipe: Boys, as soon as this jobs done Im goin into the duck business. After becoming president in 1901, Roosevelt used his authority to establish 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks and . John Muirthe surprise star of Ken Burns's recent PBS documentary, The National Parks is most remembered for founding the Sierra Club in 1911 and for the preservation of Yosemite, but another of his great legacies is his prose, which introduced a new vocabulary to the genre of nature writing. His lifelong passion for hiking began when he hiked 1,000 miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico in. Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. A Wind-Storm in the Forests. Home | . There was some virtuous effort made with a view to limit the operations of the act by requiring that the purchaser should make affidavit that he was entering the land exclusively for his own use, and by not allowing any association to enter more than one hundred and sixty acres. The sprouts from the roots and stumps are cut off again and again, with zealous concern as to the best time and method of making death sure. Enthralled by nature from a young age, Roosevelt cherished and promoted our nation's landscapes and wildlife. John Muir, (born April 21, 1838, Dunbar, East Lothian, Scot.died Dec. 24, 1914, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.), U.S. naturalist and conservationist. 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. 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. 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. In 1903, Roosevelt spent four days in Yosemite with Muir, camping with him and learning about the value of the untamed land. It has been planted and is flourishing over a great part of Europe, and magnificent sections of the aboriginal forests have been reserved as national and state parks, the Mariposa Sequoia Grove, near Yosemite, managed by the State of California, and the General Grant and Sequoia national parks on the Kings, the Kaweah, and Tule rivers, efficiently guarded by a small troop of United States cavalry under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. 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. 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. He played a significant role in preserving and protecting important areas of our country. His family did not have enough money to send him to school, so after completing his daily farm chores, Muir spent his spare time teaching himself algebra and geometry. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is wrong to steal government timber. 14 minutes. 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. American forests! Both environmentalists were great activists that informed the . > The forests of America, however slighted. They cover an area of about 29,000,000 acres. 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. 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. In Switzerland, after many laws like our own had been found wanting, the Swiss forest school was established in 1865, and soon after the Federal Forest Law was enacted, which is binding over nearly two thirds of the country. 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. 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. Critics including the . 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. President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. 234. The Civil War had just ended. 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. 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. In France no government forests have been sold since 1870. 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. 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. 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. Let them be as free to pick gold and gems from the hills, to cut and hew, dig and plant, for homes and bread, as the birds are to pick berries from the wild bushes, and moss and leaves for nests. No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. 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 diameter, lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like apostles. Then he advertises, in whatever way he can, that he has excellent sugar-pine shakes for sale, easy of access and cheap. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. On the contrary, they are made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West, chapter 1 of 'Our National Parks' by John Muir (1901). This means that less than 50,000 acres have been planted with stunted, woebegone, almost hopeless sprouts of trees, while at the same time the government has allowed millions of acres of the grandest forest trees to be stolen, or destroyed, or sold for nothing. Surely, then, it should not be wondered at that lovers of their country, bewailing its baldness, are now crying aloud, Save what is left of the forests! Clearing has surely now gone far enough; soon timber will be scarce, and not a grove will be left to rest in or pray in. 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. 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. They went to the woods to escape aspects of. 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. Theres always a market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. As he grew older, Muir became increasingly excited about what plants and nature could teach him. Abstract. 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. 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. This book deals with both of these key issues. No place is too good for good men, and still there is room. Muir served as the club's president until his death in 1914, and today, the Sierra Club boasts more than 3 . > Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous melancholy ruins; and the companies might well cry in their advertisements: Come! 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. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. > 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. The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. Every tree heard the bodeful sound, and pillars of smoke gave the sign in the sky, Many of natures five hundred kinds of wild trees had to make way for orchards and cornfields. Have you ever wondered why your favorite National Park is surrounded by a National Forest? (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. John Muir was born on April 21, 1838 in the small rural town of Dunbar, Scotland. But there is not a single specimen of the redwood in any national park. The fact is, it was all started over 100 years ago by two men I like to refer to as the founding fathers of America's public lands. The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest and most influential conservation organization in the United States. Restless to explore more of the country, he left school for what he would call "the University of the Wilderness. Trees from ten to fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high are not uncommon, and a few attain a height of three hundred and fifty feet, or even four hundred, with a diameter at the base of fifteen to twenty feet or more, while the ground beneath them is a garden of fresh, exuberant ferns, lilies, gaultheria, and rhododendron. Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains. Drifting adventurers in California, after harvest and threshing are over, oftentimes meet to discuss their plans for the winter, and their talk is interesting. Type the abstract of the document here. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are required. 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. See All test questions. 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. During a mans life only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old trees tens of centuries old that have been destroyed. Publisher's Summary During the past twenty-five years, North American forestry has received increasingly vigorous scrutiny. It is the only genuine Erebus route. At university, Muir focused his studies on chemistry, geology and botany. 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. The sky is black and the ground is black, and on either side there is a continuous border of black stumps and logs and blasted trees appealing to heaven for help as if still half alive, and their mute eloquence is most interestingly touching. 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. 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. 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. As a boy, Muir was "fond of everything that was wild" (My Boyhood and Youth 30) and took great pleasure in the outdoors. 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 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. Of all the destroyers that infest the woods the shake-maker seems the happiest. 1993. They are invited to heaven, and may well be allowed in America. Every place is made better by them. 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. 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. 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. The Forests of the Yosemite Park . The great forests of Northern United States captivated him and fueled . 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. 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. Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. The volume is from the press of Houghton . 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. 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. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. The ground will be glad to feed them, and the pines will come down from the mountains for their homes as willingly as the cedars came from Lebanon for Solomons temple. 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. Listen to the trailer for. 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. 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. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, whose main goal was to "do something for nature and make the mountains glad.". Visit Muir Woods National Monument, located in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. 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.. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West 2. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it is claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage. In crafting a sense of place for the forests, Muir is passively working his readers . Listen to the trailer for. The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction. Railroad tracks were just . It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. 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. 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. The people will not always be deceived by selfish opposition, whether from lumber and mining corporations or from sheepmen and prospectors, however cunningly brought forward underneath fables and gold. Case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is the citizens of country! 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