The fires, whether accidental or set, are allowed to run into the woods as far as they may, thus assuring comprehensive destruction. 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. 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. 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. The abstract is typically a short summary of the contents of the document. 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. America is one of the wealthiest Continue reading Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged John Muir, The American Forests | 1 Comment Then he chops into one after another of the pines, until he finds one that he feels sure will split freely, cuts this down, saws off a section four feet long, splits it, and from this first cut, perhaps seven feet in diameter, he gets shakes enough for a cabin and its furniture, walls, roof, door, bedstead, table, and stool. To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain. Thus, with abundance of fuel, shelter and comfort by his own fireside are secured. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods, trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. 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. 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. 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. 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. Thus every mill is a centre of destruction far more severe from waste and fire than from use. Happy robbers! While in Alaska, I saw the loveliest forests and scenery I've ever seen. In any case, it will be hard to teach the pioneers that it is wrong to steal government timber. dwelling in the most beautiful woods, in the most salubrious climate, breathing delightful doors both day and night, drinking cool living water, roses and lilies at their feet in the spring, shedding fragrance and ringing bells as if cheering them on in their desolating work. John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838, as the oldest son in religious shopkeepers family. But there is no such road on the western side of the continent. Muir ended his life living in the care of his Chinese employees. Timber is as necessary as bread, and no scheme of management failing to recognize and properly provide for this want can possibly be maintained. The blackness is perfect. 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. A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. This first chapter is essentially an overview of the entire book. John Muir, The American Forests. '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 . Any fool can destroy trees. By the act of March 3, 1875, all land-grant and right-of-way railroads are authorized to take timber from the public lands adjacent to their lines for construction purposes; and they have taken it with a vengeance, destroying a hundred times more than they have used, mostly by allowing fires to run into the woods. 1993. This book deals with both of these key issues. 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. He returned with the famous story. 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 . See also: no. As he grew older, Muir became increasingly excited about what plants and nature could teach him. The first few thousands he sells or trades at the nearest mill or store, getting provisions in exchange. 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. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. 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. 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. T he Mountains of California, published in 1894, is John Muir's first book. There is none to say them nay. The volume is from the press of Houghton . 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. He was 29. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity; but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. 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. Flying Spur Press, Yosemite, California. Under these circumstances, the bawling, blethering oratorical stuff drowns the voice of God himself. There is no real sky and no scenery. But when the steel axe of the white man rang out in the startled air their doom was sealed. Katherine S. Talmadge. 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. Even Japan is ahead of us in the management of her forests. 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. 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. 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. Theres always a market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. They are four feet long, four inches wide, and about one fourth of an inch thick. 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. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. Let them be welcomed still as nature welcomes them, to the woods as well as to the prairies and plains. John Muir, (born April 21, 1838, Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotlanddied December 24, 1914, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Scottish-born American naturalist, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation, who was largely responsible for the establishment of Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park, which are located in California. 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. 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. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into manageable dimensions with gunpowder. This tree is one of the most variable and most widely distributed of American pines. Our National Parks, by John Muir (1901, c. (1901)) - John Muir Writings . As timber the redwood is too good to live. Our annual Brave Thinkers list, an interview with Mike Bloomberg, the strangest potential threat to the president, the Army's culture of mediocrity, Benjamin Schwarz on the end of jazz, and more, The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? 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. Any fool can destroy trees. Within the pantheon of environmental greats, few match the stature of John Muir. Tule Joe made five hundred dollars last winter on mallard and teal. They buy no land, pay no taxes, dwell in a paradise with no forbidding angel either from Washington or from heaven. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley . The forests of America, however slighted. How strong a voice that metal has! Every train rolls on through dismal smoke and barbarous melancholy ruins; and the companies might well cry in their advertisements: Come! World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) 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. From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely . 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; At Home in the Wild. 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. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. American forests! 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. A champion of America's great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation's history and culture. Back at the turn of the 20th Century Gifford Pinchot and John Muir had radically contrasting views of how to manage . John Muir (1838-1914) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Wisconsin as a young boy. Poem About Beauty Of Forest And Trees Naturalist John Muir and my love of trees inspired this poem. The chief aims of the administration are effective protection of the forests from fire, an efficient system of regeneration, and cheap transportation of the forest products; the results so far have been most beneficial and encouraging. The remnant protected will yield plenty of timber, a perennial harvest for every right use, without further diminution of its area, and will continue to cover the springs of the rivers that rise in the mountains and give irrigating waters to the dry valleys at their feet, prevent wasting floods and be a blessing to everybody forever. University Libraries > 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. Type the abstract of the document here. (Boston, 1901), chapter 10, "The American Forests." Originally published as John Muir, "The American Forests," Atlantic Monthly 80 (August 1897): 145-57. Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. The Indians with stone axes could do them no more harm than could gnawing beavers and browsing moose. 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. "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. 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. 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