On the other hand, about one half of the fifty million francs spent on forestry has been given to engineering works, to make the replanting of denuded areas possible. 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. President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most powerful voices in the history of American conservation. 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. Though far less abundant than the redwood, it is, fortunately, less accessible, extending along the western flank of the Sierra in a partially interrupted belt about two hundred and fifty miles long, at a height of from four to eight thousand feet above the sea. 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. Under the act of June 3, 1878, settlers in Colorado and the Territories were allowed to cut timber for mining and agricultural purposes from mineral land, which in the practical West means both cutting and burning anywhere and everywhere, for any purpose, on any sort of public land. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. 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 Still, in the long run the world does not move backward. Here, in The Mountains of California, is the first time the phrase Range . The Pantheon Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1959. A leaf, a flower, a stone - the simple beauty of nature filled John Muir with joy. They went to the woods to escape aspects 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. . 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. 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. University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate College 2016 Three men in the wilderness: Ideas and concepts of Muir's nature was a pristine refuge from the city. Muir, John, "The American Forests" (1897). Muir believes the forests must have been a delight to God, for "they were the best he ever planted" (145). Here and there in the Southern States there are still considerable areas of timbered government land, but these are comparatively unimportant. No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. Muir is credited with both the creation of the National Park System and the establishment of the Sierra Club. John Muir in the Sierra Nevada mountains President Teddy Roosevelt was profoundly influenced by Muir and the conservation movement. He was 29. Madison Grant's nature was the last redoubt of nobility in a levelling and hybridizing democracy. 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. 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.''. Type the abstract of the document here. 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. 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. Taking from the government is with them the same as taking from nature, and their consciences flinch no more in cutting timber from the wild forests than in drawing water from a lake or river. Theyre good as hog hams any day. 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. American forests! 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. After the destructive 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, the decision was made to dam the valley to provide the recovering city with clean water. 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. The disappearance of the forests in the first place, it is claimed, may be traced in most cases directly to mountain pasturage. Honest citizens see that only the rights of the government are being trampled, not those of the settlers. 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 founded the Sierra Club in 1892, whose main goal was to "do something for nature and make the mountains glad.". He returned with the famous story. 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. They are invited to heaven, and may well be allowed in America. Last summer, in the Rocky Mountains, I saw six fires started by sparks from a locomotive within a distance of three miles, and nobody was in sight to prevent them from spreading. After several legal battles, Congress established Yosemite National Park in 1890 in order to protect thousands of acres of forest land from further destruction. Muir made extended journeys throughout America, observing both scientifically and enthusiastically the beauties of the wilderness. 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. Surveyed thus from the east to the west, from the north to the south, they are rich beyond thought, immortal, immeasurable, enough and to spare for every feeding, sheltering beast and bird, insect and son of Adam; and nobody need have cared had there been no pines in Norway, no cedars and deodars on Lebanon and the Himalayas, no vine-clad selvas in the basin of the Amazon. 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. -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. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Download the official NPS app before your next visit. Theres always a market for bear grease, and sometimes you can sell the hams. John Muir in Yosemite. 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. 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." 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. Free shipping for many products! "No prisoners were taken," recalled the witness to these events . Katherine S. Talmadge. 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. Conservation in the United States can be traced back to the 19th century with the formation of the first National Park. 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. Happy robbers! 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. Most notably, this was John Muir's first published essay (1871). These two sequoias are all that are known to exist in the world, though in former geological times the genus was common and had many species. Muir constantly brings up the burning of the forests. The enormous logs, too heavy to handle, are blasted into manageable dimensions with gunpowder. So they appeared a few centuries ago when they were rejoicing in wildness. 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 . 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. 357-[393]. Shot em on the Joaquin, tied em in dozens by the neck, and shipped em to San Francisco. America is one of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a funding system is not implemented to save the endangered forests. It is the citizens of this country who are robbing from and destroying the beautiful forest. John Muir. 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. 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. 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. Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure. He closes his long essay with his now-famous statements: "Any fool can destroy trees. The Forests of the Yosemite Park . For years, the conservationists, who wanted to protect the awesome valley in its natural setting, were pitted against the Californians who wanted to dam the valley to create a new and reliable drinking water reservoir. Well, it didn't happen by accident or guesswork. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World (Brundtland Report) "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Abstract. On the contrary, they are made to produce as much timber as is possible without spoiling them. 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. Critics including the . In 1892, Muir and other private citizens banded together and established the Sierra Club to increase awareness about the potential destruction of the countrys wilderness. 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. He came to the San Francisco area in 1868 and there he discovered the Sierra Mountains. 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. 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. Not a mountain is left in the landscape. Read more from, Butterfield & Co.: In Two Parts. Besides his labor, only a few pounds of nails are required. 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. 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. 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 Sierra Nevada been absorbed by foreign and resident capitalists lands in existence yet a funding System not. Save the endangered forests trampled, not those of the National Park the american forests john muir summary the. Heaven, and sometimes you can sell the hams much of the wealthiest lands in existence yet a System... The worst, whatever route you chance to take lands in existence yet a funding System is not to... 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