John Muir

For other people named John Muir, see John Muir (disambiguation).

John Muir
John Muir worked to preserve wilderness in America.
Born	(1838-04-21)April 21, 1838 Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland
Died	December 24, 1914(1914-12-24) (aged 76) Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Occupation(s)	engineer, naturalist, writer
Spouse	Louisa Wanda Strentzel (1847 - 1905)
Children	Wanda Muir Hanna (March 25, 1881–July 29, 1942) and Helen Muir Funk (January 23, 1886–June 7, 1964)
Parent(s)	Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye

John Muir (April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of U.S. wilderness. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature and wildlife, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, have been read by millions and are still popular today. His direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement.

Biography

John Muir was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland to Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye. He was one of eight children: Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, fighting (either by re-enacting romantic battles of Scottish history or just scrapping on the playground) and hunting for bird's nests (ostensibly to one-up his fellows as they compared notes on who knew where the most were located). Such pursuits would later prove formative to Muir's adult character.

Entrance to Fountain Lake Farm near Portage, Wisconsin

In 1849 Muir's family emigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin called Fountain Lake Farm, which is still owned by his descendants. Stephen Fox recounts that Muir's father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in faith and practice, leading to their emigration and joining a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement.

The author and professor Stephen Fox relates that, by age 11, young Muir had learned to recite “by heart and by sore flesh” all of the New Testament and most of the Old. But in maturity, Muir was never confused by orthodox beliefs. In a letter to his fond friend Emily Pelton of May 23, 1865, he wrote "I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization; they went away of their own accord ... without leaving any consciousness of loss." Elsewhere in his writings, he likened the conventional image of a Creator "as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penney theater."

At age 22 he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, paying his own way for several years. There, under a towering black locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany lesson. A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant. Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography: "This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm." But instead of graduating from a school built by the hand of man, Muir opted to enroll in the "university of the wilderness." He walked a thousand miles from Indiana to Florida, after spending most of the years 1866 and 1867 working as an industrial engineer in Indianapolis, where a factory accident almost cost him his eyesight. He had planned to continue on to South America, but was stricken by malaria and went to California instead.

Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point

Arriving in San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left for a place he had only read about called Yosemite. After seeing Yosemite Valley for the first time he was captivated, and wrote, "No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite," and " The grandest of all special temples of Nature."

After his initial eight-day visit, he returned to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and became a ferry operator, sheepherder and bronco buster. In May 1869 a rancher named Pat Delaney offered Muir a summer job in the mountains to accompany and watch over Delaney's sheep and shepherd. Muir enthusiastically accepted the offer and spent that summer with the sheep in the Yosemite area. That summer Muir climbed Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake. During this time, he started to create theories about how the area was developed and how its ecosystem functioned.

Now more enthusiastic about the area than before, Muir secured a job operating a sawmill in the Yosemite Valley under the supervision of innkeeper James Hutchings. A natural born inventor, Muir designed a water-powered mill to cut wind-felled trees and he built himself a small cabin along Yosemite Creek.

Pursuit of his love of science, especially geology, often occupied his free time and he soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the valley and surrounding area. This notion was in stark contradiction to the accepted theory of the day, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (head of the California Geological Survey), which attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake. As Muir's ideas spread, Whitney would try to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur and even an ignoramus. But the premier geologist of the day, Louis Agassiz saw merit in Muir's ideas, and lauded him as "the first man who has any adequate conception of glacial action."

In 1871, Muir discovered an active alpine glacier below Merced Peak, which further helped his theories to gain acceptance. He was also a highly productive writer and had many of his accounts and papers published as far away as New York. Also that year, one of Muir's heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, arrived in Yosemite and sought out Muir. Muir's former professor at the University of Wisconsin, Ezra Carr, and Carr's wife Jeanne encouraged Muir to publish his ideas. They also introduced Muir to notables such as Emerson, as well as many leading scientists such as Louis Agassiz, John Tyndall, John Torrey, Clinton Hart Merriam, and Joseph LeConte.

The Muirs' home in Martinez, California.

A large earthquake centered near Lone Pine, California in Owens Valley (see 1872 Lone Pine earthquake) was felt very strongly in Yosemite Valley in March 1872. The quake woke Muir in the early morning and he ran out of his cabin "both glad and frightened," exclaiming, "A noble earthquake!" Other valley settlers, who still adhered to Whitney's ideas, feared that the quake was a prelude to a cataclysmic deepening of the valley. Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides. This event led more people to believe in Muir's ideas about the formation of the valley.

In addition to his geologic studies, Muir also investigated the living Yosemite area. He made two field studies along the western flank of the Sierra of the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia in 1873 and 1874. In 1876, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published Muir's paper about the trees' ecology and distribution.

In 1880, Muir married Louisa Wanda Strentzel, whose parents owned a large ranch and fruit orchards in Martinez, California, a small town northeast of San Francisco. For the next ten years he devoted himself to managing the family ranch, consisting of 2,600 acres (11 km²) of orchards and vineyards which became very successful. During this time two daughters were born, Wanda and Helen.

When he died, he left an estate of $250,000, worth more than $5.1 million in 2007 dollars. The house and part of the ranch are now a National Historical Site.

Travels in the Northwest

In 1888 after seven years of managing the ranch his health began to suffer. With his wife's prompting he returned to the hills to recover his old self, climbing Mt. Rainier and writing Ascent of Mount Rainier.

Muir travelled with the party that landed on Wrangel Island on the USS Corwin and claimed that island for the United States in 1881. He documented this experience in his book The Cruise of the Corwin.

From studying to protecting

Preservation efforts

John Muir's home in 1872 (Robert E. Nylund)

Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor. He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands. He saw the greatest threat to the Yosemite area and the Sierra to be livestock, especially domestic sheep, calling them "hoofed locusts". In June 1889, the influential associate editor of Century magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, camped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the damage a large flock of sheep had done to the grassland. Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country. He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite area into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park.

On September 30, 1890, Congress passed a bill that essentially followed recommendations that Muir put forward in two Century articles—The Treasure of the Yosemite and Features of the Proposed National Park, both published in 1890. But to Muir's dismay, the bill left Yosemite Valley in state control. With this partial victory under his belt, Muir helped form an environmental organization Sierra Club on May 28, 1892; he was elected its first president, a position he held until his death 22 years later. In 1894, his first book, The Mountains of California, was published.

Preservation vs conservation

In July 1896 Muir became good friends with another leader in the conservation movement, Gifford Pinchot. That friendship ended late in the summer of 1897 when Pinchot released a statement to a Seattle newspaper supporting sheep grazing in forest reserves. Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation. When Pinchot reiterated his position Muir told him "I don't want any thing more to do with you." This philosophical divide soon expanded and split the conservation movement into two camps: the preservationists, led by Muir, and Pinchot's camp, who co-opted the term "conservation." Muir was deeply opposed to commercializing nature. The two men debated their positions in popular magazines as Outlook, Harper's Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, World's Work, and Century. Muir argued for the preservation of the land's spiritual and uplifting values; Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing for the sustainable commercial use of what he prized: the nation's natural resources. Both men opposed reckless exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests.

Roosevelt and Muir

In 1899, Muir accompanied railroad executive E. H. Harriman and other esteemed scientists on Harriman's famous exploratory voyage along the Alaska coast aboard the luxuriously refitted 250-foot (76 m) steamer called the George W. Elder. He would later rely on his friendship with Harriman to apply political pressure on Congress to pass conservation legislation.

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt accompanied Muir on a visit to Yosemite. Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, California for the train trip to Raymond. The presidential entourage then traveled by stagecoach into the park. While traveling to the park, Muir told the president about state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources. Even before they entered the park, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management.

After entering the park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the president asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt set off largely by themselves and camped in the backcountry. While circling around a fire, the duo talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point and were dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning—a night Roosevelt never would forget.

Muir then increased efforts by the Sierra Club to consolidate park management and was rewarded in 1905 when Congress transferred the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley into the park. His wife Louisa died on August 6, 1905.

Hetch Hetchy and death

Pressure started to mount to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir for San Francisco. Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy more stunning even than Yosemite Valley. Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the valley and Muir even wrote Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project. After years of national debate that polarized the nation, Roosevelt's successor, Woodrow Wilson signed the dam bill into law on December 19, 1913. Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle.

John Muir died at a hospital in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914 of pneumonia after a brief visit to his daughter Helen.

John Muir's great-grandson, Michael Muir, founded a group called Access Adventure, to help people with disabilities experience the outdoors in their wheelchairs.

Honors

John Muir appears on the California quarter

Muir Glacier, Alaska. Three John Muir Trails (in California, Tennessee, and Wisconsin), the John Muir Wilderness, Mount Muir just off the John Muir Trail, the Muir Woods National Monument, John Muir High School, John Muir Elementary School John Muir College (a residential college of the University of California, San Diego), John Muir Country Park, in Dunbar and the John Muir Way in East Lothian are named in his honor, as is the asteroid 128523 John Muir. An image of John Muir, with the California Condor and Half Dome, appears on the California state quarter which was released in 2005. A quotation of his appears on the reverse side of the Indianapolis Prize Lilly Medal for conservation. Also named for him is Muir's Peak in Mount Shasta, California (also known as Black Butte), and Muir Woods just north of San Francisco

On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted John Muir into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

Criticism

Carolyn Merchant criticized Muir for his views of wilderness as pure: "John Muir envisioned national parks as pristine wilderness, without domesticated animals or Indians." In My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), a saga of his Sierra Nevada travels in 1868, Muir wrote disparagingly of the Native Americans he encountered there. But the book also praised the Native Americans for their low impact on the wilderness, and disparaged the white people's comparably heavy impact. Muir's attitudes towards Native Americans did change drastically over time, especially after he lived with them while traveling in the California and Pacific Northwest wilderness. The Native peoples of California and Alaska helped change Muir's previous feelings which were largely based on ignorance of their lifestyle, and began for Muir the remainder of his life helping to honor and respect their lives and traditions.

Roderick Nash has described Muir's travels in Canada as journeys into wilderness to avoid military service. Nash wrote: "Muir's first encounter with the idea that nature had rights came as a consequence of draft-dodging.... Muir, who was twenty-six and single, felt certain he would be called, and he apparently had no interest in the fight to save the Union or free the slaves." But actually, Muir was in the United States until after the Gettysburg address and the later Union Army draft, and his number simply was not drawn. Yet Muir did have an aversion to the Civil War in general; he only became a US citizen at age 65. When the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment (volunteers) left Madison, Wisconsin in 1861, Muir saw them off at the station; in a letter that same day to Mrs. Edward Pelton, he observed that the festive martial pomp seemed inappropriate, with visions of heroism soon to be replaced by harsh, unpleasant realities.

References

Primary sources

• Works by John Muir at Internet Archive. Scanned, illustrated original editions.
• Photographs, journals, and drawings from the John Muir Papers are available at the University of the Pacific Library's Digital Collections.

Secondary sources

• Austin, Richard C. (1991). Baptized into wilderness: A Christian perspective on John Muir. Creekside Press.
• Cronon, William, ed. (1997). John Muir: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth; My First Summer in the Sierra; The Mountains of California; Stickeen; Essays. Library of America. ISBN 978-1-88301124-6. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Ehrlich, Gretel (2000). John Muir: Nature's Visionary. National Geographic. ISBN 0-7922-7954-9.
• Fox, Stephen (1981). The American Conservation Movement: John Muir And His Legacy. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-29110-2.
• Meyer, John M. (1997). "Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the Boundaries of Politics in American Thought". Polity. 30 (2): 267–284. doi:10.2307/3235219. ISSN 0032-3497. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
• Miller, Char (2001). Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism. Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-822-2.
• O'Casey, Terrence (24 September 2006). "John Muir: God's Preacher of Creation". Christian Standard. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |http://www.christianstandard.com/articledisplay.asp?id= ignored (help)
• Smith, Michael B. (1998). "The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot". The Historian. 60 (4): 757–778. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1998.tb01414.x. ISSN 0018-2370. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Turner, Fredrick (1985). Rediscovering America, John Muir in His Time and Ours. Viking Press. ISBN 0-87156-704-0.
• Williams, Dennis (2002). God's Wilds: John Muir's Vision of Nature. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-143-0.
• Wolfe, Linnie Marsh (1945). Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-18634-2. (awarded Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1946)
• Worster, Donald (2005). "John Muir and the Modern Passion for hey Nature". Environmental History. 10(1): 8–19. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Worster, Donald (2008). A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195166828.
• Wuerthner, George (1994). Yosemite: A Visitor's Companion. Stackpole Books. pp. 25–37. ISBN 0-8117-2598-7.
• Yancey, Philip (2004). Rumours of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing?. Zondervan Publishing Company. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Text "http://www.lookoutmag.com/pdfs/885.pdf" ignored (help); Text "p. 24-25" ignored (help)

See also

• John Muir's Birthplace
• List of places in East Lothian
• John Muir Trust

Other books

• Sachs, Aaron (2006). The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-03775-3. Muir is one of four people the author focuses on who were influenced by Alexander von Humboldt.

External links

• Works by or about John Muir at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by John Muir at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Template:Worldcat id
• John Muir Writings. Complete text online of Muir's books
• Manuscript letters, 1861-1914 put online by the Wisconsin Historical Society
• John Muir Papers. Provides an overview of the John Muir Papers and related collections held at the University of the Pacific.
• John Muir Exhibit by the Sierra Club
• John Muir Global Network
• John Muir National Historic Site from National Park Service
• Friends of John Muir's Birthplace (formerly Dunbar's John Muir Association) Scotland
• John Muir's Birthplace, John Muir Birthplace Trust Scotland
• John Muir Trust Scotland
• John Muir In Indianapolis Historical Marker
• Canadian Friends of John Muir (CFJM) website
• John Muir Project Protecting Federal Public Forest Lands