John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1991

spring, 1991 JOHN MUIR MONOGRAPH TO APPEAR The John Muir Center for Regional Studies has completed its work on the papers presented in April, 1990, to the California History Institute on John Muir\u27s life and work. The edited papers are now in the hands of a major publisher. The eventual volume will contain an introduction, fifteen separate essays, and an appendix. The book will be divided into six sections, each of which will focus on a different aspect of Muir\u27s life and work. The sections include one on Muir the individual, another on Muir and religion, and a third on Muir and wilderness. An additional section deals with Muir and literary themes, another on Muir and the physical sciences, and a last section focuses on some of the places associated with Muir or on which he wrote. The volume will be handsomely illustrated. It is hoped that the book will be published within a year. It is sure to be an outstanding volume of great interest to anyone who follows John Muir, his career, or the environment. The Newsletter will keep its readers informed as to official date of availability and price. 1991 CALIFORNIA HISTORY INSTITUTE The Californa History Institute conference on California\u27 s Gold Rushes: Past and Present,\u27\u27 held on April 18-21, 1991 was a great success. It featured a dozen different sessions which included over 20 presenters. As last year, the two days of academicsessions were followed by a breakfast meeting of the Jedidiah S. Smith Society, and then a field trip to the Mother Lode and the Northern Mines. The topics covered during the conference included Gold Rush business, finance and technology, interpreting the Gold Rush Experience, Calaveras County Mining in the past and present, the formative years of California\u27s Gold Mining, Gold Rush artifacts, philosophy and literature, and the national context for the California Gold Rush. The John Muir Center plans to publish as many of the conference papers as possible. new series, volume 1 number 2 THE THOREAU SOCIETY JUBILEE JULY 8-19, 1991 To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, The Thoreau Society of Concord, MA, is sponsoring nature walks, tours and outings, poetry readings, lectures, musical events, panel discussions and exhibits in Worcester, MA, July 8- 12, and in Concord, MA, July 11-19. The focus of the Worcester portion of the Society\u27s Jubilee will be Henry David Thoreau as a social critic, engineer, scientist, and connoisseur of music. In Concord, the Jubilee will focus on Thoreau as a nature writer, pioneering ecologist, and conservationist. The Jubilee will be open to the general public. Community members, environmentalists, Scholars, Thoreau-enthusiasts, and scientists are welcome to attend one or all of the events. Registration materials and additional information, including details about costs, lodging, and transportation will be available in early May. For further information or to pre-register, contact Jubilee organizers at (508) 369- : 4213. USING THE JOHN MUIR PAPERS AT UOP by Daryl Morrison The John Muir Papers at the Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections of the University of the Pacific Libraries, came to UOP over a period of 20 years from the Muir-Hanna families. Extensive use is made of this magnificent resource that contains approximately 75% of Muir\u27s extant papers. Special Collection librarians are Daryl Morrison, Head of Special Collections Department/ Special Collections Librarian, and Cynthia Stevenson, Manuscript/Archivist Librarian. The Department hours are 8-5 Monday thru Friday. Visiting scholars are advised to call (209) 946-2404 to confirm hours prior to arrival. Authors of many recent publications have made use of Muir\u27s papers, journals and notebooks, drawings and sketches, personal library, and photograph collection, yet many aspects of Muir\u27s life and thought still await scholarly inquiry. Academic and popular journals and magazines, such as San Diego, Sea Kayaker, MD, Outdoors, Cobblestone, California History, Wisconsin Natural Resources, GEO, Landmarks, Wisconsin Academy Review, National Geographic, and Sierra all have drawn upon the Muir papers in the past few years. Margin: a Quarterly Magazine for Imaginative Writing and Ideas, issue 8, 1990, edited in Scotland by Robin Magowan and Walter Perrie, published a Special Bird issue which used John Muir quotes and observations on birds. Books geared to youth such as John Muir: Writer, Naturalist and Guardian of the Wilderness, (Gareth Stevens, 1989) md John Muir by Eden Force (Silver Burdett Press, 1990) a biography in a series for young adult readers called Pioneers in Change ate carrying the\u27legacy of John Muir to a new generation. Recent publications which made use of the photographs and drawings from the John Muir Papers include Chemistry as Viewed From Bascom \u27s Hill, by Aaron J. Ihde, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990, an extensive history of the Chemistry Department at the UW- Madison; Milestones in California History: John Muir andihe California National Parks by Keith Kennedy, published in California Historical Quarterly, Summer, 1990; and Yosemite: an American Treasure by Ken Brower, a book sold to members of the National Geographic Society. Fresno Metro Museum prepared an exhibit on the Yosemite and King\u27s Canyon National Parks Centennials featuring several Muir photographs. Extensive use of Muir photographs were used for the documentary recently aired on PBS, The Wilderness Idea.\u27\u27 This was one of a four part series co-produced by Florentine Films and WGBH, exploring the evolution of American ideas about the Wilderness. During the last few months The Holt-Atherton Department has had contact with Lisa Mighetto in regard to a second printing of her book Muir Among the Animals: The Wildlife Writings of John Muir, Sierra Club Books; Lee Stetson in regard to commercial release of his KQED video presentation in which he impersonates Muir; Jan Izzo of Children\u27s Press for an educational book for 5-8 year old children, John Muir, Man of the Wild Places; Richard Fleck in preparation for a slide presentation at the Denver Museum of Natural History in May on Muir in , Alaska; J. Parker Huber for a slide presentation which he has given to Audubon societies, nature sanctuaries, and environmental non-profit groups; and Hoffman and Heath, .__ who are to publish a grade 4 Social Studies book Exploring Regions Near and Far. Most of the John Muir Papers are available to researchers on microfilm and may be used at the UOP Library and through interlibrary loan. The microform edition of The John Muir Papers, 1858-1957 and the accompanying Guide to the John Muir Papers, 1858-1957, edited by R.H. Limbaugh and K.E. Lewis are available for purchase from Chadwyk -Healey, 1101 Ring Street, Alexandria, VA 11214. A pamphlet entitled The John Muir Collections compiled by Daryl Morrison and Cynthia Stevenson gives a brief overview of the collection. It is available from the Holt-Atherton Special Collections/ k University of the Pacific Libraries/ Stockton, California 95211 for $4.00 including shipping and handling. THANK YOU The staff of the John Muir Center for Regional Studies is gratified at the postive response from readers and subscribers to the Newsletter. We are very appreciative of readers\u27 efforts to supply us with the latest news and announcements. Please keep the information flowing. Your efforts make this Newsletters reality. JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. I, #2 (NEW SERIES) Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. JOHN MUIR AND THE NECESSITY OF COMPROMISE by Gilbert B. Workman, Canada College (Editor\u27s note: a portion of this material was first presented at the Muir Conference in April, 1990) John Muir was much more than an intuitive, metaphysical theorist. He was also a scientist, a student and analyst of physical natures we know from his observations and writings on glaciers and his notebooks on the flora and fauna of Alaska and the Sierra. He could combine the contemplative and philosophical with the ~ physical, and he assumed the roles of ecologist and environmentalist and, eventually, of propagandist and political campaigner. In these later roles, Muir was able to modify his natural inclinations and preferences for the pathless way. He was willing to set aside his love of the remote mountain peaks and the sacred groves of Sequoias, and to come, down into the cities and the halls of Congress in order to preserve the source of that, spiritual heritage of things wild. To do this, he was forced to compromise. One can appreciate Muir\u27s complexity, his multi- faceted genius, and his ability to help resolve America\u27s - wilderness ambivalence, to straddle the gap between wilderness as a place for man to conquer and wilderness as a condition of man\u27s spiritual and rational salvation. It is fortunate that we had a man of John Muir\u27s wisdom and ability to compromise who was able to protect as much of America\u27s wilderness inheritance as he possibly could. Muir recognized full well that the presence of man disrupts the national community of the forest, and he also fully understood that man, unfortunately, was firmly involved in the woods, and that waste and destruction were making rapid headway into the nation\u27s diminishing wild areas and forests. He realized, however, that only people, through a changed awareness of wilderness could counter the destructive mentality that was rampant. Only through developing a large constituency who loved the wild places could they be maintained; he believed. This development would require compromise, and some alteration, perhaps, of portions of those wild places. Critics of John Muir sometimes aver that he naively misjudged the extent of such compromise and alteration, and suggest-that Muir should have maintained a stricter \u27no compromise\u27 posture.But Muir saw the situation more realistically and he began a quest for a middle way instead of the strictly pathless way. He started to introduce more of the public to the wilderness by helping to found the Sierra Club in 1892 as an organization which would both extol the values of Nature and also take political action across a wide range of conservation issues. By forming an alliance with Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century magazine, he reached a national audience, and together he and Johnson were instrumental in creating Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Although these parks were not to be the pristine wilderness preserves he revered, Muir\u27s compromises were the necessary concessions which he believed he had to make if anything were to be saved. Moreover, as he said, Nothing that we do on the side of justice can be wholly lost.\u27\u27 ANDREW CARNEGIE ON JOHN MUIR [Editor\u27s note: This undated clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle, ca. 1910, was found in an envelope enscribed in John Muir\u27s hand: Carnegie on Water supply &.J.M. etc. Muir and Andrew Carnegie corresponded occasionally and met in person at least once. In 1910 Miiir attended a special dinner in Southern California in Carnegie\u27s honor. From the John Muir Papers, Holt Athertpn Library, University of the Pacific, Series VI, Related Articles and Scraps] 7 Andrew Carnegie has long ago come to be regarded as a traitor to the camp of the interests. Although in a sense one of them, he is not with them, at least in sentiment, and is often quite annoying to.his old associates because of his habit of clear thinking expressed in plain speech. He has said some distressing things about certain forms of tariff robbery of which he had intimate personal experience, and ...he has come to be regarded as a heretic whom the American Protective Tariff league would rejoice to burn at the stake. Mr. Carnegie delivers a shrewd sidewinder directed at his sentimental fellow countryman, John Muir, who has : got off wrong on the Hetch Hetchy question. Says Mr. Carnegie: John Muir is a fine Scotchman, like my friend John Burroughs; but for all that it is too foolish to say that the imperative needs of a city to a full and pure water supply should be thwarted for the sake of a few trees or for scenery, no matter how beautiful it might be. The Tweed ring in New York was corrupt, there is no question of that, but it was composed of men with broad views on some things, and they prepared for the future of New York. Now New York has a magnificent water supply, a young sea, up in the hills, which can supply a population of 10,000,000 people with all the water that they can use. New York also has a fine system of wharves, which will be a splendid investment to the community. The parks of the city are exceptionally fine. Doubtless Mr. Carnegie\u27s common sense view of the matter will prevail when it comes up for settlement. It is not pressing, as the city must first exhaust the lake Eleanor possibilities^ [Secretary of the Interior] Ballinger\u27s adjudication will settle nothing one way or the other, but when the time- comes that the bay cities can demonstrate that there is real need of the Hetch Hetchy supply neither Congress nor the administration will refuse the grant. ENVIRONMENTAL PRESIDENT COOLS HIS HEELS by Char Miller (Editor\u27s note: excerpted by permission of In These Times, 2/6-12/91) ■. Manuel Lujan, whose performance as Secretary of Interior has been uninspired, won\u27t be departing anytime soon. Why? Many commentators claim that President Bush is comfortable with Lujan\u27s inactivity because the president is not serious about the environment. But there\u27s more to it than that. Were Bush to have an aggressive secretary of the interior, he or she would challenge one of Bush\u27s cherished self-delusions—that he is really a committed and engaged conservationist. Sound odd? It does until you consider who Bush has embraced as his presidential role model—Theodore Roosevelt. I\u27m an Oyster Bay kind of guy. Bush has confessed, referring to his hero\u27s Long Island hometown, And it is to the 26th president that Bush has turned to pump up his sagging image on environmental matters, happily affirming that he is a T-R. conservationist. Bully for George. This affirmation is not as goofy as it might first appear. Both men are identified with their love of vigorous athletics and the great outdoors. So what if zooming across choppy Maine waters in a cigarette powerboat doesn\u27t quite strike a Rooseveltian pose. Bush is merely indulging in the politics of image-building, something Teddy well understood. He knew the political benefits that derived from his Rough Rider image. Besides, conservation is good politics, maybe even good Republican politics. By hooking his wagon to Roosevelt\u27s star, Bush hopes to challenge the Democratic Party\u27s apparent lock on the environmental agenda. As Bush has observed, not only was Teddy a Republican but so were most of the leading conservationists of his day, includinghis key advisers, George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream; and Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Even California naturalist John Muir, long-time president of the Sierra Club, voted for the GOP. George Bush should feel right at home with these heroes of an earlier age. - That is part of the problem, of course. In allying himself with Progressive Era conservationists, Bush is. demonstrating how dated his environmental perspectives are. The reputations of Roosevelt and Pinchot, for( example, were built on their intense efforts to mediate between development and conservation. Since then, the effectiveness of their strategy has been challenged, a consequence of the deleterious effects of continued resource exploitation. The one figure who is accorded great respect today—John Muir~is hardly cut from the same cloth as Bush. Muir\u27s enraptured embrace of the divinity within nature, his provocative call for the adoption of wilderness values, smacks too much of tree-hugging for our pinstrip- ped president. These earlier conservationists are poor models for Bush in other ways as well. Indeed, one need only examine the Roosevelt administration\u27s environmental record to understand why Bush should have thought twice before choosing T.R.-as his mentor and guide, a choice that reveals clear differences both in terms of their ap- proach to conservation and to the presidency. Simply put, Roosevelt\u27s accomplishments in conservation are staggering. Among other things, he doubled the number of national parks, from 5 to 10, created the first National Monuments (setting aside 18 spectacular settings altogether) and established 51 bird sanctuaries to protect nesting and feeding grounds. Both animals and tourists owe much to Roosevelt\u27s initiatives. None of these actions came without a fight. Western developmental interests challenged his every move. Roosevelt\u27s administration was nonetheless so aggressive in its pursuit of conservation—an aggressiveness particularly associated with forester Pinchot—that its opponents coined the new epithet Pinchotism to describe governmental regulation of land use. For Republicans, the Progressive Era was a shining moment in conservation history. But it is not likely that any of Roosevelt\u27s luminescence will rub off on Bush± Roosevelt and his advisers thought in grand terms, mapped out their strategy and then moved decisively, establishing precedent for an engaged and activist presidency. Bush talks but does not act. x . Take the case of the White House Conference on Global Warming last April. Bush hoped to use it as a platform from which to make plain his commitment to the environment, to take the lead on an issue of great consequence. But rather than propose stronger legislation designed to cut emissions, specifically carbon dioxide, Bush pleaded for more time and greater research into the problem, a cautious approach that sabotaged his public- relations ploy. Such caution also characterized his response to debates over off-shore drilling—he delayed action until after the year 2000~and over clean-air legislation. As for the latter, he offered up strong words of support for a, rigorous congressional bill, but he did not provide the leadership necessary to make good on his verbal commitment. Ultimately, it was Congress that acted\u27: Roosevelt had no sympathy for such an approach: Words without action, he once wrote, are but intellectual debauchery. To avoid having that damning label stuck on him, to begin living up to Roosevelt\u27s standard, Bush would have to pursue a more audacious environmental policy. And there\u27s no better way to begin fitting words to action than to fire his current Secretary of the Interior. A MUIR LETTER introduced by Bruce Merrell While working as a reference librarian at the public library in Anchorage, Alaska last year, I was approached by a young woman. She was visiting Alaska for the first time, said that a distant relative had lived in Alaska many years ago, and wondered if the library had any information about him. The relative\u27s name was Samuel Hall Young. Recognizing the name immediately, I showed her autographed copies of Young \u27sfour books about Alaska and located several Of his letters to John Muir. in our microfilm copy of the Muir Papers. I went on to explain my own interest in Muir and asked if she or anyone in her family had anything belonging to Young. \u27 \u27Oh, yes,\u27\u27 she said. \u27 \u27I have his knapsack and snowshoesl\u27\u27 Did she know if anyone had saved old letters or photographs? \u27 \u27Well, if anyone has anything, it would be Aunt Marg.\u27\u27 I wrote Aunt Marg in Georgia and was delighted to receive a speedy reply. I\u27m not always this prompt on answering correspondence, she wrote, but I have recently been going through some old letters in doing genealogical research of my grandmother, Fannie Kellogg Young, and her family. Most of the letters I have are from my grandfather to my grandmother but among them I found a letter from John Muir to Grandpa . . . I am enclosing a copy. You notice that the signature is missing. I expect that Grandpa cut it out to give to a grandchild. He was that sort of person. I\u27m sure it was not to sell. However/ the letter is obviously from John Muir. \u27 S. Young Hall was the author of Alaska Days with John Muir, published the year after Muir\u27s death. Young was a Presbyterian missionary, nine years Muir\u27s junior, whom Muir met in 1879 while making his first trip \u27 to Alaska. He and Young shared many adventures that year and the next—climbing mountains, scrambling over glaciers, travelling for weeks on end by native dugout canoe, and discovering Glacier Bay. Young was also the owner of Stickeen, the truculent mongrel who was the subject of Muir\u27s best-selling book. J This is evidently the only surviving letter from Muir to Young. Many others were received by Young, but according to his autobiography, were lost when the steamboat Leah sank below Kaltag on the Yukon River in 1906. Young\u27s library of fifteen hundred volumes arid all his personal papers were reduced tod. \u27muddy pulp.\u27 \u272 The following letter was written when, at Young\u27s instigation, the two old friends had renewed their correspondence after a long hiatus: Los Angeles, Cal., May 31, 1910. Dear friend Young:- I wrote to you the other day, briefly telling you : that I had read your manuscript and forwarded it with your letter to the publishers, with a note from myself to the Century Company giving your address, and no doubt you will hear from it ere long. I soon learned that you would be able to write some