Several years ago in a speech to a Republican Party gathering, I was mentioning the GOP’s history in founding the original conservation movement in America. I pointed to the first preservation of public lands by Abraham Lincoln (Yosemite), the first National Park created by Ulysses Grant (Yellowstone), and several achievements of Theodore Roosevelt and his close friends – and fellow Republicans – forester Gifford Pinchot, geologist John Wesley Powell, and naturalist John Muir. Afterwards, I was cornered by a furious Sierra Club member, livid that I had dared call the club’s founder and patron saint, John Muir, a Republican.
I meant no disrespect, but history is history. During the Civil War and reconstruction period of Muir’s youth in Wisconsin, being a Democrat would have been unthinkable. I cited his life-long friendship with Republican Congressman Merrill Moores, who helped create the Forest Service, and a couple other relevant facts. But this enthusiast would have none of it. It was “deeply offensive,” he said, “to equate the great John Muir with the Party of James Watt!” I said I was actually talking about the Party of Teddy Roosevelt, but he retorted, “You can’t prove Muir ever voted for a Republican, and I demand that you stop saying that!”
Last week I mentioned that Sierra Club President Ramon Cruz is trying to erase John Muir from the group’s history, to “cancel” him, as is the current fashion. I suggested that if the Sierra Club no longer wants its main hero, I would take him. Muir wasn’t perfect, of course. Neither is Cruz. Nor any other human being. It no longer maters what party Muir belonged to. He left a legacy worth remembering. Cruz probably won’t.
Yosemite National Park was Muir’s life’s work, to preserve not only the Yosemite Valley (which had been given to the state as a park by Lincoln), but also the surrounding giant sequoias, mountain peaks, and miles of majestic scenery. No block of land that large had ever been set aside for permanent protection – at the height of the homestead era – but in 1890 Muir finally convinced Congress.
He came to Yosemite in 1868 at the age of 30. He was born in Scotland and raised in Wisconsin, working in a rake factory. But his real love was the outdoors, and he frequently taught Sunday school classes, not in church but in the forest. He educated himself, rising early and reading constantly, becoming an expert in factory efficiency until an accident left him blind in one eye, prompting him to move west. He later claimed it was the moment his life’s work began, writing that he had determined to spend the rest of his life “immersed in the sights of nature.” He spent the rest of his life talking about the intrinsic value of nature, founding and leading the Sierra Club, and becoming one of the conservation movement’s most essential leaders.
He guided famous visitors, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he became friends. He started the Sierra Club by hosting popular field trips, beginning in 1901. In 1906 the organization hit the mother lode of membership and visibility opportunities when the City of San Francisco proposed to dam the Tuolumne River at the mouth of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Muir led a national crusade to save the area, America’s first real fight pitting preservation against use of resources. Though the City eventually won, Muir and the Sierra Club became famous, and his writing is still some of the conservation movement’s most eloquent.
“These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar,” he wrote. And about Yosemite, “No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”
The California Historical Society named Muir “The Greatest Californian,” and he is pictured on the state quarter. Anyone who doubts the difference one person can make need only examine the life of John Muir, without whose vision of the value of nature, America would be a lesser place – not just in its scenic beauty, but also its economy, history, culture and way of life. My favorite story about him is of a private conversation between two legendary mountaineers. Californian Galen Rowell reportedly asked Italian Reinhold Messner why the greatest mountains and valleys of the Alps have hotels, railways, and cities, while similar sites in America remain mostly undeveloped. Messner is said to have replied, “You had Muir.”
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