John Muir

Biography

Muir was born the April 21st 1838 in Dunbar, in the East Lothian, in Scotland of his/her parents Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye. It one their eight children, is preceded by Margaret and Sarah, and is followed by David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (binoculars) and Joanna, born in the United States. In its autobiography, he tells his pastimes of childhood, his combat (either by delighting the romantic battles by History Scottish, or right while reforming on the adventure playgrounds) and his huntings for the bird's nests (apparently to overbid on his/her friends which compared words about which knew where there was more). Such pastimes would appear later formative for the character of Muir, once adult.

Muir emigrates with the the United States in 1849, when its family acquires firm not far from Portage, in Winsconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm , the Farm of the Fountain of the Lake. It enters to the Université of Winsconsin-Madison in 1860 and follows courses during a few years. It is over there, under a top Caroubier, behind the northern hall that Muir has its first course of botany. One of his/her friends studying picking a flower of the tree and uses it to explain why large the Caroubier is a family member of pea, connected to the not aligned pea seedlings. Fifty years later, the naturalist describes this day in his autobiography. “This small course envouté me and sent to me to fly across the forests and the meadows with a wild enthusiasm”, written Muir. But instead of obtaining the license of a school built by the hand of the man, Muir chooses incrire at “the university of the wild life” and thus traverses hundreds of kilometers, Indiana with the Florida, after having spent the years 1866 and 1867 to work as a industrial Engineer with Indianapolis, where an industrial accident costs him almost the sight. It had envisaged to continue in South America, but is struck by the Paludisme, and thus goes in California.

Arrived at San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left to research a place of which it had read only the name, Yosemite. After having seen the Valley of Yosemite for the first time, it is captivated, and wrote “Any Temple builds with the hand cannot be compared with Yosemite”, and “is largest of all the temples dedicated to Nature”.

After its first eight days visit, it turns over in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and becomes conducting of ferry, shepherd and amateur of Rodéo. In May 1869, an owner of ranch named Pat Delaney offers a work of summer to him, consisting in taking along and supervising his herd of sheep. Muir accepts the offer with enthusiasm, and spends the summer in the area of Yosemite. This same summer, it climbing Cathedral Peak, the Mount Dana and make a walk along an old track Indienne of Bloody Canyon to the Lac Mono. During this time, it starts to work on theories in connection with the way in which the area developed and how its ecosystem functions.

Now more enthusiastic in connection with the area than front, Muir makes sure an employment in a Scierie in the Valley of Yosemite, under the direction of the tavernier James Hutchings. Inventive naturalness born, Muir draws a Water mill to cut the trees put at ground by the wind and builds a small hut along Yosemite Creek.

The search for its love for sciences, more especially geology, often occupies its spare time and it becomes soon convinced that the glaciers carved the very many features of the Vallée and of the surroundings. This concept is in complete contradiction with the theory which is hitherto accepted, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (with the head of “California Geological Survey”), which allotted the formation of the Valley to a catastrophic earthquake. As the ideas of Muir are propagated, Whitney tries to discredit Muir by designating it like amateur, and even as ignoramus. The first geologist, Louis Agassiz, when with him, sees merit in the ideas of Muir, and rents it like “the first man who has an adequate design of the action of the glaciers”.

In 1871, Muir discovers an active glacier alpine behind Merced Peak, which helps deeply with the consideration of its theories. He is also a very productive writer, who has a great number of his accounts and books published until New York. Moreover, this year, one of the heroes of Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, arrives at Yosemite and seeks it. Former professor de Muir at the University of Wisconsin, Ezra Carr, and the woman of Carr, encourage it to publish her ideas. They also present it to the notable ones like Emerson, like with eminent scientists like Louis Agassiz, John Tyndall, John Torrey, Clinton Hart Merriam and Jospeh LeConte.

A large earthquake centered beside Lone Fucks, in California, in the Vallée of Owens is strongly felt in the Valley of Yosemite in March 1872. The seism awakes Muir at the dawn, which runs out of its hut, at the same time content and frightened, by exclaiming “a noble earthquake! ”. The colonists of the other valleys, which continue to adhere to the ideas of Whitney, are frightened with the idea that the seism can be the prelude of a catastrophic deepening of the valley. Muir does not have the same fear, and is put promptly in inspection, with the gleam of the Moon, new research Talus created by the crumbling caused by the earthquake. This event involves world more and more to be attached to the ideas of Muir in connection with the formation of the valley.

In complement of its studies of geology, Muir also inquires into the alive one in the area of Yosemite. It follows two specializations, the distribution of the Giant Sequoia along the western side of the Nevada Sierra, and the ecology of its isolated thickets, in 1873 and 1874. In fact, in 1876, American Association for the Advance in knowledge publishes a note that Muir wrote, in connection with the distribution and of the ecology of the trees.

In 1880, Muir Marie with Louisa Wanda Strentzel, of which the parents are owners of a large farm and fruit orchards with Martinez, a small town of California, in the North-East of San Francisco. During the ten years following, he devotes himself to the management of the family farm, representing 2600 hectares of rods and vines which became very prosperous. (Has its death, it leaves a property of 250.000 $, which was worth more than four million dollars in 2005. Their house and part of their farm is now a National Historic site). During these years, two girls are born, Wanda and Helen.

The voyage of Muir in the North-West

In 1888, after seven years of management to the farm, its health starts to be degraded. Under the insistence of his wife, it turns over in her mountains to even find itself, by climbing the Mount to him To groove, and by writing “Rise of the Mount To groove”.

Muir travels with the team which had unloaded on the island Wrangell on board US Corwin and which had asserted the island for the United States in 1881. He tells this experiment in his book the Cruising of Corwin . He dies, and is now buried in Mirror Lake, in Utah.

Studies upon the engagement for nature

Efforts of safeguarding

Muir launches out itself in its new role with much of strength. He imagines Yosemite and the Sierra like immaculate grounds. He sees that the greatest threat for the grounds of Yosemite and the Sierra is to make use of it like pastures, in particular for the sheep domesticates (that they called " hoofed locusts" , bottées grasshoppers). In June 1889, influence it editor associated with the magazine Century , Robert Underwood Johnson, camps with Muir in the Prairies of Tuolumne and sees, as of the first glance, the devastations that a broad herd of sheep made in the meadow. Johnson agrees to publish all the articles that Muir wrote in connection with excluding the pastures from the Sierra. It also agrees to use its influence to present a bill to the Congress which gives to Yosemite the statute national park, on the model of the national park of Yellowstone.

The law, which follows primarily the recommendations that Muir proposed in two articles of the Century (" The Treasury of Yosemite" and " Profile of the National park proposé" , both published in 1890), passed to the congress the September 30th 1890. Despite everything, with the great distress of Muir, the law leaves the Valley of Yosemite to the control of the State. With this partial victory with its credit, Muir helps to train an environmental organization called the Sierra Club, the May 28th 1892 and is elected as a its first president (a position whom it keeps until his death 22 years later). In 1894, its first book, the Mountains of California , is published.

Safeguarding against Conservation

In July 1896, Muir becomes friendly with another large leader of the preserving movement, Gifford Pinchot. This friendship breaks at the end of the summer 1897, when Pinchot publishes a declaration in a newspaper of Seattle which encourages the pastures of sheep in the forest reserves. Muir is confronted with Pinchot and required an explanation. When Pinchot reiterates its position, Muir tells him " I do not want to deal with toi" any more;. This philosophical cleavage extends, and splits the preserving movement in two camps: the preservative ones, carried out by Muir, and the camp of Pinchot, which keeps the " term; consevateur". Muir is deeply opposed to the marketing of nature. The two men discuss their positions in popular magazines like Outlook , Harper' S Weekly , Atlantic Monthly , World' S Work, and Century . Muir argues in favor of the safeguarding of the resources for their values spiritual and élévatives; Pinchot sees the conservation like a means of intelligent management of the resources of the nation. The two men are opposed hopelessly on the exploitation of the natural resources, including on deforestation.

In 1899, Muir accompanies E.H. Harriman, a framework of the railroads, and other scientists estimated, in his famous voyage of exploration along the coast of Alaska on board a luxurious steamer called the George W. Elder . It will have, later, recourse to its friendship with Harriman to apply a political pressure to the Congress to make adopt a preserving legislation.

In 1903, the president Theodore Roosevelt accompanies Muir with the visit by a park. Muir joined it with Oakland, in California, for a voyage by train to Raymond, California too. The presidential entourage travels in diligence in the park. During the voyage towards the park, Muir discusses with the president an error management the valley and an exploitation invading its resources. Before even as they do not enter the park, it is able to convince Roosevelt that the best way of protecting the valley is to impose a federal control and a management.

After being entered the park and having seen the beauty of this valley, the president asks has Muir to show him Yosemite truth. Muir and Roosevelt leave to camp in the back country. Sat around a fire, the duet discusses until late in the night, falls asleep with the free air and is slightly covered by a small fresh snowfall the morning - one night that Roosevelt will never forget.

Muir redoubles efforts with the Sierra Club to consolidate the management of the park and is rewarded in 1905 when the Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and the valley for Yosemite in the park. His Louisa wife dies on August 6th, 1905.

Works

a summer in the Sierra
Voyages in Alaska

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