The Invention of Nature

Chapter 23: Preservation and Nature

1

Muir travelled lightly: Worster 2008, p.120.

2

Muir’s appearance: Merrill Moores’s ‘Recollections of John Muir as a Young Man’, ibid., pp.109–10.

3

‘How intensely I desire’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 13 September 1865, JM online.

4

‘snow-capped Andes’: Muir to Daniel Muir, 7 January 1868, ibid.

5

‘John Muir, Earth-planet’: Muir Journal 1867–8, ibid., endpapers; for route, p.2.

6

‘I was fond of’: Muir 1913, p.3..

7

‘by heart’: Ibid., p.27.

8

explorer stories: Ibid.,p.207.

9

religious freedom: Gisel 2008, p.3; Worster 2008, p.37ff.

10

Muir’s wanderlust: Gifford 1996, p.87.

11

‘scientific curriculum’: Worster 2008, p.73.

12

Muir and Jeanne Carr: Holmes 1999, p.129ff.; Worster 2008, pp.79–80.

13

willingness to ‘murder’: Muir to Frances Pelton, 1861, Worster 2008, p.87.

14

‘University of the’: Muir 1913, p.287.

15

knack for inventions: Worster 2008, p.94ff.

16

following AH’s footsteps: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 13 September 1865, JM online.

17

nicknamed ‘Botany’: Muir 1924, vol.1, p.124.

18

‘flooded forests of’: Ibid., p.120.

19

‘simple relationship’: Muir to Emily Pelton, 1 March 1864, Gisel 2008, p.44.

20

Muir from Canada to US: Holmes 1999, p.135ff.

21

‘in the heart of’: Muir 1924, vol.1, p.153.

22

‘a botanical journey’: Muir to Merrills and Moores, 4 March 1867, JM online.

23

Muir accident: Muir 1924, vol.1, p.154ff.; Muir to Sarah and David Galloway, 12 April 1867; Muir to Jeanne Carr, 6 April 1867; Muir to Merrills and Moores, 4 March 1867, JM online.

24

‘in a glow with visions’: Muir to Merrills and Moores, 4 March 1867, JM online.

25

‘tropical vegetation’: Muir’s ‘Memoirs’, Gifford 1996, p.87.

26

Muir began walk south: Muir Journal 1867–8, JM online, p.2.

27

Muir avoided towns: Ibid., pp.22, 24.

28

mountains Tennessee: Ibid., p.17.

29

‘highways upon which’: Ibid., pp.32–3.

30

‘fragment’ in nature: Muir 1916 p.164; Muir Journal 1867–8, JM online, pp.194–5.

31

‘Why ought man to value’: Muir Journal 1867–8, JM online, p.154; see also Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.2, pp.288, 371, MHT.

32

‘the smallest transmicroscopic’: Muir Journal 1867–8, JM online, p.154; Muir inserted the word ‘cosmos’ in his published account, Muir 1916, p.139; also highlighted in Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.2, p.371, MHT.

33

‘glorious mountains’: Muir to David Gilrye Muir, 13 December 1867, JM online.

34

Muir to California: Holmes 1999, p.190; Worster 2008, pp.147–8.

35

‘cruel speed’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 26 July 1868, JM online.

36

‘To any place’: Muir 1912, p.4; see also Muir ‘Memoir’, Gifford 1996, p.96.

37

‘Eden from end to’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 26 July 1868, JM online.

38

‘ploughed and pastured’: Muir, ‘The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West’,

Atlantic Monthly

, January 1898, p.17.

39

‘sweet enough for’: Muir to Catherine Merrill et al., 19 July 1868, JM online; see also Muir to David Gilrye Muir, 14 July 1868; JM to Jeanne Carr, 26 July 1868, JM online; Muir ‘Memoir’, Gifford 1996, p.96ff.

40

‘like the wall of’: Muir 1912, p.5.

41

‘gush direct from’: Muir, ‘The Treasures of the Yosemite’,

Century,

vol.40, 1890.

42

rainbows in spray: Muir 1912, p.11.

43

‘underworld of mosses’: Muir 1911, p.314.

44

AH counting flower cluster: Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.2, p.306, MHT.

45

counting ‘165,913’ blooms: Muir to Catherine Merrill et al., 19 July 1868, JM online.

46

‘glowing arch of’: Muir to Margaret Muir Reid, 13 January 1869, JM online.

47

‘When we try to pick’: This important sentence goes through various drafts from journal to published account – from ‘when we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken to everything in the universe’; then ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound by innumerable and incalculable cords to everything else in the universe’; and then the final version in Muir’s book: ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe’. Muir 1911, p.211; Muir Journal ‘Sierra’, summer 1869 (1887), MHT; Muir Journal ‘Sierra’, summer 1869 (1910), MHT.

48

‘a thousand invisible’: Muir Journal ‘Sierra’, summer 1869 (1887), MHT.

49

‘to learn something of’: Muir 1911, pp.321– 2.

50

‘unity of all the vital’ (footnote): Muir’s copy of AH Views 1896, pp.xi, 346 and AH Cosmos 1878, vol.2, p.438, MHT.

51

Muir in Yosemite: Between 1868 and 1874, Muir spent forty months in Yosemite, Gisel 2008, p.93.

52

cabin in valley: Muir ‘Memoir’, Gifford 1996, p.112.

53

‘screaming among the’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 29 July 1870, JM online.

54

‘the farther and higher’: Muir 1911, p.212.

55

Muir’s glacial theory: Muir, ‘Yosemite Glaciers’,

New York Tribune

, 5 December 1871; see also Muir, ‘Living Glaciers of California’,

Overland Monthly

, December 1872 and Gifford 1996, p.143ff.

56

stakes in glacier: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 8 October 1872; Muir to Catherine Merrill, 12 July 1872, JM online.

57

‘I have nothing to send’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 11 December 1871, ibid.

58

‘trust me and talk’: Muir to J.B. McChesney, 8–9 June 1871, ibid.

59

‘at the opening’: Muir to Joseph Le Conte, 27 April 1872, ibid.; Muir also highlighted the pages in Humboldt’s books that dealt with the distribution of plants. (Muir’s copy of AH Views 1896, p.317ff. and AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.1, p.116ff., MHT.)

60

‘unconditional’ surrender: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 16 March 1872, JM online.

61

Muir at Upper Yosemite Fall: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 3 April 1871, ibid.

62

‘as surely as a mountain’: Robert Underwood Johnson about Muir, in Gifford 1996, p.874.

63

‘A noble Earthquake’: Muir to Emerson, 26 March 1872, JM online.

64

‘Destruction is always’: Ibid.

65

‘most suntanned and’: Muir to Emily Pelton, 16 February 1872, JM online.

66

scientists arrived: Muir to Emily Pelton, 2 April 1872, JM online; Gisel 2008, pp.93, 105–6.

67

‘for public use’: U.S., Statutes at Large, 15, in Nash 1982, p.106.

68

colourful ‘bugs’: Muir to Daniel Muir, 21 June 1870, JM online.

69

Muir and Emerson: Gifford 1996, pp.131–6; Jeanne Carr to Muir, 1 May 1871; Muir to Emerson, 8 May 1871; Muir to Emerson, 6 July 1871; Muir to Emerson, 26 March 1872, JM online.

70

‘sad commentary’: Muir on Emerson, Gifford 1996, p.133.

71

‘too befogged to’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, undated but this referred to Emerson’s letter to Muir of 5 February 1872, JM online.

72

‘Solitude … is a sublime’: Emerson to Muir, 5 February 1872, ibid.

73

Muir and loneliness: Muir underlined Thoreau’s comments on loneliness in his copy of

Walden

. Muir’s copy of Thoreau’s

Walden

(1906), pp.146, 150, 152, MHT.

74

feeling and rational thought: Muir marked Humboldt’s assertion in

Cosmos

that the connection between the ‘sensuous and the intellectual’ was vital for the understanding of nature; Muir’s copy of AH Cosmos 1878, vol.2, p.438, MHT.

75

‘I’m in the woods’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, autumn 1870, JM online.

76

‘dancing, waltzing in’: Muir 1911, pp.79, 135.

77

‘Come higher’: ibid., pp.90, 113

78

‘It’s all Love’: Muir to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 26 March 1872, JM online.

79

‘universal profusion’ (footnote): Muir’s copy of AH Views 1896, vol.1, pp. 210, 215, MHT.

80

‘breath of Nature’: Muir 1911, pp.48, 98.

81

‘part of wild Nature’: Muir 1911, p.326.

82

‘Four cloudless April’: Muir Journal ‘Twenty Hill Hollow’ 1869, 5 April 1869; Holmes 1999, p.197.

83

‘mountain temple’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 20 May 1869, ibid.

84

‘a thousand windows’: Muir 1911, pp. 82, 205.

85

preaching nature like ‘apostle’: Muir to Daniel Muir, 17 April 1869, JM online.

86

‘violation of these’: Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.1, p.502, see also vol.2, p.214, MHT; Muir’s copy AH Cosmos 1878, vol.2, pp.377, 381, 393, MHT.

87

‘no other worship’: Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.2, p.362, MHT.

88

‘sacred sanctuaries’: Muir’s copy of AH Views 1896, p.21, MHT.

89

‘sanctum sanctorum’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 26 July 1868, JM online.

90

Muir highlighted references to AH: Muir’s Thoreau and Darwin books, MHT.

91

Muir and AH’s comments on deforestation: Muir’s copy of AH Personal Narrative 1907, vol.1, pp.98, 207, 215, 476–7; vol.2, pp.9–10, 153, 207, MHT; Muir’s copy of AH Views 1896, pp.98, 215, MHT.

92

15 million acres: Johnson 1999, p.515.

93

railway tracks: Richardson 2007, p.131; Johnson 1999, p.535.

94

‘The rough conquest’: Frederick Jackson Turner in 1903, Nash 1982, p.147.

95

‘entice people to look’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 7 October 1874, JM online.

96

Muir and

Man and Nature

: Wolfe 1946, p.83.

97

for ‘national preserves’: Muir’s copy of Thoreau’s

Maine Woods

(1868), p.160 and also pp.122–3, 155, 158, MHT.

98

‘Nature’ was ‘a poet’: Muir 1911, p.211.

99

‘Our foreheads felt’: Samuel Merrill, ‘Personal Recollections of John Muir’; see also Robert Underwood Johnson, C. Hart Merriam, ‘To the Memory of John Muir’, Gifford 1996, pp.875, 889, 891, 895.

100 ‘glory in it all’: Muir and Sargent, September 1898, Anderson 1915, p.119.

101 ‘Squirrelville, Sequoia Co’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, autumn 1870, JM online.

102 a glorious wilderness’: Muir 1911, pp.17, 196.

103 ‘You cannot warm’ (footnote): Daniel Muir to Muir, 19 March 1874, JM online.

104 Muir in San Francisco: Worster 2008, p.216ff.

105 ‘barren & beeless’: Muir to Strentzels, 28 January 1879, JM online.

106 Muir about his future: Muir to Sarah Galloway, 12 January 1877, JM online; Worster 2008, p.238.

107 Carr introduced Louie: Worster 2008, p.238ff.

108 ‘lost & choked’: Muir to Millicent Shin, 18 April 1883, JM online.

109 Muir as father: Worster 2008, p.262.

110 Louie in Yosemite: Muir to Annie Muir, 16 July 1884, JM online.

111 Louie’s father died: Worster 2008, pp.324–5; for management of Martinez, see Kennedy 1996, p.31.

112 Muir, Johnson and Yosemite: Worster 2008, p.312ff., Nash 1982, p.131ff.

113 ‘no doubt these trees’: Muir 1920.

114 ‘But the pine is no’ (footnote): Muir’s copy of Thoreau’s Maine Woods (1868), p.123.

115 articles in the Century: Muir, ‘The Treasures of the Yosemite’ and ‘Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park’, Century, vols. 40 and 41, 1890.

116 ‘mountain streets full of life’: and following quotes, Muir, ‘The Treasures of the Yosemite’, Century, vol.40, 1890.

117 Yosemite National Park: Nash 1982, p.132.

118 ‘Uncle Sam’: Muir 1901, p.365.

119 ‘defence association’: Robert Underwood Johnson, 1891, Nash 1982, p.132.

120 ‘do something for wildness’: Muir to Henry Senger, 22 May 1892, JM online.

121 Muir’s publications: Kimes and Kimes 1986, pp.1–162.

122 ‘I do not want anyone’: Theodore Roosevelt to Muir, 14 March 1903, JM online.

123 ‘solemn temple of’: Theodore Roosevelt to Muir, 19 May 1903, ibid.

124 ‘I have no plan’: Muir to Charles Sprague Sargent, 3 January1898, ibid.

125 Hetch Hetchy fight: Nash 1982, pp.161–81; Muir, ‘The Hetch Hetchy Valley’, Sierra Club Bulletin, vol.6, no.4, January 1908.

126 ‘universal struggle’: New York Times, 4 September 1913.

127 ‘aroused from sleep’: Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, 1 January 1914, Nash 1982, p.180.

128 ‘Nothing dollarable is’: Muir, Memorandum from John Muir, 19 May 1908 (for 1908 Governors Conference on Conservation), JM online.

129 plans for South America early years: Muir to Daniel Muir, 17 April and 24 September 1869; Muir to Mary Muir, 2 May 1869; Muir to Jeanne Carr, 2 October 1870; Muir to J.B. McChesney, 8 June 1871, ibid.

130 ‘Have I forgotten’: Muir to Betty Averell, 2 March 1911, Branch 2001, p.15.

131 Muir in Berlin: Muir, 26–9 June 1903, Muir Journal ‘World Tour’, pt.1, 1903, JM online.

132 ‘your Humboldt trip[s]’: Helen S. Wright to Muir, 8 May 1878, ibid.

133 ‘under Humboldt’: Henry F. Osborn to Muir, 18 November 1897, ibid.

134 to be ‘a Humboldt’: Muir to Jeanne Carr, 13 September 1865, ibid.

135 ‘before it is too late’: Muir to Robert Underwood Johnson, 26 January 1911, Branch 2001, p.10; see also p.xxvi ff.; Fay Sellers to Muir, 8 August 1911, JM online.

136 Muir leaves California for East Coast: Branch 2001, pp.7–9.

137 ‘the great hot river’: Muir to Katharine Hooker, 10 August 1911, ibid., p.31.

138 ‘Don’t fret about’: Muir to Helen Muir Funk, 12 August 1911, ibid., p.32.

139 ‘I only went out’: Muir in 1913, Wolfe 1979, p.439.