John Muir 's Legacy Scotland, Wisconsin, and California

MCConnell (who is a kind of celebrity due to his tv show on Nature for many years) introducing John Muir speaker  Harold W. Wood, Jr.Chair Sierra Club  John Muir Education Team.  Webmaster,
Sierra Club John Muir Exhibition  on the web: www. johnmuir.info 

Biography of John Muir 

Harold Wood took us to Dunbar, Scotland, where John Muir is regarded as a "native son", and one of their most famous citizens, with the exception of Robert Burns, who was a favorite poet of John Muir. They have created a John Muir history hiking and cycling trail in Scotland, as well as a John Muir Way, in Dunbar, and have preserved his birthplace as a house museum, and have added an extensive education museum which since 2012 has had 100,000 visitors,  along with creation of curricula in the schools to educate children to see him as a model who preserves the environment.  This includes a graphic novel used in the high schools, and teachers research available on a website.   They held an extensive national conference honoring John Muir.  Nothing so comprehensive exists in the USA.  John Muir is viewed as a battle between "right" and "wrong", saving our environment and our natural world.  The John Muir Trust in the UK preserves lands and even purchases the meadows and highlands for preservation.  They give a John Muir award, for correction and care of wild places, large and small.

In the USA, of course, we can honor John Muir through his creation of The Sierra Club, and the national park system.  We need to "save something" greater than ourselves.

Wisconsin has a healthier program than  California for honoring John Muir.   JM spent his boyhood(arrived when age 11, in 1949) and recalled how they rooted out the forest to create a farm, and how much he liked the lake and meadow on the farm, and sought to preserve it, even when he left to enter the University of Wisconsin as a young man, and creating a life long friendship with a biologist cum botanist and his wife, which would support him in the future. Wisconsin has preserved John Muir's childhood home "Fountain Lake Farm" (1957 with creation of a country park.   Recently, the National Heritage Land Trust purchased 200 acres of wetland, preserving the woods and 48 acres settled by John Muir's father. I slso know that a plaque is present on the campus overlook, where it is said that John Muir used to come and contemplate the lake.  Wisconsin has a "friends of John Muir" organization     The Sierra Club in Wisconsin is called "The John Muir Club".

Mr. Wood made a plea that Californians pay more attention to the legacy of John Muir, in having persuaded Teddy Roosevelt to create  a park system to protect the lands in California, especially Yosemite.    Few bay visitors come to the Martinez home of John Muir and there is no museum, only the preservation of the house and its contents.  Recently, however, a conservation group did buy a site that a developer of houses wanted to claim so that was a victory. I have been trying to visit this historical house museum since July without success.  I have had another cancellation, in that the Sierra Club led tour for this week has been cancelled, due to a conflicted reservation, and is not being rescheduled.   A neighbor promised to take me there, and did not live up to her word; why people are not more interested in this figure's life is beyond my comprehension. ! 
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The bay area does have the Muir Woods(hard to believe that it is not well visited!)   There is a mural of John Muir in Santa Monica, that was endangered, but has been preserved from destruction.  Although John Muir is not taught in an integrated curriculum, John Muir is a center for a high school essay contest each year.   When Bill Clinton  visited the National Sequoia Park, he cited John Muir as  "preaching forestry from heaven" . 

The Petrified Forest  designated a national monument in Arizona in 1962 was established as a national park in 1970,  The Pinnacles is the most recent National Monument to become a park, in 2013.    President Obama has just declared the San Gabriel  Mountains north of  Los Angeles as a National Monument.  Mr Wood concludes: "Nature gives strength to body and soul.  Advocacy has given us many gains, with John Muir as our model advocate. "