John Muir's Wisconsin Preservation
What motivated John Muir to protect America's wild places one has to return to "that glorious Wisconsin wilderness" of the Sierra Club founder's boyhood, in the years of Muir's arrival in rural Marquette County, from Scotland, at age 11, and his departure for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, my alma mater, --50 miles from his home -- at age 22. I used to retreat to the lookout on the UW Madison campus overlooking the lake, which is named for John Muir, to read and meditate when a student in the mid-60s and early 70's. In Muir's words, " This sudden splash into pure wilderness- baptism in Nature's warm heart -- how utterly happy it made us!" Muir wrote this entry in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. "Here without knowing it we were still at school; every wild lesson a love lesson not whipped but charmed us into us ." This month's Sierra reported this observation about Muir, who is more honored and remembered in Wi...