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 Wisconsin, and in his native Scotland, than in California at Yosemite, or at the house museum and estate in Martinez, which I have still to visit...the pilgrimage always being postponed...
Currently, in Wisconsin, thanks to Muir dedicated activists, 1,400 acres of Muir's early "stomping grounds" will soon be permanently protected. The Sierra Club's John Muir chapter in Wisconsin teamed up with the Natural Heritage Land Trust and Wisconsin Friends of John Muir to acquire a 198 acre farm, 60 acres of which were part of the 320 acre farm settled by Muir's father, Daniel Muir. The parcels border 60 acres of prairies, wetlands next door to the Fox River National Wildlife Refuge, 1.054 acres of wetland and upland habitat offering protection for the greater sandhill crane, one of Leopold's defending species studies. John Mc Phee also wrote about the crane and I recall the battles to avoid extinction of this bird.
One of the local Sierra Club chapter members, who shares Muir's love of dragonflies, says, "You can see what Muir saw, feel what he experienced. "
It is my childhood in Wisconsin, which no doubt instilled the love of nature, which brings me so much pleasure, and now again, comfort. We must think green, live green, cherish green. I read Gretel Ehrlich's JOHN MUIR NATURE'S VISIONARY, and discovered that I live not far from his elected home, once he stopped living so much of his time in Yosemite, where I plan to go with the Yosemite Conservancy for the first time in late March, for a Spring gathering of the authors and photographers who have preserved Yosemite in the psychic memory. I also have a copy of Obata's Yosemite, a gift to myself for Christmas, published by the Yosemite Association. All this is to prepare me for the place where John Muir persuaded President Roosevelt by personally taking him out on a tour and camping in Yosemite, to start our National Park system!
This month's Sierra reported this observation about Muir, who is more honored and remembered in Wisconsin, and in his native Scotland, than in California at Yosemite, or at the house museum and estate in Martinez, which I have still to visit...the pilgrimage always being postponed...
Currently, in Wisconsin, thanks to Muir dedicated activists, 1,400 acres of Muir's early "stomping grounds" will soon be permanently protected. The Sierra Club's John Muir chapter in Wisconsin teamed up with the Natural Heritage Land Trust and Wisconsin Friends of John Muir to acquire a 198 acre farm, 60 acres of which were part of the 320 acre farm settled by Muir's father, Daniel Muir. The parcels border 60 acres of prairies, wetlands next door to the Fox River National Wildlife Refuge, 1.054 acres of wetland and upland habitat offering protection for the greater sandhill crane, one of Leopold's defending species studies. John Mc Phee also wrote about the crane and I recall the battles to avoid extinction of this bird.
One of the local Sierra Club chapter members, who shares Muir's love of dragonflies, says, "You can see what Muir saw, feel what he experienced. "
It is my childhood in Wisconsin, which no doubt instilled the love of nature, which brings me so much pleasure, and now again, comfort. We must think green, live green, cherish green. I read Gretel Ehrlich's JOHN MUIR NATURE'S VISIONARY, and discovered that I live not far from his elected home, once he stopped living so much of his time in Yosemite, where I plan to go with the Yosemite Conservancy for the first time in late March, for a Spring gathering of the authors and photographers who have preserved Yosemite in the psychic memory. I also have a copy of Obata's Yosemite, a gift to myself for Christmas, published by the Yosemite Association. All this is to prepare me for the place where John Muir persuaded President Roosevelt by personally taking him out on a tour and camping in Yosemite, to start our National Park system!
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