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John Muir: Prophet of the Wilderness
| Article
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13621 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1988 |
3,897 Words |
| Author
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Tom Pniewski
Tom Pniewski is a musicologist at Hunter College in New York. |
John Muir, pioneer American conservationist, was a man of paradox and contradiction. A Scot by birth, he came to embody the American transcendental love of the alliance with nature. A gifted inventor and mechanic, Muir left a promising career in industry to live in uninhabited wilderness. An eccentric who had little interest in big cities and their sophisticated societies, he became the associate of presidents and politicians. A self-taught naturalist, he challenged the leading scientists of the day and proved them wrong; almost a mystic by nature, he was a gifted, articulate, and prolific writer. We are all indebted to him for his work, which helped bring into existence the National Park system as well as a national awareness of the value, importance, and fragility of our natural resources.
Muir was born on April 21, 1838, in Dunbar, Scotland, the third of eight children and the oldest boy. He grew up studying French, Latin, and mathematics under stern teachers. The emphasis was on memorization and, as he later recalled, "if we failed in any part, however slight, we were whipped; for the grand, simple, all-sufficing Scotch discovery had been made that there was a close connection between the skin and the memory, and that irritating the skin excited the memory to any desired degree."
At home, Muir studied the Bible under the even more stern direction of his father, Daniel Muir, a merchant and member of a sect called the Disciples of Christ. Beatings were a regular part of home instruction as well; by the time he was 11, Muir had "about three-fourths of the Old Testament and all of the New by heart and by sore flesh."
In 1849, Muir's father, inspired by tales of fortunes to be made and religious freedom to be enjoyed in the New World, emigrated and settled on a piece of wild land in central Wisconsin near the city of Portage. The father harshly disciplined his family, forcing the boys to work in the fields from dawn to dusk; meals were taken in a sacramental silence, and little time was left for reading. Yet Muir managed to get copies of Milton, Shakespeare, and other poets--of whom his father heartily disapproved--as well as accounts of journeys by Alexander von Humboldt, who traveled through South America, and Mungo Park, who explored the Niger River of Africa. Dreams were planted in young John's head that were to inspire him throughout his life and find realization 60 and more years later.
Mechanic and Inventor
John and his
...
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