John Muir. Frederick Turner
he is a gifted writer who creates images of enduring power, whether of Scotland, California or Alaska. In his appended “Notes on Sources”, Turner gives us a revealing insight into the biographer’s art and makes plain his own motives for undertaking the four-year project which resulted in this book; he was “disappointed by the flatness of the established portraits of Muir and their critical lack of historical and cultural perspective”. As a folklorist and professional historian, his primary aim was to present Muir in the historical and cultural context of his times, and he succeeds admirably. Indeed, the breadth of his research and the depth of scholarship are impressive.
Turner presents Muir’s life firmly in the context of the tides of history which swept millions of other Scots and Irish emigrants to the United States: the revolutionary unrest of Europe’s “Hungry Forties”, the Highland Clearances, the Irish Famine of 1847–48, the California Goldrush of 1849, the American Civil War and the great currents of religious and political thought in 19th-century America. Crucially, he illuminates the birth and emergence of the Conservation Ethic as a persistent theme in American society, largely as a result of Muir’s writings and campaigns.
Turner also uses a variety of innovatory techniques to bring his portrait of Muir to life. He wanted, he says, to go beyond the limitations of conventional biography and was not content to produce a mere hagiography of regurgitated letters, books and journals. Transcending these standard ingredients, Turner has re-enacted many of Muir’s experiences in order to reconstruct his “imagined perceptions”. During four years of research he has walked the cobbled streets of Dunbar on a rainy night, paddled in the white surf of Belhaven and explored the glens of the Lammermuir Hills. In Wisconsin he visited the Muir homesteads and dived among the lilies of Fountain Lake, to feel the rushes trail along his body in the sunlit water. In California he followed Muir’s trail to Yosemite’s high country to discover the sheep-camp and alpine meadows of My First Summer in the Sierra and tracked him along the Hiwassee river from Tennessee to North Carolina, while reading The Thousand Mile Walk. Envisioning these scenes through Muir’s imagined eyes, he has tried to reconstruct Muir’s feelings against the context of the literary and historical evidence, which he knows intimately. The result is a rich and engaging biography that brings the drama of Muir’s adventures to life against the backdrop of American history.
However, it should be remembered that Turner was addressing an American audience to whom John Muir is a household name, and saw little need in his prologue to chart the cardinal points of a life, which to millions of Americans, is as familiar as that of Henry David Thoreau or Martin Luther King. But in Scotland, and indeed the UK as a whole, Muir’s story has barely begun to be told and so Turner’s biography fills a crucial need.
In academic circles the contrast between the United Kingdom and the United States is dramatic: in America dozens of university and college environmental courses focus on the writings of Muir, as well as those of modern ecologists like Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry or Rachel Carson. Similarly, many English departments offer courses on Literature and the Environment, which feature Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, Wordsworth and Blake, as well as contemporary writers like Gary Snyder. In the United Kingdom, with the exception of St Andrews’ Department of History of the Environment, or the research degrees in environmental values offered by Lancaster University’s Department of Philosophy, such courses are generally unheard of.
In our schools the knowledge gap is equally marked: for millions of American children John Muir serves as classroom hero and educational role-model. To them he is the very epitome of the mountain-man and muscular conservationist as depicted in more than a dozen children’s biographies. In Scotland and the UK until very recently Muir’s adventures and conservation ethos have not figured in the curriculum, although this situation is currently being addressed by the Education Departments of East Lothian and the City of Edinburgh.
For the general public in the USA, Muir is ensconced in the environmental pantheon alongside Thoreau, Emerson and Audubon; indeed for many, he has transcended mere historical fact to become a mythic archetype, casting his protective aegis across the continent as the ever-watchful guardian of Nature. In Scotland, he remains virtually unknown to the mass of people.
There is an enigma inherent in all of this; many historical figures are respected for their achievements, a few are even revered. But Muir is accorded something that goes beyond simple respect or historical stature, even eighty years after his death. Anyone who has visited the national parks of California, Wisconsin and other states will have encountered the reverence, and what can only be described as affection, with which John Muir is remembered. Almost every visitor centre recounts something of the tale of the Scots genius who fought to protect wilderness areas from the forester’s axe, the miner’s drill or the “hoofed locusts” of the sheep and cattle barons. Indeed, the maps and landscapes of America are indelibly stamped with the evidence of Muir’s success: Muir Woods, Muir Beach, Muir Glacier, Mount Muir, the John Muir Trail, and over two hundred other sites, testify to the enduring impact of his achievement.
Across the continent, over thirty schools and colleges proudly bear his name and, with Martin Luther King, he shares the rare distinction of a day in the calendar named for him. John Muir Day, every April 21st, is a focus for environmental celebrations throughout the United States, since it was resolved:
… by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America: that April 21, 1988, is designated as “John Muir Day”, and the President is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
But why is this Scot, largely unknown in his own country, ranked with Thoreau, Kennedy and King in the national hall of fame? And why is the name of this boy from Dunbar so deeply engraved in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, and so liberally scattered across their maps? For some it is the sheer diversity of his talents and achievements that inspires admiration: emigrant, farm-boy, inventor, explorer, mountaineer, botanist, biologist, geologist, fruit-farmer, political lobbyist, presidential adviser, writer, poet, eco-philosopher and wilderness-sage. To others it is the epic nature of his journey from humble origins in Scotland, to eventual enthronement as the elder statesman of the American conservation movement; friend and adviser to presidents, he was lauded with honours by the greatest universities of his day.
Muir’s life affirms that most cherished myth of the American Dream: that hard work, self-help and self-belief inevitably lead to success in the land of equality and opportunity. And the difficult path which Muir travelled, with all of its mental, physical and spiritual hardships, still resonates deeply with millions of Americans whose ancestors fled economic and religious oppression in the Old World to build prosperous lives in the New. But for most people, it is as the founder of the conservation movement, the first person to call clearly for the conservation of wild places and wildlife, that John Muir is affectionately remembered.
Any traveller who ventures into the great wilderness of Yosemite National Park or any mountain or desert area in that vast country, is reminded that if John Muir had not fought to conserve all this unspoiled beauty, it might well have been destroyed long ago. Muir’s conservation battles were not easy ones, as Turner makes plain; they involved years of struggle against overwhelming odds before victory was assured. It should never be forgotten that Muir’s campaigns: to save the Big Trees, to extend Yosemite National Park, and to protect the High Sierra from annexation as a vast sheep ranch, were pitched against the flood-tide of rampant capitalism. This was the heyday of the “robber-barons”; the timber, mining and railroad magnates were busy stripping the forests, the gold seams and the mineral deposits of the west, building financial empires and accruing legendary fortunes.
Law and order was a tender new growth on the western frontier and choosing to oppose such rapacious interests could be unwise and even dangerous. Despite these threats, Muir confronted the richest and most powerful cartels in America at that time, along with their allies in Congress and the Senate, and he usually won.
His unassailable authority on conservation issues was grounded in hard-won mountain knowledge and many years of geographical and scientific exploration of the territory. Climbing the mountains alone, he studied the rocks and glaciers and mapped the distribution of the redwoods and sugar pines; he collected hundreds of