At last night’s JMA board meeting I saw this entreaty penned with earnest flourish in an original letter by John Muir to a book seller in Texas. He was writing to ask for support against the infamous Hetch Hetchy Dam, a battle that Muir ultimately lost. Apparently this closing remark, “Help us if you can”, was a common request in his persuasive letters to friends and potential friends, alike.
These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
Source: John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: Century, 1912), 255–257, 260–262. Reprinted in Roderick Nash, The American Environment: Readings in The History of Conservation (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1968).
I was able to see this because last night curator Steve Pauly brought portions of the William and Mayme Kimes Collection, which the John Muir Association purchased ten years ago from these avid collectors and mountaineers. It contains (among other things) every edition of Muir’s books, signed and inscribed volumes, and much of Muir’s personal library. The idea is to eventually have this collection displayed at a visitor’s center at the Muir site, and to make it available for ongoing research into this important American voice.
One set of items in current discussion was Muir’s complete Shakespeare collection. Barbara Mossberg is a founding dean in in the college of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Cal State Monterey Bay. She is interested in how other writers, such as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Thoreau shaped Muir’s thinking and writing at the time. She wants access to the collection to analyze and understand Muir’s pertinent, delicate notes which he penciled into volumes along with underlines and favorite quotations. She believes this could help us understand how seminal writers influenced his work. The question before the board is how to safely allow that access so that Muir’s work can be better understood, and still preserved.
The Shakespeare collection was one of those J.M. Dent-looking pocket libraries with the complete volumes enclosed in two boxes. He pulled Henry V from its place and read Muir’s notes from the back, a reference to the speech “Once more into the breech dear friends” and my fingers literally itched to see what else Muir might have jotted down, oh say in the Hamlet volume. It was wonderful to be so close to the thinking of a man whose vision continues to give us so much.
As the collection was carefully packed away and Mr. Pauly concluded his presentation, I considered Muir’s epic advocacy. One thing I am learning in my time on the board, is that my romantic notion of him as this beloved farther of our National Parks is missing a hugely salient point. He was the original “endless pressure, endlessly applied”. Muir was an advocate, a burr, a voice raised and written in fire, a prod, a nudge, a handshake and a branding iron for all those developers who wanted to carve up the land for profit, and all those bad scientists who wanted to keep saying things that weren’t true just because they had been taught them in school.
(In short, Muir was much, much, much more trouble than a woman trying to save beavers.)
The recognition pleases me enormously. I was afraid I was too outspoken to be accepted among the well respected John Muir Association, but it turns out I only barely qualify.
