The Conservationist, the explorer, the author, and one of the first people in the United states to want to stand up to preserve nature, John Muir was a pinnacle in the conservation movement, and he had an enormous impact on peoples outlook on the environment long after his time on this Earth. John Muir was one of the worlds first environmental activists. His actions helped to preserve places like Sequoia National Park, Yosemite Valley, and countless other wilderness areas. John Muir co-founded one of the most influential, and successful conservation organizations in the United States, which is still very influential to this day (Encyclopedia of Biography, 2010). Muir has been immortalized in the United states and around the world by having places like John Muir Trail, Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Camp Muir, and Muir Glacier all named after him in his honor (Wenk 2007).
John Muir was born in 1838, in Dunbar Scotland. He was the son of Daniel and Anne Gilrye Muir and the third born out of eight siblings (Encyclopedia of Biography). In Muir’s early years up to age 10 Muir was known as a bit of a restless child, and was prone to beatings from his father. Author Amy Marquis attributed his early fascination with the environment to his father’s strict religious upbringing, because his father considered anything that took away from John’s Bible studies as unnecessary and unacceptable (Marquis 2007). Around age eleven the Muir family moved to Portage Wisconsin in the United States of America. The Muir family farm is now a National Historic Landmark called “Fountain Lake Farm” (National Historic Landmarks Program 2008). John Muir was brought up under a strict and religious household where his father...
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...Club has over 1.3 million members and has helped with establishing numerous national parks. Muir is known as the “patron saint of the American wilderness.” His words have forever changed the way North Americans see their forests, mountains, and many other pieces of nature (Ehrlich 2000). Not only did Muir lead the way in protecting forests, but his writing gave a conception of what Thurman Wilkins wrote was the relationship between "human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life," (Wilkins 1995). From John Muir’s Childhood Bible teachings he seemed to retain one thing more than everything else that sums up his philosophies. Henry Fairfield Osborne noted that the thing he retained was "this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament that all the works of nature are directly the work of God." (Sierra Club Bulletin 1916).
David Jason Muir was born on the 8th November 1973 in Syracuse, New York USA. He is known to the world as a television reporter and anchorman of the ABC Show “ABC World News Tonight with David Muir”. His career as a reporter earned him several awards, which includes an honorary award, which he received for his reports of the assassinations of Israel`s PM, from Radio-Television News Directors Association.
Leopold would most likely approve of the work being done to preserve Gorongosa National Park and would agree with Wilson in that nature is our home and we should treat it as such, but Leopold, unlike Wilson, argues that it is our moral obligation, and not just our pleasure, to respect nature. Additionally, Wilson seems to focus specifically on the plants and animals that make up an ecosystem, but Leopold extends his focus to non-living components such as soil and water because they are instrumental in maintaining the integrity of land communities. Leopold might urge Wilson to make sure that he is not simply educating people at Gorongosa, but really help them genuinely understand land ethics. This way, humans can evolve a sense of praise and approval for preserving the integrity and beauty of the biotic community (262), and social disapproval for doing the exact
In the essay “The Calypso Borealis,” John Muir used imagery and personification to describe his journey within nature to find a flower. Muir shares the deep bond he has with nature when writing about his experience with the Calypso, and the great lengths he went through to find it. As Muir was describing his journey, he used words such as “bewildering” and “discouraging” to show the hardships he faced. Once he had found the Calypso, he wrote that he “cried for joy” to show just how much happiness it brought to him. These words and phrases allow the reader to grasp that even though he faced so many problems and setbacks, it was worth it to find the “rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants.” In paragraph 4, Muir describes the difference
Theodore Roosevelt: The Great Environmentalist This Paper will outline President Theodore Roosevelt’s role in helping to conserve our environment during his administration (1901-1909). It will also examine his theory of a stronger American democracy through environmental conservationism. “The movement for the conservation of wildlife, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.” (Roosevelt 274)
John Muir: John Muir also known as "John of the Mountains", was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States and was the founder of the Sierra Club.
In the 1800’s into the early 1900’s a man named John Muir began to explore the western American lands. He traveled down South and up North. But, when he reached Yosemite Valley, his life changed. As said in John Muir’s Wild America, written by Tom Melham, “Following the forest-lined mountain trails, Muir climbed higher into the Sierra Nevada: suddenly, a deep valley enclosed by colossal steeps and mighty water falls yawned before him. Spell bound, he entered Yosemite Valley” (79). Muir’s travels and adventures, highlighted in Melham’s book, explain this man’s love of the wilderness. Yosemite Valley was like a wide, open home to Muir, who, lived alone and discovered new landings and important later landmarks that create the aura of Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Valley was given to the state of California in 1864, part of the continuous idea of Manifest Destiny, later, in 1890; Yosemite became one of the first National Parks (“World Book”). Uniquely, the longer Muir stayed the more that he...
Not many people know of the used-to-be 150-mile excursion that the Glen Canyon had to offer. Not many people know how to sail a raft down a river for a week. Not many people know how to interact with nature and the animals that come with it. We seem to come from a world that is dependent on time and consumed in money. Edward Abbey is what you would call an extreme environmentalist. He talks about how it was an environmental disaster to place a dam in which to create Lake Powell, a reservoir formed on the border of Utah and Arizona. He is one of the few that have actually seen the way Glen Canyon was before they changed it into a reservoir. Today, that lake is used by over a million people, and is one of the biggest recreation hot spots in the western United States.
.... The conservation movement had grown and spread as a result of the industrialization of America. John Muir became a leader of this movement to protect the natural world for all generations. His outspoken actions were major influences in the protection of many national parks as well as the formal arrangement of the National Park System which today still protects our natural world.
He believes that the wilderness has helped form us and that if we allow industrialization to push through the people of our nation will have lost part of themselves; they will have lost the part of themselves that was formed by the wilderness “idea.” Once the forests are destroyed they will have nothing to look back at or to remind them of where they came from or what was, and he argues everyone need to preserve all of what we have now.
Mission San Juan Capistrano is a mission like no other. Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1775 and in 1776. Serra’s Chapel was the first permanent building. It was made out of Adobe brick instead of wood. Local native Americans helped build the mission and hang the bells. The people worked for 8 days then stopped. They buried the mission. The people came back the next year to dig out and rebuild the mission. A neat fact about San Juan Capistrano is the brand of their livestock is the letters C,A and P twisted together. San Juan Capistrano is called the jewel of the missions. This unique mission is not an ordinary, everyday mission.
The purpose of this paper is to inform you about John Muir and his effect on America's national forests. He was a Scottish American and was born in Dunbar, UK on April 21, 1838. He arrived in the U.S in 1868 when he was 30 years of age. John Muir was one of the most influential naturalists in the world. If it wasn't for John Muir we probably would not have the national park known as Yosemite. Some of his goals in the U.S. were the preservations of the national forests. He was an environmental philosopher and did well for the U.S. national parks. John Muir founded the Sierra Club, an American organization and the 211-mile trail called the Sierra Nevada was named in his honor.(John Muir, wikipedia)
Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
When thinking about the transcendental period and/or about individuals reaching out and submerging themselves in nature, Henry David Thoreau and his book, Walden, are the first things that come to mind. Unknown to many, there are plenty of people who have braved the environment and called it their home during the past twenty years, for example: Chris McCandless and Richard Proenneke. Before diving into who the “modern Thoreaus” are, one must venture back and explore the footprint created by Henry Thoreau.