Rethinking John Muir’s relevancy
By Lousi Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
John Muir is the patron saint of environmentalism, an epic figure whose writings of mystical enlightenment attained during lone treks in California’s wilderness glorified individualism, saved Yosemite and helped establish the national park system.
As the first president of the Sierra Club, Muir shaped enduring perceptions about how the wild world should be prioritized, protected and managed.
But now some critics are arguing that the world has changed so much in the century since his death that Muir has gone the way of wheelwrights.
He is no longer relevant.
“Muir’s legacy has to go,” said Jon Christensen, a historian with UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability. “It’s just not useful anymore.”
Jon, you need to stay in LA where you apparently belong. Muir is someone to behold. I have lived in the High Sierra’s for 30 yrs. YOUR type needs to stay south and choke among your environment. Your type have infested the Eastern Sierras with mindless ideas. I venture no further south than Bridgeport lest I run into LA fools attempting to learn to fish a pellet fed brood stock and call it a catch. Your type have no clue to the real wilderness up here. You have no business up here. Stay south where you belong! These wilds will eat you up.
Having read the full article and having some knowledge of the historical craft I would have to disagree with the dear professor. Yes John Muir did fight to preserve the cathedrals of nature, I am sure he would also appreciate small parish churches of nature in urban areas. As to squirrels, there is not a gardener in our small urban area of Lake Tahoe who does not dread them, but would not see them go away except in his or her garden. There are still cathedrals in the world to be preserved. John Muir still relevant today? Yes. I’ll plant Digitalis, by all thats holy they won’t eat the Digitalis.
“On Thursday, six weeks before the centennial of Muir’s death, conservationists, geographers, lawmakers, artists, historians and environmental justice advocates will meet at UCLA to discuss his legacy and relevance”.
Sounds like a bunch of the wrong people to be involved. YES, ye best stay in the sewer of Southern Cal where you belong. Don’t ruin our Sierras. Just leave them alone and don’t try to alter history. HISTORY is always relevant!!!!!!!! Wake up!!! You southern Cali. people wouldn’t know how to protect the environment if it was shoved where the sun won’t shine.
This is typical angry leftist agenda bile and an attempt to rewrite history when not discounting it. To think they are on the government payroll and indoctrinating young people is sickening. The pioneers of the environmental conservation movement sought to conserve and protect and have nothing in common with today’s radical element of leftist history re-writers complete with accusations against the historical figure, the history and what they stood for.
Of course situations change as do perspectives. But someone is supposed to be correct in all judgments made in a particular time and place FOREVER? 100 years later, you don’t have to agree with all of an individual’s conclusions or even some of them to conclude that he or she had an important and positive influence on their society.
I’ve recently had the pleasure of reading some of Muir’s books, so I can recommend Muir’s writings as exceptionally well written. The 100th Anniversary Edition of My First Summer in the Sierra, available at the South Lake Tahoe Library is a particular pleasure.
You LA people need to rethink your OWN relevancy. You’ve done nothing like he. Stick with your own ever polluting types down there. Deal with your open borders and ghetto gangs. Leave Muir and his memory alone. YOU people have no business up here.
Yes LA is the perfect place for this guy, someplace where he’ll never be without 4 bars on his cell phone.
Justass, bile is what I spit in the sink as I read your ugly rant
Nature: Maybe you shouldn’t drink so early. Save that bile for later?
I too took the few minutes to read the entire article and it appears that some of the posters here didn’t bother to do so before they started their diatribes(nothing new there).
I think it is important to view historical people and events within their original context as a foundation and then be willing grow from there, based on new info. The people we deify(therein lies the problem) are also human; They f**k and they fart, they love and they hate, they succeed and they fail-all of it unfolding at the same time!
In a way, the ‘politicians’ craft is the art of spinning personal history in a way that polishes the preferable and obscures the objectionable, tying it to a party platform and then selling the package for money to buy votes with. The ‘activist’ does a similar thing, but with a narrower focus(a cause) and for less personal profit.
Mores and morals change over time. The critics job is to illuminate those dark corners where the backroom deals occurred and the bodies are hidden, so to speak. ‘History’ is not just about the chronology of events, it needs to be flexible in order to adapt to changing information and circumstances if we are going to learn from it and apply those lessons to our immediate circumstances as well as project out towards a future we will personally be gone from but will nonetheless bear our stamp. That is why it is continually being discussed, reevaluated and rewritten.
As for you who discount some of the messengers due to their SoCal locale…I have to say I have had some early and pivotal moments of ‘transcendent nature experiences’ in the mountains east of San Diego, along the coasts and even within its city parks.
I argue we need both…the pristine place AND the urban oasis. The wild flourishes in both. The moment of transcendence is always but a breath away.
We can go outside and learn the plants and trees growing in your yard, in your neighborhood, in the woods and meadows and mountains around the lake(shrubs are hard). Learn the birds and the bugs and the critters(what they eat, what eats them.) They too live relevant lives-it’s their planet too. Watch the sunsets, look up at the stars. Let the magic return. And let Muir’s ghost be.
Hmm;
Muir traveled and wrote about wild places and fought for their preservation, he has nothing to do with urban anything and the comparison history re-write the article suggests and takes him to task for is senseless urban leftist idiocy. The article suggests being able to afford to write and travel and his being white is their problem with him a hundred years later and because of open borders and illegal immigration Hispanics are gaining population and this is relevant to anything? This is not worth the wasted media attention this received.
You got issues. Why don’t you start your own newspaper then?
Hmm;
Start opening your eyes and maybe you will see. This has nothing to do with anything except a fraudulent story. If you can see that there is hope for you.
As i said…let Muir’s ghost be. I didn’t think it was that difficult a comment to understand.
GA and Justass (lol) John Muir is a 1000000 times more a good human than you two creeps will ever be. I hope his ghost treats you to a “trip” off the mountain side when you least expect it. Splat…
@Nature…can’t be poisoning the wildlife…
Funny how the editor deletes my comment for writing ‘Justass’.
You can say the a word on television. I am pretty sure I’ve heard it in Disney movies. The general guideline is that adding the word ‘hole’ after it is what makes it PG-13.
So don’t use the a word here, even as a play on words. Feel free to use racial pejoratives though.
Hmmmm, you are right, that would be some very rotten meat to feed our wild friends. Sorry for that over sight. Cant think yet of a more fitting consequence for those creepy dudes. Need another cup a jo to get my creative juices flowing. Will report back later with more options…:)