Muir’s 184th Birthday– How His Writing Legacy is the Best Gift for Us to Save The Redwoods and Forests
“We are often told that the world is going from bad to worse, sacrificing everything to mammon. But this righteous uprising in defense of God’s trees in the midst of exciting politics and wars is telling a different story, and every Sequoia, I fancy, has heard the good news and is waving its branches for joy”
Surprisingly, this quote perfectly describes the world today even though it portrays a world one century younger than ours. Years ago, I first saw it in a book of essays about redwood forests written by John Muir. Not only was Muir an avid botanist and environmentalist– the man wrote eloquently, and with an enduring faith, in his advocacy of forests and the environment.
I grew up a suburban kid without a car, unable to visit forests, but Muir brought his glorious world of nature to me in a book. Granted, forests on paper are not the same as forests in life, but his honest, passionate writing enchanted me with what then was outside of my reach. He so inspired me that despite no direct experiencing California’s forestlands, I joined the Stop Clearcutting California Campaign (SCCC) affiliated with the Sierra Club, an organization cofounded by Muir. I was determined to help save what is left of what he dearly cared about and clearly is one of our state’s greatest natural treasures.
I read his book of nature writings a second time just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. Seeing this quote again, as countries engage in war and logging companies voraciously mow down trees, the uncanniness of Muir stunned me as he advocated saving the redwoods. Approaching Muir’s 184th birthday, we live in much the same world situation as Muir did, but with some advances in technology and new activists to take a stand against clearcutting logging interests. That said, his writings, including “Save the Redwoods’’ and “God’s First Temples,” resonate even today. They offer insight into how to deal with the many conflicts happening that Muir also faced.
To understand what John Muir confronted, it should be noted who he was as well. He was an avid reader, rising as early as one in the morning for religious readings. Though he exhibited bravery, as well as an independent nature and an abiding curiosity, by also reading histories, classics, and scientific literature under the threat of his dour and authoritative father finding out. His love of God and literature fueled his love for education and his distaste for war. Against the backdrop of the American Civil War, which he described as an unsightly monster, Muir worked at various jobs in factories and sawmills. Despite sawing down timber to support himself, he possessed a passion and respect for the vitality of nature such that he only cut down nonliving trees.
Passion is a powerful emotion, especially when it motivates one to strive for the common good of humanity and nature. For Muir, not only did he refuse to cut down living trees, he wrote for innumerable publications, including the Sacramento Record-Union, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New-York Tribune. Advocating the prevention of clearcutting forests by logging companies during the Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, his writing style consisted of an eloquent integration of his passionate faith and blunt sincerity. He embodied a sense of spirituality to the Sequoia forests, comparing them to “lordly monarchs proclaiming the gospel of beauty like “apostles.”
He criticized loggers seeking to clearcut or excessively log Sequoia trees, calling them fools that persecute and skin alive the trees. Not sugarcoating their harmful logging annihilation of the redwoods and the like, Muir called out the clouds of smoke and desolation of charred tree stumps that arose from clearcutting-induced fires. Despite his admonitions, he nonetheless preserved a sense of honest optimism, hopeful that better change could be possible if the American people and governments possessed awareness and took action in the form of regulations that protected more forests.
Two essays, “God’s First Temples” and “Save the Redwoods” exhibit powerful defenses for the redwoods and other trees. “God’s First Temples” specifically stresses the importance of preserving those forests since they provide “blessings’’ in collecting water from storms and streams that would otherwise lead to devastating floods, as well as fostering grass and underbrush that would otherwise make the land a desert. Muir boasted of the immortality of these Sequoia species, claiming they would live up to 15,000 A.D.
However, he warned that based on the extraordinary pace of waste and pure destruction of the clearcutting and burnings, these noblest of tree-species in a few years (his time) will only be a few hacked, scarred remnants. In plain words by Muir, “the great enemies of forests are fire and the ax.” He proposed that the ideal way to counteract this destruction is following the example of European countries, regulating widespread destructive logging.
In “Save the Redwoods,” Muir marvels at the beauty and divinity of the Sequoia redwoods and Big Trees. In the essay, he criticized five sawmills adjacent to the forests of the Calaveras Grove. Despite the trees having prospered for millennia, waving their branches and singing in glee, they were now being rampantly clearcut. The smallest of these mills cut down two million square feet of Sequoias in one year alone with additional mills established in Fresno and Kings River. Muir chastised the Calaveras sawmillers as fools destroying aboriginal giants that cannot defend themselves. Muir further pushed to strike hard the iron of public sentiment– that galvanization of public and government support for the quick gifting and purchasing of all these forests. Followed by the establishing of national parks and reservations, these actions would truly save the trees.
Based on these essays and others, Muir’s powerful and consistent themes emerge. One message is how God has cared about these forests through tribulations of avalanches, disease, drought, and storms, and dating back to before the time of Christ. Yet the other point is that now the American people have a sacred duty to save the redwoods by challenging the loggers and sawmills mowing the forests down. In addition, Muir felt that the U.S. federal, state, and local governments should protect as many redwoods and other trees as possible through the formation of reservations or national parks.
Overall, Muir’s environmental legacy is that through his efforts, Yosemite National Park was established, as was the Sierra Club. Legislative progress that he promoted also enabled federal protections from abhorrent logging interests originally seeking to clearcut trees for greed and profit.
We should acknowledge that while Muir promoted justice for the environment, he held racist views on Indigenous people and persons of color (at least during the early period of his life). Accepting that, Muir himself is no longer here but his words on environmentalism endure. While we can condemn the racist views he once had, we can honor his environmental messages and the Sierra Club organization that he co-founded, which now emphatically promotes anti-racism and inclusion. The Sierra Club also calls for a ban on clearcutting and other forms of aggressive logging that harm the forests, environment, and BIPOC communities.
The 20th century saw continued disregard of the redwoods and other California forests despite advances in preservation and conservation efforts. The United States Department of Agriculture determined that from 1850 to 1950, there was an exponential increase in the amount of logging, including through clearcutting. Propelled by needs for harvesting timber for infrastructure and the World Wars, up to 100 billion board feet of timber logged during this period, derived from various pine, fir, and redwood trees, with nearly half of this timber harvested from the redwoods that Muir defended.
“Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, –chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests” –The American Forests
Muir would have found this excessive industrial logging, performed in the name of the war and post-war effort, atrocious, given his love of the forests and hatred for war. He would have no doubt mourned that his legacy was challenged and unfulfilled. However, it signifies how the need for timber versus the environmental dilemma logging creates is a complex issue that ultimately affects all of us in some way (and some people quite more than others).
In the 21st Century, as Muir would turn 184 years old, logging interests continue to challenge his dream of preserving forests. It is still legal to clearcut live trees on federal government-owned forests, while timber companies such as Sierra Pacific Industries utilize their economic power to lobby the government and misinform the general public to justify clearcutting on state and private lands. There also is salvage logging of dead trees, done using clearcutting practices on federal lands. Consequently, the past twenty plus years have seen a million acres of forests, including the redwoods and other trees, obliterated by clearcutting practices. The current pace of forest extinction by clearcutting proceeds at a rate of 50,000 acres of forest per year.
We do not need to be told the world is going from bad to worse and is sacrificing the California forests in pursuit of mammon. There is a need for a righteous uprising in defense of the trees in the midst of corrupt politics and wars to change the current dismal fate they face. As part of Muir’s birthday, a posthumous gift to both him and the trees he sought to protect is taking steps towards changing the dismal fate of the forests. One way is by joining the SCCC or any organization actively stopping clearcutting and protecting God’s first temples.
The Stop Clearcutting California Campaign (SCCC) is one group working tirelessly to stop such clearcutting conducted by big timber industries. Support in any way to the SCCC would go a long way, from joining the team to sharing blogs and stories published by the group. Other immediate steps would be to sign petitions or join other organizations involved in protecting the redwoods and other forests, including the Save the Redwoods League to the EPIC and The Mendocino Trail Stewards’s petitions for CALFIRE to reject a logging project of Jackson Demonstration State Forest.
“Notwithstanding all the waste and use which have been going on unchecked like a storm for more than two centuries, it is not yet too late– though it is high time– for the government to begin a rational administration of its forests” –The American Forests
However, we should not stop at petitions. Our forests deserve more than 30 seconds of our help, considering that the current generation of redwoods will give us 2000 years and counting of essential air to breathe. We should all write letters to the editors of various news publications and platforms, while publications that published Muir’s essays should themselves take charge and raise the issue of excessive logging or clearcutting (the only two of which still in existence are Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic). Individuals could also contact their representatives and lobby them to pass anti-clearcutting policy, as well as to boycott products produced by logging industries reliant on clearcutting (and other interconnected companies that benefit from clearcutting). Furthermore, instead of delegating protection of these forests to the government– which currently operates by corrupt politics– we should provide Indigneous peoples, the first and best stewards of the land, authority over and reparations for the lands they once resided over.
Muir wrote about the trees because of his sacred love of them, as well as for the sake of making change. His nature essays compelled me and others to promote change and protest against the commoditization of our California nation’s forests. Muir wrote that viewing nature firsthand is much better than a cartload of books, and I agree. While I am, personally, forever in his debt for opening up my eyes to the sacred nature of forests through his writings, I recognize that we must not let them live only on paper.
We must ensure they are always here for us. We must ensure that they are always here to safely store carbon in their soils, trunks, branches, and leaves and to produce the oxygen that we depend on to survive. We must ensure that they are always here for us to walk through, to appreciate their beauty and the habitat they provide to so many of God’s creatures. We must ensure that they are always here to nurture our souls, just as they did John Muir’s.
When we read books about forests, let it not be to read them simply for the sake of reading but for the possibility of those books opening up the world of their divinity to us.
