John Muir and Gifford Pinchot were men who both had different opinions about the environment. Both men were active in the early 1900s, and both aimed to protect North American wilderness by opposing rapid deforestation and unregulated economic land development. Muir was a preservationist who believed that nature should be protected for its own sake and that we should protect it for its beauty. He believed nature provided spiritual renewal and met human recreational needs. As such, Muir recognized that nature met human needs in an anthropocentrist view, but he also believed that nature deserved protection for its own inherent value in an ecocentrist view. Pinchot was a conservationist who favored sustainable use of resources for the benefit
My opinion, Emerson and Muir have depicted their love and passion for nature. Muir as a nature conservationist, explicate the beauty of the nature and how fortunate we are for having not one but two Yosemite. On the other hand, Emerson depicts the beauty and importance of nature to humanity. I been to Yosemite once, I am fascinated to its amazing landscape and superb natural beauty.
Stegner wants to conserve the untouched land because he fears a world with no silence. He argues for the preservation of Robbers’ Roost country, as an example, “It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into… Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value (Stegner, Wilderness Letter).” Saving the untouched lands, he contends, is a reminder of how uncontrolled the Earth is and how timeless it remains. Others disagree with this viewpoint, one of those people being American forester, Gifford Pinchot. In his writing “The Fight for Conservation,” Pinchot argues that conservation
John Muir was a muckraker who protested against the expansion of people and animals that would ruin our soon to be national parks. Muir was a man that loved to explore natural formations in nature and traveled around the world to see as much natural land as possible. As he traveled around the world, he found out that California was his place to live. In California, his favorite places to explore and watch were the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Yosemite. As more and more settlers moved West, the land that Muir loved was soon to be destroyed by herds of animals and people looking for a place to build their homes. Muir wrote most of his 300 articles and 10 major books in Oakland, California. In Muir’s writings, he elegantly
He had an accident that almost made him blind, and he really started to go after nature then. What he saw was people destroying nature, and he wanted to stop that. That is a problem because wild life needs to be protected and preserved, not taken away and destroyed. He was a co-founder of the Sierra Club and he helped create national parks. Muir is often called “The Father of Our National Parks” or “Citizen of the Universe.” He wrote a lot of articles and books that inspired people to be in nature and enjoy it. One of his quotes from My First Summer in the Sierra is, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
John Muir is arguably the most influential conservationist in American history. He was an active member in the preservation of the American wilderness from the late 1800’s until he passed in 1914. Muir is often referred to as the “Father of the National Parks” because of his efforts in the establishment of several National Parks. One of the biggest flaws of American history textbooks in need of change is the fact that they do not include the conservationists who have preserved the environment so today the same beauty can be see the way that they saw it. John Muir was involved in many American conservation efforts including the co-founding of Yosemite National Park, founding of the Sierra Club, and his overall career as a
Both Henry David Thoreau and Christopher McCandless ventured out into the woods to get away from the dreariness of everyday society and to find themselves. Only one lived to tell the tale. What was the fatal flaw of the man who didn’t continue on? The only way to find this is to analyze the differences and similarities between the two. McCandless, while embracing some of the same values as Thoreau, was ultimately a different man. While they led very contrasting lives in very distant times, both McCandless and Thoreau sought a type of freedom that can only be achieved when immersed in nature. Thoreau’s entitlement and cozy cabin in the woods is a far cry from McCandless’s constant struggle during his expedition, however, certain parallels
The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform that grew from the 1890s to the 1920s. Social reformers and journalists, like Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, and Ida Tarbell were some of the powerful voices for progressivism. “They concentrated on exposing the evils of corporate greed, combating fear of immigrants, and urging Americans to think hard about what democracy meant.” Many progressive reformers wanted to end corruption in the government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, and improve working conditions. It was also an era of conservationists. Conservationists are people who protect and preserve the environment and wildlife. Throughout the Progressive Era, there were many conservationists who wrote and described nature, but the most well-known figure in conservation was John Muir. John Muir worked to protect Earth’s beauty by traveling and exploring nature, co-founding the Sierra Club, and by influencing others through his writings and by showing some of the most important people how the wildlife was magnificent.
Environmentalism has always been two sided. Nature versus urban. locals versus national. Frequently, large tracts of public and federal land are bought and developed by industry. Pristine wilderness turned to bustling epicenters of human activity, all in the name of progress and economic growth. This tale of preserving natural wilderness is one that begins with John Muir, an advocate against the taming of Yosemite national park and the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir, while the head of the US Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, insisted on the reservoir to supply the city of San Francisco with water. This timeless epic of conservation or preservation brings us to the Jumbo Valley, a vast expanse of uninhabited, pristine wilderness home to diverse
Gifford Pinchot was born in Simsbury, Connecticut on August 11, 1865. Pinchot grew up in a wealthy well to do family. He got a great education and attended Yale University in 1885. One day Gifford Pinchot’s dad asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. Pinchot said he wanted to go into forestry. Not many universities offered forestry and Yale was a college that did not. Ever since Pinchot was little he loved nature, trees and the woods. There was a school in Nancy, France that offered forestry so that is where Pinchot headed. He attended this school for a year then returned to the United States to start his journey in the forestry business. For three years he worked under Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Forest Estate as an assistant forester. Later
Renowned poets and philosophers Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, although being from different schools of thought, actually shared many of the same views about nature and mankind’s role in society. Whitman, being more of a ‘romantic’ poet, praised nature’s beauty and majestic qualities. Thoreau, on the other hand, was more of a Transcendentalist; The Transcendentalism school of thought emphasized individualism as a common theme and celebrated the ‘self’ as a separate, but equal, counterpart to the nature of our environment. While both of these poets had their opinions on the landscape around us, they were quite similar in their beliefs about mankind’s existence and skirted the line between both schools of thought.
After reading and analyzing Wordsworth’s poem and Muir’s essay, I can see that both men use writing as a creative way to express their love for nature all around them.
Nature and wilderness were very important ideas to some extant for St. John de Crevecoeur and Ralph Waldo Emerson, each had their own opinions and ideas that contrasted against each other and were somewhat similar to each other. Emerson who valued it and looked at the nature as something to proud of had used it many times in his works as examples and that we are part of nature as well and make whatever choices from it as it can from us. While Crevecoeur believes that in every land it has its own form of culture as it does its own kind of nature, and describes how the land and nature was then and how it will be giving details of it in his pieces of work. How they use and see nature is described equally important in both their works “the American Scholar” and “What is an American” but shows how different their views really are in them.
Nature and wilderness were very important ideas, to some extent, for St. John de Crevecoeur and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Each had their own opinions and ideas that contrasted against each other and were somewhat similar to each other; Emerson valued nature greatly, whether it be from looking at it as something to be proud of, to using nature as an example in his work, such as how we are a part of it and how random it can be. Crevecoeur believed that every land has its own form of culture as it does its own kind of nature. He describes how the land and nature was, and how it will be, by giving details of it in his pieces of work.
Phrases such as “botanising in glorious freedom [...] wandering through innumerable tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps, and forests [...], rejoicing in their bound wealth and strength and beauty, climbing the trees, revelling in their flowers and fruit [...], glorying in the fresh cool beauty and charm of the bog [...] displayed in boundless profusion”, “rarest and most beautiful”, and “I was able to wander many a long wild fertile mile in the forests and bogs, free as the winds, gathering plants, and glorying in God's abounding inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread”, all show how Muir felt about nature and what nature meant to him. A key phrase that shows Muir’s attitude towards nature states, “Storms, thunderclouds, winds in the woods—were welcomed as friends”. These phrases, as well as the words mentioned above, are extremely positive and show the utmost joy Muir found in his surroundings. The long and detailed descriptions of Muir’s surroundings helps to reinforce his joy in nature. The words that Muir uses to describe nature shows that he is close to nature and feels a connection with it. These positive words also show how absolutely stunning Muir finds nature and how he finds peace and joy in the wild. All of this is also supported by one of Muir’s
According to Pollitt, the Greeks wanted to live with order but ended up living in a constant worry. His first example was an Archaic lyric poet by Archilochus who expressed intense anxiety which was produced by the reasonable uncertainty and mutability of life. By this he looks into the mutability of life which, without a doubt, has and allows will have chaotic experience. Pollitt’s second example is Solon’s poem. The poet gives us a concerned subject who is under “a cloud of worry” but he is ultimately looking for quest for order. The subject of each of the poems look for clarity by spiritual ideal which they can come to with patient analysis. These primary sources give us an explanation on how and why the Greeks searched for a kosmos, which