Land Prophets

This month, as April encourages us to linger outdoors and play, we honor the death of Rachel Carson on the 14^th, remember the birth of John Muir on the 21^st and celebrate Earth Day on the 22^nd.

            *

The Land Prophets dedicate their lives to showing others how to do less damage to the land. They confront people in politics and businesses who exploit the land only to make money, who listen to special interest groups rather than the everyday people they represent, and who betray the public trust as trustees of the land. These are some of our prophets.

In California, John Muir saw sheep destroying the wilderness meadows of the Sierra Nevada and worked to get them removed. In the process, he helped create the Sierra Club and the National Park system that has saved large tracts of wilderness areas. He also wanted to save Hetch Hetchy, but the politicians in San Francisco sold nature out for votes.

Sequoias

(from a visit a few years ago)

Leaving my car at the entrance of the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias, I walk slowly through the deep snow and let the silence of the grove wrap around me, moving from one giant tree to the next. I place my hand on the thick red bark of one and feel its endurance.

Beneath my feet, its roots connect to the roots of the other trees in the grove, and I feel the strength of community. Leaning back, I marvel at the dimensions of a giant sequoia. In its canopy, an ecosystem of life exists, far above the visible life I see from the forest floor.

I feel insignificant here, and imagine how dwarfed I’d look in a photograph. These 3000-year-old elders of the mountains hold centuries of memories in their branches. In the quietness of the afternoon, I feel the presence of shared wisdom.

Nature As Revelation

John Burroughs wanted people to go outside and enjoy the nature that existed around them wherever they lived, whether this was farmland, forest, ocean, desert, or a city park. He was concerned that people were staying indoors too much.

He wrote this in the late 1800s.

I think he’d be more concerned today, because we drive, rather than walk, to the local grocery, if we still have a local grocery. New housing developments often don’t have sidewalks. Most of our houses don’t have porches for sitting and chatting with neighbors walking by. We don’t linger after dinner to watch the sun set over the trees, or see the moon rise. Our children don’t go outside to play, and many are afraid of being alone in the woods.

The Transcendence of Nature

Its wonder, majesty, and downright gob-smacking awe.

Nature has the power to lift us out of ourselves, especially when we’re in the wilderness.

It renews, restores, and rehabilitates us when the pressure and drudgery of city life become too much. If you have a place in nature where you go because you feel alive there, then you’ll appreciate the following quotes. While these writers were all speaking about Yosemite, and often in terms of spirituality, feel free to translate the words to fit your own favorite place, whether it’s at the ocean, in the desert, or out on the prairie.

            *

"That mute appeal (pointing to El Capitan) illustrates it, with more convincing eloquence than can the most powerful arguments of surpliced priests."  -- Lafayette Bunnell, 1851

John Muir and the End of the World

(notice the two people standing at the base of the tree)

John Muir is one of my patron saints. He said, “Creation was not an act, it is a process, and it is going on today as much as it ever was.”

When we go to natural places like Yosemite (or Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, etc.), it looks like it never changes. Yet if we go often, and pay attention to the details, we notice that everything is a little different than it was the last time we were here.

Mirror Lake has gradually filled in with sediment brought down by the river and becomes a meadow. Flakes of rock the size of houses have broken off the valley walls and fallen, leaving white spots behind on the gray granite. A meadow in the west end of the valley that was completely open now has quite a few trees. The spring flood carved a new path through the valley and shifted the river 500 feet.

Everything is continually changing in nature. Lesson number 1.

The Wilderness is Home

(The top of Yosemite Creek as it goes over the falls.)

This is where it began. In the snow. My journey in Yosemite began in the snow one winter. And I could not believe that such a place could exist.

I grew up in the woods, on the rolling hills and lakes of Wisconsin, reading the words of John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Sigurd Olson. When I moved to the Bay Area in California, and the urban landscape of endless buildings and highways, I lost touch with the outdoors. 

John Muir

I grew up in Wisconsin playing in the woods through the seasons and reading about John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Sigurd Olson, nature writers in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I lived near Muir’s home, we both went to the University of Wisconsin, and one side of my family is Scottish, so there are those connections. Then he headed west and found himself entranced and delighted by Yosemite’s grandeur.

When I moved to California, I went to Yosemite to experience the place that Muir raves about in his books, the place that nurtured his soul.  I was, and still am, amazed that such a place can exist – a valley with granite walls that go straight up for almost a mile, waterfalls that flow into the valley from every direction, mountain peaks that stretch to 13,000 feet, and giant sequoias that are 300 feet tall and 3000 years old. I continue to use Muir’s words to guide and draw me closer to nature.  Like him, I also to hike by myself because the solitude I find nourishes me.