JOHN MUIR— AN APPRECIATION 

 By J. D. Guthrie 



In the recent death of John Muir the cause of American for- 

 estry has lost a pioneer friend. While it is perhaps true that 

 his interest in forests was primarily that of a naturalist and 

 explorer, yet his pen was used mightily in a very practical way 

 for the cause of forest conservation at a time when help was 

 much needed, to awaken a people unconscious of what their 

 forests should mean to them. 



From the time of his birth in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, 

 through his boyhood and youth in Wisconsin and his later years 

 in Alaska, the tropics and all the world, and his last years in 

 California, he was a friend of the forests and all nature. 



Bailey Millard, who knew him intimately, writes of Muir's 

 personal characteristics : "Tall, lean, craggy, wild-haired, wild- 

 bearded, with wonderful gray eyes and a soft agreeable voice, he 

 had the indescribable charm which nature's men possess and 

 radiate. Folk listened to him raptly because he had something 

 to tell. He knew the forests, not only of the West, but of the 

 world — the giant redwoods of California, the eucalyptus groves 

 of Australia, the great pines of Siberia, the banyans of the 

 tropics. He knew the grizzly and the deer, the coyote, the water 

 ouzel, the oriole, and he loved them all. In all the days of his 

 forest faring and mountain climbing he never slew bird or 

 beast. He even treated rattlesnakes as friends and did not 

 dream of killing one though it menaced him on the trail." After 

 reading IMuir's gentle statements about rattlesnakes in "Our 

 National Parks," "poor creatures, loved only by their Maker," 

 a friend of mine said, "Nobody else has ever said that since 'not 

 even a sparrow falleth.' " 



Muir published "Our National Parks" in 1901, which was 

 made up of sketches originally appearing in the Atlantic 

 Monthly. This book unquestionably helped forward the cause of 

 American conservation when it needed all the help that it could 

 get. Writing of the area within the forest reserves at that time, 

 Muir says : 



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