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Show 317. He had walked through areas where there was not enough forage for his one mule. In contrast, he wondered about the natural condition of the Sequoia forests, when they were unmarred by Man's flocks. I have often tried to understand how so many deer, and wild sheep, and bears, and flocks of grouse - nature's cattle and poultry - could be allowed to run at large through the mountain gardens without in any way marring their beauty. The answer was of course that a natural community allowed each species to feed on what its tablemates didn't want. Muir's answer was the one Warmer would make popular in 1895, that there was a communal life of organisms in an ecosystem. This was the way Nature had managed her realm before Man began to disrupt it. Muir had developed a symbolic argument about ecology with his work in the Sequoia forest. It was not a specialized or a unique environment, but typical of the communities of life which existed throughout the wilderness. If one could understand that theirs was a community of interrelated species, one could apply the same truth to any living landscape and recognize its perfect adjustment of means and ends. The Sequoia forest indicated the diversity and complexity Nature aimed at, where every effect was also a cause. Because everything was connected to everything else, when men interfered, they could not do any one thing without changing the entire dynamic of the system. |
