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Show 435. background. Unlike the Pinchots, Mathers, and Albrights, he was not an inveterate joiner, and certainly never nurtured the abilities that these men cultivated in themselves, the abilities which made them great bureaucrats. Even while Muir had been urging governmental control of Forests and Parks since 1875, he never thought of himself as a potential -government employee. He would never follow a path like that Lowell fell into, as a resource manager. He wished to remain Outside the government, to speak as a concerned citizen, •though there was always the danger that he would become 'simply a "consulting expert." He could say a word for good t ^government when he found it, but his real praise was for the SP-'land itself, not for the men who made Parks. He did not, with 'the exception of Hetch Hetchy - and what a tragic exception! - ,]i"get bogged down in the "political quagg." Rather, he remembered 1 that the issue he could best deal with was the issue of consciousness. L" SECONDARY SOURCES AND SCHOLARSHIP :" There is a great danger to the student of the environ- """"mental movement in America - that he be too good a student, and too well-read. Even as Emerson had to remind the American "scholar that "Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be •wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings," so we Kare in danger of that failing today. I, for instance, had to |
