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Show 451, Hetch Hetchy better, not worse. The Sierra Club could not answer this kind of argument, having already subscribed to the terms in which it was couched. They could never say that San Francisco was not as important as Hetch Hetchy, but could only argue that San Francisco's greater good did not need the sacrifice of Hetch Hetchy. But I am getting ahead of myself. THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA The first service Muir did for the Sierra Club was to publish The Mountains of California. It became the Sierra Club's chief text, a political book. Muir wrote it at a time when it could do the most good as a guide or a new testament for preservationists. It was a secondary source for the Club. He wrote it instead of working on many other projects which were perhaps more dear to his heart. As an early outline of the book suggested, Muir at one time wanted it to be a mountaineering book, on the order of Whymper's Scrambles Amongst the Alps, and the title he wrote above this outline was The California Alps. Later, when Johnson cut a large portion of Muir's glaciology out of the second chapter, Muir could only comment wistfully that sometime he hoped to "write a hard geological book." Unlike some of the other material he was writing for Johnson "to order," where he was even willing to let his editor "take what you want & leave the balance," The Mountains of California was Muir's book, and he was quite defensive about it. It was more than the "charming collection" |
