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Show 460. enforcement. Speaking to the Sierra Club, he was giving them their own direction. He knew that he would always be a theoretician, but the Club, he hoped, might always watch the protective fences. Though he was speaking to the Sierra Club about Yosemite, his analysis of the problems of that Reservation anticipated the problems which he expected would plague all Reservations in America. It was an ancient problem, as one of his favorite anecdotes suggested: The very first forest reserve that I ever heard of, the most moderate in extent, was located in the garden of Eden & included only one tree. The Lord himself laid out the boundaries of it, but even that reserve was attacked & broken in upon. The attacks then of sheepmen & lumbermen, unregenerate sons of Adam, on the Yosemite National Park are in the natural course of things. If God could not prevent the first humans from violating His Reserves, how much harder it would be for men to make decisions for permanence. Fences always seemed to fail when it came to preserving bits of pure wilderness. Muir claimed that he had tried to preserve a small pond and meadow in Wisconsin, and had later tried to protect a quarter section of the "flowery San Joaquin plain." But such things could not be accomplished by individuals. For that reason, Muir said, he "did not take up a timber claim in the sugar-pine woods." Neither barbed wire nor moral prohibitions could guarantee the safety of the wilderness. Because Muir saw the conflict between Man and Nature as |