OCR Text |
Show 372 the bosom of the American Earth. He found it difficult not to believe in a possible generation of "hardy and virtuous yeomen," in an agriculture which would be better than the urban or mining cultures. Perhaps, as Henry Nash Smith argues, the agricultural Utopia was doomed by the Industrial Revolution. But from Muir's point of view, Californians claimed to be living in a democracy, where the will of the people determined the future of the landscape. He wondered about the people, their intelligence, their strength, their will. He wondered if they could learn to see. Toward the end of 1881, he had reason to wonder about their democracy. He had been involved in legislative efforts to enlarge Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove, and had also helped draft a proposal for a Park in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. These both failed to get through Congressional Committee. Perhaps because he was so disheartened, he turned to private affairs for the next seven years. Certainly the tone of "Bee Pastures" suggested such a turning away: Muir viewed, at an alienated distance, the affairs of California, and finally washed his hands of the matter. Even eight years later he wrote to Robert Underwood Johnson, "The love of Nature among Californians is desperately moderate; consuming enthusiasm almost wholly unknown." He must have recognized that moderation was the worst enemy to his cause, that his campaign of the seventies was, finally, a failure. |