OCR Text |
Show 398, noble animals. In this, he was aided by Joaquin Miller's contribution on Yellowstone Park. Miller's own enthusiastic appeal for the preservation of Parks and wild game seemed to echo Muir's. Both men argued that America would need wildernesses for her future. "The railroads have enough. Spare this one spot of this vast continent," said Miller. Such places would be needed, just as some representative grizzlies would help to "declare to man that he is not yet God." Ah, but Man was becoming God. Even in the creation of National Parks, he was fencing in his little Edens. It was a short step from Picture Books to the idea of National Parks. All one needed to do was fence off the places where there were possibilities for pictures. This was not what Olmsted had meant by the need for National Parks, and certainly not what Muir had in mind, but the language used to describe the first National Parks was a predictable result of the tastes for picturesque description. The idea of a "public Park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" was perfectly anthropocentric. The idea of a Park, and its entomological origin, was also perfectly antithetical to Muir's ideas of a wilderness, since a park was an enclosed area, which had artificial boundaries. The creation of Parks suggested that "natural attractions" and "scenic wonders" could be framed in a painting. The whole idea denied Muir's view of Nature as shoreless, boundless, and infinite. Muir's first response to Yellowstone National Park gives |