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Show 457 that fall. He was in despair about the Valley, as he wrote to Johnson, but about the National Park he was hopeful. Muir told the Sierra Club in 1895, The preservation of specimen sections of natural flora - bits of pure wilderness - was a fond, favorite notion of mine long before I heard of national parks. In a letter to Johnson he indicated that a specimen section had to include a whole watershed, had to be a natural ecological unit: "As I have urged over and over again, the Yosemite Reservation ought to include all the Yosemite fountains." For him, a Reservation, as a specimen section, as an ecological whole, was a living organism, and it didn't matter whether it was called a Wilderness, Forest, Reservation, or Park. The point was to save its flowing life. When Harrison reserved vast tracts of timber in 1891, their function and administration was not at all established, and their defense was not assured. So, when Muir joined the Forestry Commission in 1896, he hoped, along with Sargent, to establish a policy of administration and protection which would benefit the already established Reserves and create new ones as well. Muir knew that the policies which the government would enact would depend on the kind of men who made these policies. Thus he began to realize that he might not only write about forests, but also write about the kind of men who loved forests His article on Linnaeus, written in 1896, should be seen in |
