My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

Source of book: I own this.

It is impossible to be a outdoor sort in California without feeling some connection to John Muir. More than any other person, he was responsible for the protection of our magnificent National Parks here in this state, and can be said to have founded the American conservation movement. Without his efforts, Yosemite National Park would have been looted by developers and miners - it was his guided tour of the future park with president Theodore Roosevelt which gave the necessary push to create the park. Later, he would co-found the Sierra Club, which has done more to protect the natural world and the environment than any other group over the last 100 years. Without Muir and the Sierra Club, the magnificent giant sequoias would likely have been logged to extinction. Muir came along at the right time - before the growing oligarchs had the power to buy everything up and destroy it. He correctly understood that conservation was a matter of justice: destroying the natural world literally steals from the future generations. (Something our current despoilers need to be taught all over again.) 

Muir also has a lake or two named after him - and a certain trail leading from Yosemite to the top of Mt. Whitney. Some of us might say you can still feel his presence as you walk the slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the places his feet fell all those years ago. 

Born in Scotland, Muir and his family immigrated to the US when he was eleven. As an adult, he migrated here and there before settling in California. For years, he scraped by without much of a regular job, trying to find his place. Eventually, with his pen, he made a reputation for himself, and went on to inspire countless others. We visited his home in Martinez a few years ago, and you can read about that here. 

My First Summer in the Sierra was written in 1911, a good many years after the actual events took place in the summer of 1869. Muir mostly copied his own journal entries and sketches, but fleshed out the narrative with additional information and background. Because of this, some of the entries read very much like the original - very “journaly” for lack of a better term. Others go on longer and include philosophical musings, information on plants and animals, and background information on the people he traveled with and met. 

The journey itself begins in the foothills west of Yosemite, traverses the ridge and plateau to the north of the canyon, and continues over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake and back. The route roughly follows that of state highway 120, although not exactly. While I have travelled much of the southern and central Sierra Nevada, this is one route I have not yet taken. A few of the kids and I had planned to do so the summer before last, but a large wildfire shut down the entire area, and we ended up backpacking west of Lake Tahoe instead. Despite the lack of personal knowledge of the exact places on the plateau, I have been to a number of the places mentioned, such as the top of Yosemite Falls, the Yosemite Valley, the upper Merced River, Half Dome, and Mono Lake. Muir made the trip as part of a sheep grazing expedition, which is why it took all summer. He signed on in exchange for his food and a bit extra cash, with the understanding that he would help as needed, but have the freedom to explore when he wasn’t. 

While one can certainly enjoy this book without having ever visited the Sierra, it certainly adds to the reading experience. Muir describes sights and sounds, smells and textures, which are instantly familiar to a regular hiker like myself. The plants and animals are also easy to recognize, even though the names can vary a bit. Just one example of that, Muir refers to the “yellow pine,” which is the older name for what is now recognized as two closely related species, the Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pines. (Don’t mix them up: you can boil the sap of the Ponderosa to make turpentine. Try that with a Jeffrey, and you will blow yourself up.) Likewise, the White Fir and Red Fir have different names, and Muir thought the Yellow Bellied Marmot was a kind of groundhog. It is important to remember that he did this in 1869, long before modern genetics, which helped distinguish species from each other and sort living things into the correct slots based on evolutionary history. That so few things are now anachronistic is a testament to Muir’s memory and observation. (On a related note, he memorized all of the New Testament and half of the Old Testament as a kid - and he was renowned in his old age for his still-sharp ability to memorize things.) 

As a person who loves the mountains and has a poetic bent, I really found that Muir’s writing resonated with me. He was definitely a kindred spirit. Here are just a few things that I loved. This is how the book opens.

In the great Central Valley of California there are only two seasons--spring and summer. The spring begins with the first rain-storm, which usually falls in November. In a few months, the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.

I’ve lived in Southern California most of my life, and for the last two decades in the Central Valley. This is pretty accurate. And it is why sheep - and humans - tend to want to head for higher altitude for the summer. 

While in the foothills, Muir comments on Poison Oak, which is rather abundant in the middle altitudes. 

Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question, “Why was it made?” goes on and on with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.

Indeed. And for that matter, Poison Oak is an attractive plant, particularly in the fall, when the leaves become a brilliant red. 

Muir writes early and often about the clouds, and the thunderstorms which visit the mountains on many summer afternoons. Here is just one of his eloquent descriptions of them. 

Cumuli rising to the eastward. How beautiful their pearly bosses! How well they harmonize with the upswelling rocks beneath them. Mountains of the sky, solid-looking, finely sculptured, their richly varied topography wonderfully defined. Never before have I seen clouds so substantial looking in form and texture. Nearly every day they rise with visible swelling motion as if new worlds were being created. And how fondly they brood and hover over the gardens and forests with their cooling shadows and showers, keeping every petal and leaf in glad health and heart. One may fancy the clouds themselves are plants, springing up in the skyfields at the call of the sun, growing in beauty until they reach their prime, scattering rain and hail like berries and seeds, the wilting and dying. 

Muir also makes a rather disturbing observation. He sees the deer and bears and other creatures visit the meadows full of flowers, and notes that they tend to leave the flowers alone, eating only what they need. “Man alone, and the animals he tames, destroy these gardens.” 

In the center of the narrative is a fascinating episode. Muir, having been in the mountains for over two months, is sitting on North Dome, overlooking the Yosemite Valley, writing and sketching, when he has a peculiar sense that a friend of his, who had promised to visit California sometime that year, was in the valley. Muir starts down the 3000 foot cliff before realizing that it will be dark before he gets there. He hikes back to camp, then wakes up early the next day and hikes down into the valley. (For what it is worth, that’s an absolute butt-kicker of a hike, even with the modern trail!) 

Sure enough, when he inquires at the old lodge, his friend is indeed in the valley. Muir hikes up to Nevada Falls and meets his friend halfway up Liberty Cap. Say what?! Muir has no real explanation for how he knew - he just...knew. And he was right. (Also, hiking down into Yosemite then just sprinting up the, um, John Muir Trail a few more thousand feet. In the same morning. Muir was a fantastic hiker, to say the least. As those who tried to keep up with him noted often. 

Alas, the visit is short, because his friend has a job and places to be. Muir muses, “I’m glad I’m not great enough to be missed in the busy world.” That’s kind of my aspiration. I’m not there yet - I still have to earn a living - but I can still head into the mountains on a regular basis. 

I also have to quote his description of Vernal and Nevada Falls. We have hiked this route about every other year for the last decade (see this post), and it is one of the prettiest hikes ever. It should be on everyone’s bucket list. Come to California in May or June and I will be happy to take you on a hike. 

The Vernal, four hundred feet high and about seventy-five or eighty feet wide, drops smoothly over a round-lipped precipice and forms a superb apron of embroidery, green and white, slightly folded and fluted, maintaining this form nearly to the bottom, where it is suddenly veiled in quick-flying billows of spray and mist, in which the afternoon sunbeams play with ravishing beauty of rainbow colors. The Nevada is white from its first appearance as it leaps out into the freedom of the air. At the head it presents a twisted appearance, by an overfolding of the current from striking on the side of its channel just before the first free outbounding leap is made. About two thirds of the way down, the hurrying throng of comet-shaped masses glance on an inclined part of the face of the precipice and are beaten into yet whiter foam, greatly expanded, and sent bounding outward, making an indescribably glorious show, especially when the afternoon sunshine is pouring into it. In this fall--one of the most wonderful in the world--the water does not seem to be under the dominion of ordinary laws, but rather as if it were a living creature, full of the strength of the mountains and their huge, wild joy. 

The passage continues, describing the Silver Apron and Emerald Pool and other iconic sights. Muir clearly loves these places he describes. He also captures a thought about fishing as “sport.” (Muir, like myself, didn’t mind the idea of hunting or fishing for food - but didn’t like the idea of killing for fun.) 

It seems strange that visitors to Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes were bandaged and their ears were stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were looking down as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty chanting congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making music that might draw angels out of heaven. Yet respectable-looking, even wise-looking people were fixing bits of worms on bent pieces of wire to catch trout. Sport they called it. Should church-goers try to pass the time fishing in baptismal fonts while dull sermons were being preached, the so-called sport might not be so bad; but to play in the Yosemite temple, seeking pleasure in the pain of fishes struggling for their lives, while God himself is preaching his sublimest water and stone sermons!

I did laugh at this one. There was a more serious moment later on, when Muir left the camp to hike to Mono Lake. He met a group of Native Americans, and felt guilty at his response. Muir may have lived in a time when the indiginous peoples were largely dismissed as “savages,” but he genuinely pushed back at this idea. Realizing that colonialism had displaced them from their homes and ways of living, he noted that their current impoverished state was the fault of their conquerors. Thus, when he felt repulsed when asked for whiskey, he noted his deep sadness that he felt repulsion from his fellow human beings. As in other places, he quoted Scotish poet Robert Burns: “It’s coming yet, for a’ that, that man to man, the warld o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that.” 

Once Muir got to Mono Lake, he mentions more about the Native Americans in the area, particularly their traditional diet. Of the foods mentioned, two are ones that I have experience with. First is pine nuts. When I lived in the mountains, we had Singleleaf Pinion Pines all over (and they are in the Sierra Nevada too), which had large and tasty nuts. A Navajo acquaintance showed me how to roast them properly. The second is the fly larvae which live in Mono Lake, and are blown to shore in huge piles. A ranger guided hike there introduced me to the larvae, and a couple of the kids and I tried them. Kind of like tiny shrimp, perhaps. 

My First Summer in the Sierra is a thoroughly enjoyable book, particularly for anyone with a love of the forest, mountains, or foothills of California. 

***

From my own perambulations:

North Dome from the base of Half Dome. (For more on that hike, see here.) 

 Half Dome (left) and Liberty Cap (right) from the John Muir Trail. 

By Nevada Falls.

Rosie the Riveter and John Muir

This post is part of my ongoing series on National Parks and Monuments.

This past fall, we took a trip to the San Francisco area, and visited these two relatively obscure sites. Both preserve history, and in both cases, this history was a turning point in a significant battle for justice.

Rosie The Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park

As the docents love to inform visitors, this place has the longest name in the entire National Park Service, and yet has the smallest area, in one sense. The park does not own any land, rather utilizing a combination of property belonging to the City of Richmond, and property leased from private holders. In addition, it is spread over several sites on the Richmond waterfront.

The official website is here, and has additional information. 

My Rosie Girls

Even before the United States officially entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it as unofficially participating in the war by supplying Great Britain through the Lend-Lease program. After Pearl Harbor, however, it became necessary to ramp up a huge program of production to supply the needs of the war.

Many able-bodied men either volunteered or were drafted, creating a vacuum. Where would the factories get laborers? How would ships and airplanes and tanks and jeeps get built?

In the case of the Richmond shipyards, there were two significant new sources of labor. The first gave the name to this park. Women enlisted in great numbers. The second is often overlooked. Minorities - particularly African Americans - saw the opportunity to leave low paying service industry jobs and better their quality of life.

In both cases, the new workers faced significant obstacles. For example, the local unions simply would not admit women or minorities. White males only. Realistically, it was only due to the extreme need for workers that the gender and color barriers came down.

One of the best things about this park are the videos. The NPS took the time to interview numerous workers, back when there were many still alive, and learn the individual stories. It was moving to hear the tales of poverty, and lack of housing (nothing like absorbing tens of thousands of new workers in a few weeks), and the ongoing harassment, racism, and sexism that many endured, particularly when they first started working.

There are two things that particularly stuck with me, and I think these are both important to our understanding of the fight for justice then and now.

The first is this: given the opportunity to do “man’s work,” women proved entirely capable. And likewise, minority workers proved that they could do as meticulous work as any white man. Even now, we keep hearing (particularly in certain circles) that whites and/or men are just better at things, from education (hello, Justice Scalia), to engineering and technology. This has always been the preferred approach by those who wish to remain in a bubble and believe that racism and sexism are myths, or at least not real anymore.

The second is related. Often, we tend to think of the Civil Rights Movement and Second Wave Feminism as originating in the 1960s. For those of us who absorbed some poison from Christian Fundamentalism [link], we were told that both movements were morally wrong (if for no other reason than that government shouldn’t tell people not to do racist things) and that they arose from the decline of “true” religion in the 60s.

The truth is quite different, as the stories of the workers in the Richmond shipyards made clear. While the men were away fighting in Europe and the Pacific, women were able to taste financial and social freedom in a way that they had not. As one woman said, no matter how good your marriage is, there is no substitute for having one’s own bank account and income, that you and you alone can manage and spend. To go from a variety of well-paying and fairly prestigious manufacturing jobs back to either domestic work at home or a short list of “women’s” professions (teaching and nursing and maid service, mostly) was no longer acceptable. Thus, Second Wave Feminism’s focus on breaking down employment barriers.

I want to mention something else in this regard. It isn’t as if women neglected the home either. Somebody had to take care of the children, and indeed this happened. Some of the older relatives stepped in, cooperative day-cares were formed at the factories, and schools adapted as well. Likewise, having their own bank accounts didn’t mean an endless spree at Macy’s, but the ability and responsibility to manage the household and its funds. In other words, women didn’t use their freedom to be irresponsible.

But they did realize that they were every bit as capable as men at being in charge, and weren’t happy to be told to go be the little woman and let the big man do the thinking and managing of the purse. So, in a very real sense, it wasn’t the “immoral 60s” that gave rise to Second Wave Feminism. It was World War II, and the opportunities that women tasted.

Likewise, the Civil Rights Movement was birthed in World War II. Although full integration of the armed forces wouldn’t come until later, there still were more opportunities for whites to experience African Americans as equals, rather than lessers.

It was the factory experience, however, which was to prove more influential. Prior to the war, opportunities for African Americans were dismal. They were expected to serve in low-paying service industry jobs. Waiter, maid, sharecropper, busboy, gardener, and so on. The better compensated manufacturing jobs were off limits - in many cases by force of the Jim Crow laws.

Just like women, who refused to go quietly back to a subservient status, African Americans tasted better opportunity, and refused to settle for low-paying service jobs, segregation, and humiliation. It is no coincidence that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and the others of the Civil Rights Movement would rise not long after the end of the war. The genie was out of the bottle, and change had to come.

We were not able to participate in one particular facet of the park, which is too bad. Alas, the waiting list is six months long. Betty Reid Soskin is the oldest National Park Ranger at 93. She worked in the shipyards, and was one of the rangers who brought the Rosie The Riveter park into being. Her talks are so popular that one literally must sign up far in advance to have any hope. NPR did a bit on her a few years back, which you can read here.

"What gets remembered is a function of who's in the room doing the remembering."

This is so very true, and why it is important to have more than one dominant viewpoint. We need a full spectrum of stories, or we fail to remember.

John Muir National Historic Site

John Muir’s footprints are (literally and figuratively) all over my home state of California, and throughout the majestic Sierra Nevada mountains in particular. Without his efforts, it is entirely possible that Yosemite would be a resort for the wealthy (assuming the mining companies didn’t destroy it), the giant sequoias would have been logged to near extinction, and the conservationist movement would have come a couple of generations too late. It is not an exaggeration to say that the world was changed when Theodore Roosevelt took his legendary hiking and camping trip through Yosemite with Muir. More than anything else, this tipped the balance of power away from corporate mining and logging and toward the fledgling environmental protection movement.

Muir believed that conservation was a matter, not just of personal preference, but of actual justice. As I have grown older, and spent more time hiking and exploring the wilderness of the western United States, I have come to agree with him more and more.

On the one hand, there is the emotional connection. The thought of the basalt columns of Devil’s Postpile National Monument [link] being blasted to build a dam for mining makes my blood boil. (I wrote about that here.) A corporation would have profited for a few years, making a few people rich. Or not, given the high failure rate of mines. Some pretty metal would have been gained, but a natural wonder tens of thousands of years old would have disappeared forever.

This leads to the real reason that conservationism is indeed a justice issue. In any human endeavor, there are costs and benefits. In some cases, the costs and benefits are borne directly. For example, I bear the expenses of my law practice, and gain income from it.

But there are also external costs and benefits. I could argue that by increasing access to justice, I am benefiting even those who do not access my services. On the other hand, I require the killing of a number of trees (lawyers are terrible about this), so the environment suffers as a result. These are the external costs and benefits which are borne, not by me, but by all of humanity.

It is the externalized costs of an endeavor which are the focus of conservationism. A factory owner may pay his or her own costs for the actual physical plant, labor, and materials. But if the factory pollutes the air or water, those costs are not borne just by him, but by everyone who breathes the air or drinks the water. And, if he causes a tree to become extinct because he uses all of its species - even if he “pays” for them by buying them from the landowner, he has cost future generations the chance to benefit from that species.

Needless to say, the problem with external costs is that they are easily ignored in favor of profits. The business (or individual) gains little or nothing from minimizing external costs, and often would incur a significant cost to reduce those externals.

Hence the need for a way of ensuring justice when it comes to external costs. This is my main quibble with the Libertarian mindset, is that unregulated markets lack any means of controlling external costs, so those with the most to gain from despoilation pretty much get free run.

So, in my opinion, Muir was right that conservation is indeed a matter of justice. It protects the rights of those who bear the external costs of industry, and the rights of future generations, against those who would wish to personally profit at the expense of those others.

Admittedly, in some cases this can be a very complex calculation. People need to eat, for example, and land used for agriculture isn’t left untouched. The point is that conservationism and regulation serve to return the external costs back to one(s) reaping the benefits, whether those who profit directly, or those who consume.

Anyway, Muir eventually settled down and got married, and raised a couple of daughters. He bought a place near what is now Martinez, California, east of the Bay. When his in-laws died, his wife inherited the house and property nearby, which the Muirs then moved to. The current park contains these lands and the old mansion.

We spent a day there, hiked the hills named for Muir’s daughters, and explored the house. It was fun to see the old photos of the Muir girls, who seemed to inherit their father’s outdoor preferences. Not nearly as staid as one might have thought from the outfits - but quite a bit like my own vigorous girls.

This picture, though, is one that says so much. The sequoia tree (on the left) was planted by Muir himself about 100 years ago. Perhaps 2000 years from now, it will be as big as the giants in the Sierras.

But whatever the fate of the tree, Muir’s legacy lives on in the National Park system, which is dedicated to Muir’s passion for preserving the natural wonders of the world so that all of us, present and future, can share them.

For more, here is the official website for John Muir National Historic Site.