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Post-Darwinian Visions of Divine Creation

John Gatta

in Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and the Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present

Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Darwinism had a varied impact on American sensibilities. John Muir, for example, studied science and accepted the transmutative premise of ... More

Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Darwinism had a varied impact on American sensibilities. John Muir, for example, studied science and accepted the transmutative premise of evolutionary theory--but retained a biblically colored piety that saw God’s presence inscribed “in magnificent capitals” at places like Yosemite. During this extended period, writings by Mary Austin and Black Elk reflect their encounters with versions of naturalistic piety lying outside Euro-American ethnic traditions. Still, the written form in which Black Elk expressed his ecological vision of holiness, as imaged in the great hoop of the Lakota nation, was decidedly influenced by his contact with non-Indian culture. Although Rachel Carson was a committed scientist whose work presupposed belief in organic evolution, her writing also reflects a robust spirituality founded upon reverence for life and for the mystery of things unseen.Less

Two Views of One Valley

Robert W. Righter

in The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism

In early 1908, San Francisco felt confident that the Hetch Hetchy Valley would soon hold a reservoir. Secretary of the Interior James Garfield favored the city, and he formally approved the city's ... More

In early 1908, San Francisco felt confident that the Hetch Hetchy Valley would soon hold a reservoir. Secretary of the Interior James Garfield favored the city, and he formally approved the city's application in May. The Garfield grant, however, necessitated congressional hearings. In the House of Representatives and the Senate, damaging testimony as to the value of national parks influenced the legislators. San Francisco lost its chance for congressional approval of the Garfield grant. Now Muir, William Colby, Harriet Monroe, J. Horace McFarland, Robert Underwood Johnson, and others took the offensive. They formed the Society for the Preservation of National Parks to give their cause a more national voice. They enlisted the help of hiking and mountaineering clubs, and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. The new organization put out circulars attacking San Francisco's plans and offering alternatives. San Francisco responded with an attack on Muir and the “sentimentalists”, which it labeled “short-haired women and long-haired men”. Equally significant, the Roosevelt Administration left office and with it went Garfield, and soon, Pinchot. Congress, somewhat befuddled by the Hetch Hetchy controversy, endorsed a study by the US Geological Survey.Less

“Come Suck Sequoia and Be Saved”

Mark I. Wallace

in When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World

Chapter 4 keys on John Muir’s ecstatic wilderness religion as a paradigm of the dialectic between Christianity and animism at the center of this book, namely, Christianimism. Muir’s nature evangelism ... More

Chapter 4 keys on John Muir’s ecstatic wilderness religion as a paradigm of the dialectic between Christianity and animism at the center of this book, namely, Christianimism. Muir’s nature evangelism came at the price of rhetorically abetting the forced removal of Native Americans from their homes within the fledgling national parks movement. Notwithstanding this stain on Muir’s legacy, his thought is notable for rethinking the full arc of Jesus’ life—John the Baptist, departure into wilderness, temple money-changers, and crucifixion—in deeply personal terms that are environmental and biblically sonorous. Muir advocates a two bookstheology in which the Bible and the Earth are equally compelling revelatory “texts.” His Yosemite spirituality reaches its apogee in his 1870 “woody gospel letter,” a paean to a homophilic, orgasmic religion of sensual delight: “Come suck Sequoia and be saved.” In Muir’s spirit, the chapter concludes that Christianity is still not Christianity because of its erstwhile hostility to embodied existence.Less

 Wonder and the Moral Emotions: The Genesis of Aesthetic Spirituality

Robert C. Fuller

in Spirituality in the Flesh: Bodily Sources of Religious Experiences

The emotion of wonder is among our genetically encoded programs for responding to unexpected features of the environment. Wonder is distinct from other emotions in its ability to foster receptivity, ... More

The emotion of wonder is among our genetically encoded programs for responding to unexpected features of the environment. Wonder is distinct from other emotions in its ability to foster receptivity, openness, metaphysical thinking, and moral sensitivity. Biological and psychological studies of wonder help us understand the moods and motivations that distinguish aesthetic spirituality or nature religion.Less

Water, Earthquake, and Fire

Robert W. Righter

in The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism

Two leaders emerged as San Francisco pursued the valley: Mayor James Phelan and naturalist John Muir. Both were determined and led strong constituencies, and each held competing views of the meaning ... More

Two leaders emerged as San Francisco pursued the valley: Mayor James Phelan and naturalist John Muir. Both were determined and led strong constituencies, and each held competing views of the meaning of progress. Phelan was convinced a great dam symbolized human determination and ingenuity, and would enhance nature. Muir was skeptical that humans could improve on nature, and certainly not in the mountain sanctuary of Hetch Hetchy. John Muir and the Sierra Club held the upper hand until the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 intervened to change everything. The prostrate city with four square miles of its heart in smoldering ruins became an object of both pity and charity. Who could deny the city its desire for abundant water? Furthermore, many blamed the fire on the privately-owned Spring Valley Water Company. San Francisco reapplied for a permit. With the support of US Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot and the sympathy of Secretary of the Interior James Garfield, the city felt assured that soon its engineers would be damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley and building an aqueduct to transport the water to the city.Less

A Joy on the Precipice of Death: Muir and Stevenson in California

in The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept

This chapter examines the California travel narratives of Scottish free spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, who set out to purge the Victorian cult of leisure, specifically, outdoorsy ... More

This chapter examines the California travel narratives of Scottish free spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, who set out to purge the Victorian cult of leisure, specifically, outdoorsy sportiness, of its proprietary egoism. They reimagine the Golden State, their adopted home, as a sublime Romantic playground where the middle-class male ego disintegrates in the face of destructive nature, and where competitive men are reborn as little cosmic boys. Stevenson and Muir's literary efforts to rebrand California as a postapocalyptic, neo-Caledonian playground, as a land of death and play, helped shape the fledgling state's image of itself as an otherworldly and exceptional place. Modern California is a product, in part, of the Victorian world in play.Less

/ IDEAS: Franklin Roosevelt's Progressive Era Influences

Neil M. Maher

in Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Enviromental Movement

Chapter One examines the ideological origins of New Deal conservation and the CCC. It begins by showing how the idea for the Corps originated both from Roosevelt's early experiences with the ... More

Chapter One examines the ideological origins of New Deal conservation and the CCC. It begins by showing how the idea for the Corps originated both from Roosevelt's early experiences with the Progressive conservation movement, and, more surprisingly, from his lifelong involvement with the Boy Scouts. Similar to many progressive reform efforts such as the city beautiful, playground, and urban parks movements, the Boy Scouts promoted the notion that social behavior could be shaped by manipulating one's physical surroundings or environment. Chapter One illustrates how this philosophy not only influenced Roosevelt's decision to create the Corps, which like the Boy Scouts took young men from diseased urban settings and placed them in healthful environments in nature, but also greatly influenced early New Deal politics. The creation of work relief programs that put urban men to work in rural areas, Roosevelt knew from experiences as governor of New York, significantly raised his political capital. Creating the Corps, this chapter concludes, not only introduced the Boy Scout philosophy to the conservation movement but also helped the new president jump-start the New Deal.Less

. A Life Shaped by Wonder: John Muir

Robert C. Fuller

in Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality

This chapter explores the link between phenomenology (that is, the full, lived range of thought and feeling as registered by the experiencing subject) and wonder. It shows how emotional experience ... More

This chapter explores the link between phenomenology (that is, the full, lived range of thought and feeling as registered by the experiencing subject) and wonder. It shows how emotional experience can affect motivation, perception, and cognition in ways that influence moods and personality traits, which in turn predisposes individuals to certain philosophical and spiritual orientations to their world. More specifically, it examines how experiences of wonder can have a profound effect on a person's existential posture toward life. The chapter looks at one individual whose life was shaped by recurring experiences of wonder: John Muir, the earliest leader of the American nature preservation movement. It shows how Muir responded to displays of natural beauty and how that response led to an essentially pantheistic view of the relatedness and sacredness of all being.Less

Strange Lands

Louisa Gairn

in Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature

This chapter explores the confrontation of modernity and wilderness in Stevenson's fiction and travel writings, relating this to the work of John Muir and to ideas developed by Henry David Thoreau, ... More

This chapter explores the confrontation of modernity and wilderness in Stevenson's fiction and travel writings, relating this to the work of John Muir and to ideas developed by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Charles Baudelaire, taking up the idea of ‘exile’ in the context of the philosophy of ‘dwelling’ developed by ecotheorists. It notes that Stevenson's generation experienced an unprecedented acceleration of ‘progress’, where rapid developments in technology and urbanisation disrupted the idea of home and homeland. It further notes that progress for Stevenson and other Scots brought with it the possibility of international travel, and exposure to exotic lands and wilderness areas which appeared, to the Old World observer, as somehow ahistorical, a confusing mix of primordial nature and the markers of nineteenth-century modernity.Less

Introduction: Into Muir’s Forest

Daniel Capper

in Learning Love from a Tiger: Religious Experiences with Nature

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of naturalist John Muir's fascination with nature and his eventual “floral pilgrimage.” Muir embraced nature mysticism, which is the direct ... More

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of naturalist John Muir's fascination with nature and his eventual “floral pilgrimage.” Muir embraced nature mysticism, which is the direct experience of sacredness in and through nature. His nature mysticism sheds light to the manifold ways in which nonhuman nature, humans, and religions interact. The chapter also explains how the book unravels other examples of the dialectical processes in which religions help to determine experiences with nature, while experiences with nature alter the shapes of religions. Furthermore, the religions in this study all embrace in some way the myth of human superiority and since human-on-human slavery has not yet been completely extinguished, it is no surprising that humans treat natural ones like slaves as well.Less

. From Muir and Alexander to Leopold and Carson

John G. T. Anderson

in Deep Things out of Darkness: A History of Natural History

In which we make the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries as issues of conservation and preservation become entwined with natural history. John Muir’s travels both within the ... More

In which we make the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries as issues of conservation and preservation become entwined with natural history. John Muir’s travels both within the United States and globally echo some of the early natural historians, but the emphasis has shifted from one of discovery to one of concern. The founding of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley and the founding of the School of Forestry at Yale mark two axes of future direction to what comes to be called ecology.Less

The Hope of the World?

Jenni Calder

in Lost in the Backwoods: Scots and the North American Wilderness

By the late 1850s, the threats to natural wilderness were already apparent, with ranching, mining, tree felling and the damming of rivers beginning to take place on a massive scale. A key figure in ... More

By the late 1850s, the threats to natural wilderness were already apparent, with ranching, mining, tree felling and the damming of rivers beginning to take place on a massive scale. A key figure in identifying and combating these threats was John Muir, and this chapter begins with an examination of his conservation work and his mission to preserve and publicise the regenerative potential of wilderness. It goes on to discuss some later interpretations of the Scottish encounter with particularly the Canadian wilderness, where the Scottish impact is most prominent. Among authors considered are Margaret Laurence, Hugh MacLennan, Alice Munro, Alistair Macleod, Alexander Macleod and Margaret Elphinstone. It examines recurring themes of loss and displacement, which link Scottish and North American experience, and explores the continuing impact of natural wilderness and the man-made wilderness that has often displaced it. The conclusion suggests that Scottish experience of the wild, a key aspect of Scottish and British imperial activity, deeply imprinted responses to pioneering history on both sides of the Atlantic, responses that remain ambivalent, often contradictory, but a continuing source of creative endeavour.Less

The Conservation Biologists

Michael J. Lannoo

in This Land Is Your Land: The Story of Field Biology in America

Here I describe conservation’s convoluted and evolving history in America. As it became clear that extinctions at the hand of man should be avoided, the question became “how do we save these ... More

Here I describe conservation’s convoluted and evolving history in America. As it became clear that extinctions at the hand of man should be avoided, the question became “how do we save these imperilled species?” The first solution came from Gifford Pinchot’s concepts of “wise use” and “the greatest good for the greatest number.” But Pinchot’s conservation philosophy also perpetuated ecologically destructive policies such as grazing in national forests and damning the Hetch Hetchy Valley. John Muir, with his preservationist philosophy, opposed such policies, and the tension between these two perspectives—conservation vs. preservation—defined the struggle to delineate land-use policies on America’s federal lands, including national forests and grasslands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas. These were, and continue to be, bitter fights, producing civil wars among biologists and administrators within, but also across and beyond, federal agencies.Less