John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1994
John Muir Newsletter spring 1994 university of the pacific volume 4, number 2 JOHN MUIR AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT by Ron Limbaugh Was John Muir sympathetic toward 19th century feminism? Did he consider the rights of women worthy of at least the same respect as the rights of animals? Until recently i...
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| Summary: | John Muir Newsletter spring 1994 university of the pacific volume 4, number 2 JOHN MUIR AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT by Ron Limbaugh Was John Muir sympathetic toward 19th century feminism? Did he consider the rights of women worthy of at least the same respect as the rights of animals? Until recently it was not possible to explore these questions because of the lack of primary resources. Before 1970 the subject of Muir and his relationship with women was delicately side-stepped by scholars who were unable to win the confidence of Muir's heirs. Since then a new generation of heirs has opened the papers, and the result has been the emergence of new lines of critical inquiry. Stephen Fox's book, John Muir and His Legacy (1981), first critically analyzed Muir's relationship with Jeanne Carr and Elvira Hutchings. Muir biographies by Michael Cohen (1984) and Frederick Turner (1985) also delved into personal history, yet neither addressed the questions asked above, questions that surfaced repeatedly during my research on the origins and evolution of Muir's dog story, "Stickeen." Darwinians in the late Victorian era raised three troubling issues of special interest to Muir: the ethical relationship between humans and animals, the nature and extent of animal intelligence, and the status of the soul in higher animals. Of less direct impact on the dog manuscript, but still influential in shaping Muir's thinking during the long "Stickeen" gestation, was a fourth question that grew out of the debates on the other three: did all sentient beings, including women, have fundamental rights men were bound to respect? As Muir worked on the meaning of "Stickeen" he saw the logic of extending the equality argument to women. But on general questions of feminism his heart and head were divided. Though sympathetic to the legal and moral plight of women, his was a masculine world where language and culture and tradition defined gender roles. Suffragists might have a point, but his "fellow creatures" had a higher priority. Torn by countervailing forces Muir remained ambivalent. Not so his friend Henry S. Salt, England's leading advocate for animal rights. As the women's movement surged in the wake of Darwinism, Salt made friends with feminists. Drawing parallels between animals, slaves and women, he conceived of a grand coalition, a union of activists for the promotion of both human and animal rights. Middle class compassion for the downtrodden had fed the fires of antebellum reform in America, and Salt counted on this universal capacity for sympathy, "the very essence of the human," to promote "a wide sense of brotherhood with all sentient beings."' Drawing a connection between women's rights and animal rights was nothing new. The relationship dates from the beginnings of the Romantic era with its broad emotional and moral appeals to protect the innocent victims of immoral society. Ethicists today see the nexus as part of a larger picture, a "continuing struggle" over the last two centuries "to enlarge the boundaries of moral community."2 But for most of the 19th century linkage was a definite liability both to feminists and animal sympathizers. Opponents of moral reform drew absurd analogies between women and animals in a perverse attempt to discredit the women's movement through ridicule. The derision surfaced as early as 1793, a year after publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's pioneer tract, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. If women achieve the right to vote, asked the anonymous author of A Vindication of the Rights of Beasts, "why not cats and dogs?"3 The same forces that (continued on page 4) MUIR AND THE SCOTTISH CONNECTION: REVIEW OF A FRIENDLY DIALOGUE by Ron Limbaugh In January of this year, I received a letter from Graham White, Director of The Environment Centre, Drummond High School, Edinburgh, describing his efforts to locate "an extended record" of Muir's 1893 visit to Scotland. He had scrutinized Muir's travel journals on microfilm but "was surprised to find that the Journal for 1893 begins on the very day that he left Scotland and that there was no record of his Scottish trip in the [other] Journals of that date." From the film copy he was using, there appeared "to be visual evidence that a fair sized chunk of the Journal's early pages had been torn out."1 Graham White's investigation took him to Frederick Turner's biography, Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (1985), in which he was surprised and pleased to discover the following note on page 388: "On Muir's return to Scotland and his evident delight in the natural and human history of his native country, see his notebook on the trip with the Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton." This of course led to a request to obtain a copy of the notebook. This letter came as a considerable surprise. If Turner had found this notebook in the Muir collection at UOP, why hadn't it been published with the other John Muir Papers in the comprehensive microform edition of 1986? I had been the principal editor of that project, and the thought that we might have left out an important document that lay right under our noses caused momentary panic, relieved only by a quick trip to the Holt-Atherton Library. There, with the help of Janine Ford, a member of the library staff, I reinvestigated the relevant journals and correspondence, finding no evidence of a lost journal. Reassured by this second look that Muir had simply lifted these notes from some un-named Scottish gazeteer while he was a student at the University of Wisconsin, I replied to White, adding my opinion that Muir had been too busy visiting friends and relatives during the 1893 trip to take extensive journal notes. But what about Turner's citation? I was still pondering the matter when White wrote again, enclosing transcriptions he had made after laboriously deciphering Book Notes on Scotch Geology, a notebook located in the Muir microform edition which he believed Turner had "stumbled on" and had referred to in the book citation.2 During the preparation of the Muir papers, my co-editor and I had estimated the date of this notebook at about 1863, but White was "fairly convinced that this Journal could have been recycled by Muir to contain the notes of his Scottish trip in 1893."3 His rationale for this hypothesis rested on the content of Muir's notes, which referred to "sites in the Highlands and the Borders [which] could not have been reached by Muir as a child." The couplets White found in the notebook also "read like eye-witness notes" describing sites which "Muir cannot have visited . before he left Scotland in 1848. This implies that these poetic couplets were drafted during or after his 1893 visit." White's argument, and Turner's citation, led me back to the Holt-Atherton for still another investigation of the notebook in question, this time with a magnifying glass in hand and Robin Winks' book, The Historian as Detective (1970), in mind. What I found supported neither White's conclusions nor Turner's note. As I explained in my reply: 1. There are no visible later additions or alternations to the original notes. The handwriting slant and style are consistant throughout the 42 pages remaining in the journal. It is clear from the physical evidence that Muir began the journal on page 1 and worked forward, without skipping back and forth or revising earlier notes. On page 12, in the middle of the page, the penciled notes end and the inked notes begin, showing clearly that the penciled (continued on page six) ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CONFERENCE JUNE 19-22 The Alliance for Environmental Education, a broad coalition representing over 50 million members through 350 affiliated organizations, is sponsoring an international conference June 19-22 in Vienna, Virginia. The theme is "Environmental Education 2000: Communications for the Future," and the purpose will be to explore model programs from around the world. For further information, contact AEE, P.O. Box 368, The Plains, VA 22171, (703)253- 5812. JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. IV, #2 (NEW SERIES) SPRING 1994 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff o Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. BOOK REVIEW John Muir, Letters from Alaska, ed. by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1993. $12.95 (paper). Reviewed by Frank E. Buske, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Alaska, Fairbanks When John Muir, late in life, began work on Travels in Alaska, one of five books he hoped to write about the territory, he had a wealth of material on which to draw. In addition to his prodigious memory, he had letters, no notebooks and, most importantly, newspaper letters he had written in 1879 and 1880 while traveling in Alaska that had been published in the San Francisco Bulletin. Editors Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell have assembled some of these letters in their Letters from Alaska, a handsomely produced book from the University of Wisconsin Press. The volume contains seven of the eleven newspaper letters Muir wrote in 1879, the seven letters he wrote in 1880, plus Muir's article about the discovery of Glacier Bay.' Muir used a number of these same letters for his book, either exactly as published in the newspaper or in revised copies. Muir's Alaska experience was a baptism in the pure wildness that he so much relished. In the Yosemite Muir believed he had found a great valley produced by almost endless years of glacial action but only remnants of the glaciers that had done the work. In Alaska there were huge ice sheets daily sculpting new landscapes. It was, as he had written earlier in another context, "still the morning of creation. . ." Although Muir's chief interest in these letters is in glaciers, he nevertheless wrote about other things that interested him. He observed the Indians who lived there and came to respect and admire them. Since there was much interest in mining, he also wrote about prospects for finding gold in Alaska. This book contains a long introduction, a mini- biography of Muir, including some information that needs clarification. Muir came to Alaska by way of the Yosemite but how did he get there? Although he may have seen a painting of the Yosemite while in Indianapolis,2 he had actually heard of the great valley earlier: "A prophecy in this letter of Emerson's recalled one of yours sent me when growing at the bottom of a mossy maple hollow in the Canada woods, that I would one day be with you, Doctor, and Priest in Yosemite."3 There is little doubt that when Muir began his 1,000 mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico, he expected to end up in the Yosemite, whatever his wanderings on the way. Muir may have had conversations about glaciers with the Reverend Sheldon Jackson at the Sunday School convention in the Yosemite Valley in 1879, but he had already heard about possibilities of glaciation in Alaska some years before. In the summer of 1871, Professor M.W. Harrington of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor had visited Yosemite where he met Muir. In October of that year, Harrington wrote Muir from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, about his impressions (mistaken) as to the extent of glaciation in Alaska.4 The fact that Muir published his letters from Alaska in a San Francisco newspaper did not limit their readership. Family and friends in Wisconsin and Indianapolis wrote of having read copies of his letters in local newspapers. Letters from Alaska contains an abundance of illustrations: some of Muir's sketches, contemporary photographs and maps. Of particular interest is the chronology constructed of Muir's almost day-to-day activities while in Alaska in 1879 and 1880 since it provides a framework for a better understanding of the letters. The Notes on Sources has much valuable information about Muir scholarship. 1 Reprinted from the American Geologist. 2 Engberg and Merrell, p. xviii. 1 William Frederic Bade, The Life and Letters of John Muir (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924), Vol. I, p. 261. 4 This letter in the Muir Papers, University of the Pacific. NEW CACHE OF MUIR LETTERS DISCOVERED IN ENGLAND Graham White of The Environment Centre, Drummond High School, Edinburgh, has send us transcriptions of five letters he located in the archives of the Royal Botanic (Kew) Gardens in England. With the help of Cheryl Piggott, Kew archivist, he found this correspondence among the papers of Sir Joseph Hooker, celebrated 19th century British botanist who toured the Shasta region with Muir and Asa Gray in 1877. Later Muir visited Hooker in England. As White remarks, Muir "certainly. was right in placing Hooker among the giants of the 19th century." Only one of the letters in the Kew Archives was published in the John Muir Papers microform edition of 1986. The four unpublished letters include one to Gray, 13 January 1878, and three to Hooker dated 1 February 1879, 20 February 1882, and 20 October 1904. The 1879 letter is a lengthy description of Muir's Great Basin expedition of 1878 during which he climbed Wheeler Peak (see John Muir Newsletter, Winter, 1992). We are grateful to Mr. White for his generous assistance in providing transcriptions of these letters, which we hope we are able to publish in a future issue of this Newsletter. (continued from page one) held women in moral bondage to men also kept reformers from asserting the rights of animals. Reformers also had to contend with the more traditional approach to animal protection led by conservative animal shelter organizations like the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In the half-century since its founding, the RSPCA and its American counterparts had been led by upper-class elites who found humanitarian appeals preferable to revolutionary polemics on the rights of animals. "Radicals" were purged from the English SPCA-meaning Jews, vegetarians, feminists, and anyone else that might be unconventional or too liberal. Americans simply avoided them. In both cases the remaining leaders were safely orthodox Christian, masculine, and upper-class. SPCAs generally did not engage in rhetorical debates over the nature of animal rights. The backbone of their support came from the status-conscious middle-class who looked to the elites for leadership and models. SPCAs also siphoned off many Victorian women who felt pangs of conscience for both animals and other "brutes", including the impoverished lower classes seen in ever greater numbers as industrialization spread across the western world. Humanitarian sentiment toward downtrodden animals was a safe and reassuring act of Christian love that avoided disturbing ideological or philosophical issues. The primary objective was to eliminate the worst abuses and educate the abusers-usually the lower classes-on the Christian virtues of kindness and sympathy. SPCAs in America and England, by and large, became safe havens for the upper classes and their middle-class allies who felt they were doing something to improve society while not threatening its basic values.4 By the latter part of the 19th century a revived feminism threatened to undermine the conventional approach to animal protection as well as the old SPCA power structure. The confrontation between feminists and reactionaries now took on a new Darwinian twist. Opponents of women's rights used evolution theory to argue that suffrage would violate the laws of nature. Natural selection, they said, demonstrated "that the highest forms of life were most specialized. Therefore, the proposal that woman invade man's sphere must be retrogressive rather than progressive."5 By the same reasoning a New York physician concluded that women were inferior to men because of their "comparative indifference to pain." His deduction was based on a common 19th century presumption that the "higher classes and nations are more sensitive to physical suffering than the lower classes and barbarous tribes," and that "in all grades of civilization the men are more sensitive than the women." But feminists could play the same game. Turning the learned doctor's syllogism on its head, one indignant woman retorted that since men are stronger than women, and since brute strength characterizes savage societies, therefore men are savage brutes.6 On the West Coast the resurgent women's movement penetrated the inner circles of power, including humanitarian organizations like the Bay Area SPCAs. While John Muir worked on his Stickeen text in Martinez, just 20 miles away some of his friends debated the meaning of evolution for both humans and animals. One was Sarah J. McChesney, an Oakland housewife who loved animals. Twenty years after Muir had boarded in the McChesney household while writing up his Sierra glaciation theories, Mrs. McChesney became a director of the Oakland SPCA, defying the traditional subordination of women members.7 Not reticent to speak out on the implications of Darwinism, she said evolution had reversed Cartesian logic. If souls were necessary ior sentience, then "most assuredly" animals had souls. The remark of course had religious implications, for orthodox Christianity denied that animals were immortal. On that question both McChesney and Charles B. Holbrook, secretary of the San Francisco SPCA, boldly asserted that dogs and other sentient animals had a rightful place in heaven.8 That same logic could also be used against anti- feminists who denied that women had souls. This was simply a religious extension of Cartesian theory, based on the pre-Darwinian premise that souls were necessary for sentience and that women were less sentient than men. Mrs. McChesney's reported remarks stopped short of challenging the conventional western religious view of women, but another Muir friend was more outspoken. Mary McHenry Keith, a San Francisco attorney and wife of Muir's closest friend William Keith, played a prominent regional role in the cause of women's rights.9 She was also an animal rights activist, asserting, with Sarah McChesney, that animal sentience no longer could be disputed. In response to a reporter's inquiry she boldly linked the cause of women and animals. Both were sentient beings with immortal souls. Mar)' Wollstonecraft had been vindicated at last! Mrs. Keith even suggested western Christianity could learn something from Hindu teachings on the "transmigration of souls" after death.10 Muir had also explored the idea and had even mentioned it in his final draft of "Stickeen", but his editor had tossed it out as a "digression." If Muir liked some feminist views on animal rights, Maiy Keith's outspoken opinions on the role of women in society must have troubled him. He had friends on both sides of the issue. The Keiths themselves were divided—the landscape artist refused to take his wife seriously, perhaps in retaliation for'her refusal to take an interest in his Swedenborgian views. He was a notorious tease, poking fun at feminists, even playing the fool dressed as Susan B. Anthony at a gathering of friends. Presumably he was polite when Anthony herself visited the Keiths at their Berkeley home on her West Coast tour in 1895." William Keith was a light-hearted anti-feminist, but another Muir acquaintence took a harder line. Joseph LeConte, geology professor at the University of California and a radical Darwinist.12 was outspoken in his attack on the suffragists. Recalling the Wollstonecraft lampoon a century earlier, he said if women should vote so should children, and if children voted so should horses and dogs. Once more evolution theory came to the service of the Social Darwinists. The "intelligence of man & beast differs only in degree," he asserted, presumably meaning man in the generic sense. Within the human species, however, male dominance simply confirmed the inexorable consequences of natural selection.13 Muir pondered these anti-feminist remarks and found further opposition in his readings. He noted that Thoreau had reported conversing with a feminist but found the experience unenlightening. "You had to substitute courtesy for sense and argument," he wrote. "The championess of woman's rights still asks you to be a ladies' man. I fear that to the last woman's lectures will demand mainly courtesy from man."14 Francis Parkman was even more blunt, writing in exasperation after listening to a "noise party in the cars": "Is not a half educated vulgar weak woman a disgusting animal? Where there is no education at all and no pretension, the matter is all very well-where high education and good sense are united is very well indeed; but the half and half genteel-damn them!"15 But for every nay-sayer there were positive voices. Muir was impressed by the outspoken views of John Stuart Mill, who had fought for women's suffrage in the House of Commons. "He disliked to think that there were any fundamental differences in mind and character between the se,xes," said Richard T. Ely in a review Muir thought worthy of notice.16 Nearer home, Ina Coolbrith and Katherine Graydon, both close friends of Muir, took prominent roles in the Bay Area suffrage movement." Like some Civil War families, on the women's issue friends and relatives stood divided. One of the friendly critics was Theodore Hittell, who mocked Carrie Chapman Catt at the same party where Keith mimicked Anthony. However, his daughter Catherine, nicknamed "Kittie," was an active feminist in San Francisco. Both Hittells corresponded with Muir and visited him occasionally. I8 How much Muir was influenced by these conflicting opinions is impossible to measure. His journals and notes reveal no discernable pattern to his thinking on the women's question. Perhaps he consciously tried to avoid taking sides for the sake of his family, for even in his own household there may have been voices of discord. Muir's wife Louisiana, or "Louie" as she was universally known, is a reclusive figure in the Muir story. Presumably she followed her husband's views, but their eldest daughter Wanda was influenced by her Berkeley boarding school experience. Later she attended the University of California for at least two years, although not long enough to graduate. Muir opposed sending Wanda off to school. He believed women should be educated at home-in contrast to the views of his next-door neighbor and friend John Swett, one of the founders of public education in California.19 Whether this conservatism extended to the suffrage issue cannot be directly determined from the paltry evidence left behind, but Wanda's independence in matters of education and marriage caused at least a temporary rift in the Muir household and may have been rooted in more basic differences on the matter of women's rights. The fact that Muir chummed with some outspoken anti-feminists lends credence to this view. On the other hand he stood with the feminists on fundamental philosophical questions, rejecting anti-feminist dogmas based on the presumptive inequality of sex or species. Regardless of how he felt personally, his frequent contacts with activists on both sides of the issue provide an intriguing backdrop for further study. The story of Muir's outlook on the feminist movement has more chapters to come. Notes 'Henry S. Salt, "The Rights of Animals," International Journal of Ethics, 10 (January 1900), 215-216. 2Ethics and Animals, p. 5. 3Ibid., p. 5. 4Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 39-59; Gerald Carson, Men, Beasts and Gods: a History of Cruelty and Kindness to Animals (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, cl972), 53-55; 96-105. 5Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920 (New York & London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), 21. 'New York Times, March 28, 1897, p. 16, col. 5. 'Women were minority members and only occasionally officers until after the turn of the century in both the Oakland and San Francisco SPCAs. The San Jose branch, however, apparently had a much larger female contingent by the mid- 18903 than other humane societies in the Bay Area. San Francisco Call, July 19, 1892, p. 8, c. 2; August 28, 1896, p. 11 c. 2; March 19, 1897, p. 9, c. 5; July 19, 1898, p. 7, c. 4. 8"Have Animals Souls," newspaper clipping from San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Supplement, May 26, 1901, p. 31, in the unfilmed John Muir Papers, Series VI, UOPWA. 9San Francisco Call, May 6, 1896, pp. 10-11; May 21, 1896, p. 13, cs. 3-4; The History of Woman Suffrage, Ida Husted Harper, ed. (National American Woman Suffrage Association, cl922), v. 4, pp. 480, 483. ""'Have Animals Souls," JMP UOPWA. Another controversial woman leader in both feminist and animal causes was the wife of Charles Holbrook, the San Fransisco SPCA Secretary. In 1903 anonymous accusations were brought against both Holbrooks, he for "neglecting his duty in order to visit theaters and music halls," she for conducting herself "in an unladylike manner in the society's offices," "being generally disagreeable," and, on her absentee husband's behalf, having "administered the affairs of the charity during his absence." A majority of trustees, however, recognizing Mrs. Holbrook's outstanding efforts to educate school children on the proper treatment of animals, supported her and her husband and dismissed the charges. San Francisco Call, February 22, 1903, p. 27, c. 2. "Brother Cornelius, Keith: Old Master of California (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1942), v. 1, pp. 349-353, 373-374. After the turn of the century Keith became more sympathetic toward the suffragists, even donating paintings to help his wife raise money for the cause. Upon his death in 1911 the National American Woman Suffrage Association included his name in memorial resolutions adopted for "prominent suffragests who had died during the year." The History of Woman Suffrage, v. 5, p. 320. l2Joseph LeConte, "From Animals to Man," The Monist, 6 (April 1896), 356-381. "Keith: Old Master of California, 356-358. 14Henry D. Thoreau, The Writings ofHemy David Thoreau. Journal, m (Boston & NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 168, in JMP UOPWA. 15Charles H. Farnham, A Life of Francis Parkman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1902), 113, in JMP UOPWA. "Richard T. Ely, "John Stuart Mill," in A Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, XXV (NY: The International Society, 1897), 10011, JMP, Huntington Library. "San Francisco Call, May 6, 1896, p. 11, c. 1; The Histoiy of Woman Suffrage, v. 4, p. 479. "Brother Cornelius, Keith, v. 1, pp. 349-352. "Shirley Sargent explores Wanda's educational experiences and the family rift in Dear Papa: Letters Between John Muir and his Daughter Wanda (Fresno, CA: Panorama West Books, cl985), pp. 69-80. The information on Swett is from an interview with Mrs. Margaret Plummer (John Swett's granddaughter), Martinez, California, March 28, 1988. (Scottish connection continued from page two) notes were entered before the inked section. 2. The inked section of the journal contains notes Muir wrote while consulting an unidentified reference work on Scottish history and geology. This is clear by the historical references and the alphabetical list of entries. I have not investigated the possibilities, but there must have been a number of works on Scotland available to Muir during his student days at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 1860-1863. Muir would not have drafted these notes while touring Scotland in 1893. He had no time for such work, and besides it is totally inconsistent with his method of study in the field. 3. The penmanship, phraseology, and style of the "Scotch Geology" notebook and Muir's 1893 journal "Trips to Alaska and Norway" (Microfilm reel 27. 02882) are so different that it is inconceivable they could have been written at the same time. Conclusive is the discrepancy in Muir's use of the double "s." In the "Scotch Geology" notebook he followd the Old English style, making "ss" look like "fs." (for examples, see "Gentlenefs" on p. 7, "Mofs" on p. 27). In 1893, however, he followed modern "ss" usage. (See 1893 "Alaska and Norway" journal, page 1: "seasickness", "smoothness") This same pattern can be found in his correspondence: in 1863 he was using "fs" (see JM ltrs 1 June 1863 {"unlefs"} and 12 June 1863 {"pofsible"}). compared to "ss" in 1893 letters (see JM ltrs 20 June 93 to his brother {"pass"}, and to Wanda {"address"}). Equally conclusive are the stylistic differences between Muir's journals and his notebooks. When he was in the field recording first-hand observations, he became part of the action and used personal pronouns to refer to himself, and recorded the action in field journals. When he was taking notes from a written source, or sitting at a desk revising notes or reflecting, he avoided personal pronouns and took himself out of the action entirely. These comments he recorded in notebooks. If one studies the remaining journals and notebooks in the microform collection, these differences are consistent and significant, and I think make it difficult to argue that the "Scotch Geology" notebook is in fact a field journal used on his 1893 trip.4 Graham White was gracious in his response. On April 6 he wrote that he had "come to the same conclusion as yourself," discovering "by pure chance.the book from which Muir made his abridged notes." White's friend Donald Duff, a retired professor of geology, "found the entire Geography and Geology passages to have been taken verbatim from the Introduction" to a two-volume edition of The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland (1868).5 Despite his disappointment "that these notes were not original Muir writings," White is "still pursuing the idea of a new biography of Muir from a Scottish viewpoint since there appear to be many themes which have not been treated in previous biographies." In this I heartily agree, and I hope all scholars who have an interest in this subject will express their opinions directly to Graham White, Director, The Environment Centre, Drummond High School, Green Street, Edinburgh EH7 4QP, Scotland. Tel: 031-557-2135 (day/fax). Notes 1 TLS, White to R. Limbaugh, 13 January 1994, in John Muir Center- Director's files, hereafter JMC. 2 AMS notebook, Reel 31/00080. 'White to Limbaugh, 13 January [February] 1994, JMC. 4 Limbaugh to White, 17 March 1994, JMC. 5 White to Limbaugh, 6 Apr 1994, JMC. YOSEMITE EXPERIENCE AVAILABLE Brooks Peterson, a real estate broker with a lifetime of experience exploring trails in Alaska and the Americas, has founded the Range of Light, Inc., a non-profit center for wilderness education, located on his 80-acre forested ranch near Coulterville, California, close to the north entrance of Yosemite National Park. He offers a variety of wilderness treks in all seasons, as well as an art experience working with Kate Campbell, a British-born sculptor who is resident artist at the ranch. Individuals as well as groups looking for outdoor adventure and education are welcome. For more information contact Brooks Peterson at the Range of Light, Inc., 6752 Dogtown Road, Coulterville, CA 95311 209-465-7442. THE CANADIAN SPIRIT OF JOHN MUIR EXPLORED IN A NEW THESIS A doctoral study on John Muir is currently underway at the Department of Forest Science, University of Alberta. Connie Bresnahan's thesis will explore the contribution that the Canadian wilderness and its people made toward the formation of Muir's biocentric perspective. Most of Muir's early journals and correspondence went up in the mill fire at Meaford in 1866, but Connie has studied the fragmentary early sources that remain, including several letters between Muir and William Trout only recently made available. She has also worked closely with Muir's later journals, and is proposing a comparison of Muir's early, restless years as a young man in Ontario, with his later years as a mature and established naturalist/ conservationist exploring the great Stikine river and the Cassiar region. In addition, she intends to trace the influence that Muir and his ideology had upon the beginning of the Canadian conservation movement. Any comments or information that may be helpful should be forwarded to Connie Bresnahan, c/o Dept. of Forest Science, General Services Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. A MUIR LISTSERVER GROUP FORMING The staff of the John Muir Center has been gathering a list of e-mail addresses for those willing to share information and ideas by the "information superhighway." Here's what we have thus far: Don Browne: browne@seas.ucla.edu Ron Limbaugh: rlimbaugh@unixl.cc.uop.edu Sean O'Grady: spogrady@bullwinkle.ucdavis.edu Dennis Williams: dwilliam@aixl.ucok.edu Harold Wood: visali https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1036/thumbnail.jpg |
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