John Muir Newsletter, Fall 1994

• Main Author: John Muir Center for Regional Studies
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1994
• Subjects: John Muir; Newsletter; Holt-Atherton Special Collections; University of the Pacific; Holt-Atherton Pacific Center for Western Studies; Stockton; California; John Muir Center for Regional Studies; American Studies; Natural Resources and Conservation; United States History; Atherton; Bancroft; Canada; Carr; Coates; Crawford; Emerson; Hooker; Huntington; New Zealand; Pacific; Steamboat; Theodore; Tromso; Watkins; Zeus; glacier; glacier*; glaciers; Alaska; University of Tromso
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/39; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=jmn

John Muir Newsletter fall 1994 university of the pacific volume 4, number 4 JOHN MUIR'S PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION By Janene Ford Library/Archives Assistant Holt-Atherton Library It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. John Muir could easily turn out a thousand words, but as far as we know he seldom, if ever, used a camera. However, it is evident that Muir recognized and respected the value of visual images. During his lifetime he amassed a collection of nearly 3,000 photographs, many of which were taken by acquaintances and friends such as William Keith, Charles Lummis, Theodore Lukens, Marion Delany, George Fiske, Herbert W. Gleason, William Herrin, Marion Hooker, Helen L. Jones, C. Hart Merriam, Edward Parsons, and his daughter Helen Muir. Some photographs were retained for personal enjoyment and others for use as illustrations for his writings. Before snapshot cameras were developed, taking photographs required cumbersome equipment and supplies. Muir's personal lifestyle did not involve packing a lot of excess baggage, as he preferred to carry only the necessities in a sack or a pocket. A pencil, a pad of paper, and with some time by the campfire, and he was able to record his journeys in words and in detailed sketches and drawings. If they had been available in the nineteenth century, Muir might have carried a small lightweight disposable camera. John Muir's photograph collection contains many portraits and landscape photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As friends and relatives were often far apart geographically, it was the fashion to include portraits with correspondence. This practice, along with Muir's habit of keeping everything, makes it possible for today's researchers to see images of members of Muir's family and his friends. There are many portraits of John Muir and his daughters, but very few of his wife Louie. One can speculate that she did not like to have her picture taken. Currently, early photographs documenting the Muir- Strentzel home in Martinez serve a useful purpose. They are being used to help the historic site staff recreate the gardens as they existed in Muir's time. In addition, the photographs of John Muir at his writing desk give us a glimpse into his private domain, complete with plant specimens and slacks of papers and books. The majority of photographs in the collection are landscape views of California and especially the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These document some of Muir's favorite scenes and haunts. As examples, Hetch Hetchy Valley is shown with its lush meadowlands, and there are many grand views of mountains and glaciers in Alaska. John J. Reilly, Carleton E. Watkins, Edward Curtis, Andrew P. Hill, Crawford Brothers, William Rulofson, Kilburn Brothers, Eadweard Muybridge, Charles Savage, Shew, Isaiah Taber, Ormsby, Pastridge, and L. Pedrotti are among the many photographers represented in the collection. Muir was known to collect photographs when he traveled. An entry in a journal notes that he "went ashore to buy photographs". There are photographs of Muir's homeland~Scotland-and others from his travels in Africa, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, India, Latin America, (continued on page 5) BOOK REVIEW (Editor's note: the following appeared earlier this year, and is reprinted courtesy of the John Muir Trust Newsletter, edited by Colin Eastwood, 12 Booth Avenue, Sanbach, Cheshire CW11 OJN, England. For information about the Trust and its activities, write Freepost John Muir Trust, Musselburgh, Midlothian EH21 7BR Scotland). Review by Terry Gifford In Nature's Defence: Conservation and Americans. By Peter Coats. British Association for American Studies Pamphlet 26, Ryburn Distribution, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG. 53 pages, ISBN 0-946488-16-9, 4-95 It is tempting to think of the history of American conservation as being either before Muir or after the formation of the Sierra Club. Certainly this succinct history by Trust member Peter Coates places Muir in a pivotal position as 'one of the few early conservationists to emerge from within the pioneer tradition.' It is in the context of a national mood of anxiety at the closing of the frontier for a 'frontier-nurtured culture' that Coates places Muir's literary success. In Muir's day, too, enshrining national treasures, the spectacular sites of frontier struggle, substituted for European historical monuments, but was always compromised by a need to feel that the resources of America were being put to best use. Conservation had to justify itself as recreation. Whilst admitting that Muir 'clearly went beyond Emerson and even Thoreau,' Peter Coates is guarded about constructing a politically correct Muir who was a deep ecologist befriending E.H. Harriman, owner of the Southern Pacific RailRoad, and advocating cars in Yosemite. This is overcautious. Muir's vision was undoubtedly biocentric, but it also sought to integrate recreation in conservation. This is a challenge facing the John Muir Trust for the future. And a challenge outlined for the future of American conservation also relates to Scotland: 'Nature must be defended outside the existing parks and refuges if marginalised species are to stand a chance.' Maintaining biodiversity is the problem that piecemeal protection has created. This is an extremely useful publication, with an amazingly comprehensive annotated bibliography for those who want to read further. It is readable and gently provocative, quoting with restraint and to good effect. In 1954 the biographer of Thoreau, one Joseph Wood Kmlch, wrote: 'Man's ingenuity has outrun his intelligence.' This little pamphlet proves him not entirely correct. JEANNE CARR THE SUBJECT OF A NEW DISSERTATION Bonnie J. Giscl, Ph.D. candidate at Drew University, is completing a thesis that discusses Jeanne Carr's experiences as a naturalist and writer in an ambivalent era when Americans saw nature "both as pristine and cultivated," and thus tried to balance "the spiritual and affective with the utilitarian and economic." Her dissertation, "Jeanne C. Carr: Into the Sun; Toward a Nineteenth-Century American Woman's Experience in Nature and Wilderness," uses Carr as a case study of how a "Euro-American woman" dealt with this ambiguity, and analyzes whether or not Carr was a "representative example" or "an independent distinctive voice." While the study includes extensive discussion of the Muir-Carr relationship, Gisel also explores Carr's correspondence, publications, and other writings, as well as the personal friendships she developed with Emerson. Asa Gray. Helen Hunt Jackson, and Joseph Le Conte. Because "Carr's Christian spirituality is pivotal to her life," the thesis also explores the effect of her religious views on her understanding of nature. Gisel has been actively pursuing research leads for the past year. Most of the sources for her work are in western repositories, including the Huntington Library, the Pasadena Historical Society, and the Holt-Atherton Library at the University of the Pacific. Anyone with helpful information or ideas may contact her at 39 Green Village Road, Madison, New Jersey 07940, phone [phone], voice mail 201-408-5602. Speaking of the Carr-Muir relationship, did Carr's descriptive nature prose influence Muir's own writing style, or did Muir inspire Carr? For possible clues, see the article on page six of this issue. JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. IV, #4 (NEW SERIES) FALL 1994 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies. University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff © Sally M. Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. LAUNCHING A MUIR DIALOGUE ON E-MAIL The John Muir Center recently inaugurated the John Muir Forum in order to serve the growing number of e- mail participants. The Center will act as a clearinghouse for the exploration of ideas and the exchange of information, and as a focal point where comments can be posted for distribution to group members. We do not propose direct and live interchange between members. That can be done by the writers themselves. This is not a regular Listserver. Our plan is to post ideas to a central board (the Muir Center), where all can read and comment, building a body of information that, hopefully will promote better understanding of issues relating to Muir. To keep the level of exchange friendly but frank, and to insure quality control, we need some guidelines. Here are our preliminary suggestions. Please respond with suggestions of your own, either about format or content. If a readers have issues they would like to explore, please notify us via e-mail, or write to us in care of the John Muir Center at the University of the Pacific. 1. The Muir Center will post a list of suggested issues for discussion, and will distribute comments received on those issues. Each comment a member contributes must identify, by name and number, the issue addressed. 2. Anyone can offer ideas, opinions, and views, but submissions must be relevant to the topic and kept under 500 words each exchange. All comments received will be posted in the order received. Commentators will be identified by name, institution or town unless a specific request for anonymity is received. 3. It is assumed that all comments sent to the Center as part of this Forum are sent for the purposes of publication in the same media. They will therefore be redistributed by emaifunaltered, to other members of the Muir Group without seeking permission from the author. 4. Because this is an academic forum, the Center reserves the right to withhold comments from distribution that are grossly offensive or obscene (using California community standards). 5. Selections from responses to issues may be collected and printed in future issues of the John Muir Newsletter. Prior to hardcopy publication, a copy of the edited version will be distributed via e-mail to the Muir Group. At that time anyone wishing to withdraw comments from the printed version may do so by notifying the editor, Sally Miller, at the John Muir Center. To launch the Forum, the following has been contributed by Ron Limbaugh: ISSUE #1: WAS MUIR A THEIST OR A POSTMODERN PANTHEIST? Max Oelschlaeger's The Idea of Wilderness (Yale U. Press, 1991) offers a provocative deconstructionist view of western nature philosophy. Included is a chapter on Muir that characterizes him as a postmodern pantheist whose theology ultimately evolves in a different direction from Transcendentalism. Emerson's Transcendental "confirmation of God's existence" in Nature, argues Oelschlaeger, is simply another explication of conventional Christian theism: an external, supernatural creator. In contrast, he says, Muir began as a theist but developed an "evolutionary pantheism" that "transformed" the idea of God "into a temporal, immanent, and continuing process of divine creation." By "directly seeing God in nature," says Oelschlaeger, Muir "cuts through the cake of social convention and achieves an immediate felt unity with the web of life." While I do not dispute postmodernist interpretations that Muir rejected Christian dualism and materialism, I think we have to take Muir at face value and see him in the context of the more conventional nineteenth century creationist paradigm. The entire span of his writings, both published and unpublished, shows a persistent and unwavering belief in the notion of a purposive, progressive, created universe. Oelschlaeger's contrast between Emerson's concept of "an eternal and transcendent creator" and Muir's belief in an "immanent and continuing process of divine creation" I think is a distinction without a difference. More important, Oelschlaeger glosses over the anthropomorphic descriptions that pervade Muir's religious writing. God is not a process but a distinctive personality: masculine, proactive, inventive, omnipresent, and above all caring. In a 1985 article I described Muir's vision of god as a "Yosemite Zeus in overalls," and while that is perhaps a little strained, I think it still is close to Muir's perception of deity. If everything is divine, to use Oelschlaeger's definition of pantheism, then nothing is divine. Oelschlaeger links Muir with Ernst Haeckel, whose "monism" was clearly an attempt to replace supernaturalism with scientific materialism. Muir rejected that notion, and indeed disputed Haeckel's American proteges. He never stepped out of the nineteenth century western culture that nurtured him. He never abandoned the notion of an anthropomorphic divine creator. To interpret his writings otherwise may make good postmodernist philosophy, but not good history. RESPONSES TO ISSUE #1: —From Harold Wood, Visalia ([e-mail]) I don't think this is an "either-or" proposition. If indeed Muir was a Christian, he was expressing a prophetic vision far outside the mainstream of the Christian churches of either his or our day. What comes through loud and clear in considering this debate is that Muir's view of religion was plainly antagonistic to the fundamentalist Christianity of the nineteenth century which appointed man as the ruler of Creation. Many Christians today idly imagine their pet dog or cat going with them to the paradise of the afterworld (unaware that the official doctrines of every major Christian church firmly bars animals from Heaven). Perhaps such Christians are really not Christians, since they have adopted a theological position at odds with nearly universal Christian doctrine. Muir, too, was struck by the stinginess of the Christian God in denying an immortal soul not merely to animals but to the vegetable kingdom as well. "They tell us," he noted, admiring a palm tree, "that plants are not like man immortal, but are perishable - soulless. I think that this is something that we know exactly nothing about." According to Stephen Fox, "With that statement, Muir stepped, unequivocally and permanently, outside the Christian tradition." Muir's life and writings reveal that regardless of labels, Muir advocated a perception of Divinity within Nature This seems to me more important than what label we affix on Muir. If I can claim Muir as a Pantheist, I will not begrudge those of other faiths who also wish to embrace him. In fact, 1 think it possible to derive Pantheism from Christianity, a point which certain theologians have espoused. We should all agree that Muir's writings put the focus of piety on the natural world. Whether or not Muir saw Nature and God as precise equivalents, the crucial point is that he revered Nature in a way that is accepted by both Pantheists and a new generation of Christian reformers, but is a far cry from nineteenth century Christianity. Let us seek not to place divisions and boundaries between spiritual concepts; let us instead embrace the holistic view that Muir embraced, the understanding that regardless of theological niceties, the ultimate focus of religion in today's world must be to devote a new sense of "reverence for the Earth". —from Char Miller, Trinity University (miller@vml .tucc.trinity.edu) I was fascinated by your reply/response to the question you posed, fascinated in large part because it is so difficult to imagine anyone arguing that Muir is a pantheist, or rather doing so without recognizing the projection that such a claim reveals. He may have put a lot of distance between himself and his orthodox Presbyterian father, but he imbued and retained a large dose of father's ascetic and stoic Calvinism. A sense of that emerges in one of my favorite paired moments in The Mountains of California. The first, when he draws a pair of visiting artists to a stellar view of the Sierra, or what they would consider a "view," an artificial construction that Muir depicts with a gentle but dismissive irony— they, after all, wanted a landscape that was "suitable for framing" (p. 36). After leaving them to paint what they think is a picturesque scene, he leaves them behind and pulls his readers along, into much rougher terrain, the virgin peak of Mt. Ritter, where real men breathed hard. That tugged world, in which he almost falters—a test he surmounts, happily—is also the spot where he announces his affiliation with a transcendentalist conception of divinity, and humanity's place within it: "In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himselfyet feeding and building up his individuality" (39). Through a direct and vigorous encounter with Nature did he confront God and Self, the classic formulation that is Emersonian to its core. But it is also linked back to such Puritan divines as Jonathan Edwards, whose "Images or Shadows of Divine Things," in which the physical world of grass and trees, birds and rivers, earth and sky were emblems of God's presence. Muir concurred, only adding to Edward's catalogue things the New England minister had not seen or felt, such as the glacier-scarred Sierra and earthquakes. All were manifestations of the divine, of God, not gods. — From Dennis Williams, So. Nazarene University (dwilliam@aixl .ucok.edu) In reaction to Ron's posting regarding Oelschlager's allegation that Muir was a Pantheist. Oelschlager's position is total hogwash. Muir is quite within the parameters of the philosophical positions taken by Thomas and Alexander Campbell, the founders of the Disciples of Christ church, of which Muir's father was a lay-pastor in Wisconsin. First: The Campbells were solid Protestants imbued with Scottish Enlightenment philosophy. Thus, when Muir sees God displayed in the Canadian Woods, the Florida Everglades or the California Sierras, he is affirming the traditionally Christian idea that God continues to act as a creative agent on Earth, through the auspices of the Holy Spirit. Since Muir believes that God is real, and since the Scottish Common/Moral Sense philosophers, such as Thomas Dick, affirmed that humans could really apprehend, with the senses, all real things, no doubt Muir believed that he could (rough paraphrase follows) 'see God working, working like a human being,' carving out the valleys of the Sierra with glaciers like a carpenter uses a chisel to carve a piece of wood. Second: Muir is merely being a good Protestant, right in line with the harsh critique of the Evangelicals, like the Campbells, who harshly criticized other Christian communions' doctrines as being nearly heresy, when he lashes out at the straw Christians he defines in "Thousand Mile Walk." Further in line with the Campbells, however, Muir's vision of the ideal faith is one that does not draw arbitrary lines in the sand and demand loyalty. Like the Campbells, Muir is not interested in going beyond the sources, into the realm of opinion, when defining doctrine. When he sees the palmetto tree, he finds it preacing a sermon, he questions its eternality, and then backs away by saying: This is something we know nothing about. The Disciples were interested in developing a doctrine of Christian unit}'. Muir finds that proof-texting from scripture is not a sure way for the development of evangelical unity. He suggests that a couple of thousand years of interpreting the Bible plus the weight of civilized intellectual baggage have made it very difficult to find a true interpretation of the spirit of the Gospel. Thus, Muir goes to Nature as an alternative text—but not one unknown to nineteenth century Christianity, and certainly not one unknown to historical Christianity. In Nature Muir finds Christian doctrine declared aright. Finally: Muir believes that Nature is an evangelist, pointing humans to the real God, Who is out there working and easily apprehended (remember the Scottish Enlightenment). Muir expresses this in statements suggesting that nature, and I think specifically he was addressing Yosemite Falls, was a gentle John the Baptist, preparing the way of the Lord to all who would enter nature and open themselves to the truths it preached. This is not the unitarian universalism that emerges out of American transcendentalism, but rather an evangelical vision of nature worked out in his journals in the context of an internal dialogue he had with the ideas of the Disciples of Christ, Scottish Enlightenment, uniformitarian geology, and later his friend Joseph LeConte's theistic evolution, to name a few. (Muir's photo collection continued from page 1) and New Zealand. Portraits of John Muir and photographs of Yosemite are among the most frequently found photographs in the collection, and receive wide use in publications and multimedia productions. Many images have been published in numerous books and in periodicals such as U.S.News and World Report. Sierra, San Diego, Wisconsin Natural Resources, National Geographic, Landmarks, Alaska, Sea Kayaker, Outdoors, Cobblestone, and Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. Such images always include the accompanying credit: Copyright 1984, Muir-Hanna Trust, University of the Pacific Libraries. There are still many photographs in The John Muir Papers which are yet to be published or seen by the general public. It is interesting to work with publishers and producers of various media productions. The staff of the Holt- Atherton Library work with independent photo researchers and/or directly with the publication editors. Often photographs are selected which researchers have seen in another publication which they have traced back to the John Muir Papers. Most of these contacts come to us by mail or over the telephone. I often ask "Ideally, what are you hoping to find"? They may have a preconceived image which they hope exists. Sometimes a photograph being sought is not in our collection, but we can help them locate and contact the source. Sometimes we find publishers are not familiar with the limitations of nineteenth century photography. Photo-journalism had its birth in the nineteenth century, but the numbers of photographers and the difficulties they encountered limited the images that were produced. Today we see images of celebrities and news events from numerous camera angles-including shots from helicopters-through television and computer screens or in newspapers and magazines. In the future photo editors will have a better chance of finding "the perfect image" or--with technology's new frontiers-they will be able to create their desired image. We are often asked for action shots of Muir "in the wild"—climbing over the rocks, up mountainsides, behind a waterfall in the moonlight, clinging to the top of a tree in the wind, shaking hands with Gifford Pinchot~or something in color. When we read Muir's words, these are the images we see, and this is what producers want to show in their documentaries. These are the "have-nots" in the John Muir photograph collection. They do not exist. In some cases publishers may elect to use an artist's rendering to put action and color into their work. When we are contacted by photo editors, we usually find that deadlines are just days away- -particularly for periodicals and videos. To produce a copy print, we need to have a minimum of two weeks to shoot,- check proofs, and make enlargements. When we are working with light deadlines, we try to be accommodating. FAX machines have helped speed up the identification time. We often use Federal Express to get the materials shipped quickly after the copy prints are produced. John Muir's photograph collection is part of The Microform Edition of The John Muir Papers. There are 53 microfiche with photographs arranged by subject. Copyright is held by the Muir-Hanna Trust. The fiche may be viewed here at the University of the Pacific or at other repositories, or you may request the fiche through Interlibrary Loan. To publish or to obtain a copy print, you will need to contact: Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections. University of the Pacific Libraries, 3601 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA. 95211 or call: [phone]. JEANNE CARR ON SHASTA (Editor's note: the following excerpt, from an unidentified clipping, dated May 17, 1876, is from the Muir Family collection at the Holt-Atherton Library. The source is probably the Sacramento Union). "SHASTA-WARD" "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," and we who went, not without misgivings, to perform an unfamiliar task, found one of the crowning pleasures of our lives. Incommunicable as the impressions made upon the mind by sublime natural scenery may be, it is possible to convey a craving for it which will lead another along the same track. So John Muir's letters, written last year in his wild walks over and around Our Fusiyama, and the earlier blossoming of Mr. Avery's thought flowers, had drawn me Shasta-ward with an irrepressible longing. Despising merely big things, I have a profound respect for high things, but this is also best in all its characters and conditions, celestial or terrestrial. Somewhere I shall never care to remember where, during that May day's ride from Redding northward, from one of the mountain benches along which the stage creeps slowly, the white wonder of Mount Shasta breaks upon the enchanted vision. No nearer view can enhance the majesty, the glory of it as seen from that spot. The forest billows rise and fall like pulsations from the living soul of the scene; young rivers musically pour their silver floods out of its deep stillness; the many-colored earth carpet, blue, crimson and gold, is only the embroidered hem of that snowy robe, beautiful through every fold. Once revealed in fullest perfection, I lost sight of the mountain for many hours of day and night, the stage road following the tortuous line of the McCloud, Pitt and Sacramento rivers. I had one noble view by moonlight, compensating for much weariness of the flesh incident to staging over freshly repaired corduroy roads then everywhere deeply rutted by heavy teams. But the morning of the 2d found me at the monarch's feet silently worshipful. There was no smoke in Sisson's chimney, and I was driven past to Mrs. Fellows' where only a month before the stages encountered seven feet of snow. The great fire place and our mountain hunger held me but a few of the precious moments from the crisp, bracing air. Only the faintest line of shadow broke the grand sweep of the snow from summit to base on the eastern side and showed where the canyons might be. "SPOTLESS FROM CROWN TO GARMENT'S HEM", Shasta stood waiting for "Our Brother, the Sun" who laid his golden rays like an aureole upon the summit before all the stars had faded from the morning sky. The ride around the base of Shasta for miles and miles is as charming as the braided beauty of pine and fir forests, and singing waters can make it. Up there spring is just opening her eyes, and the blue Nemophilas were everywhere nodding their infantile faces; links in the flowery chain which binds our alps to the plains below. I may not speak of the flowers peculiar to our northern counties, which some winged messenger brought ages ago from Armenia and the base of Ararat. Nor yet of our ride homeward with two enthusiastic teachers, our stay at Sissons', who accompanied us down as far as "Portugee", and introduced as the first (aboriginal) families, who were still in their winter quarters, awaiting the coming in of the salmon. About fifty Indians, were congregated on the evening of our visit, to celebrate with a dance the arrival of one of their young women at the marriageable age. I asked of the chief the name of the maiden, whose charms even the Poet of the Sierras could hardly celebrate. "No name" he said. "Your wife, has she a name? I asked. "No name; woman no name", was the reply. The names of these tribes would already have disappeared but for the patient labors of our Western Bancroft who has saved from oblivion the perishable records of these native races. The stars and stripes were waving over the Fish Commissioner's station, on the McCloud, where I would gladly have lingered. Would that the Government could rehabilitate the forests as easily as it can repeople the rivers. Then the sound of the ax and the buzz of the steam mill would no longer mean waste and desolate places, where these bright, foodful [sic] rivers now rise and flow. To the seekers for health and recreation I say go north, brothers, go north. Take your gun and fishing tackle, and fix your eve steadily on Shasta butte. And you, dear sisters, fearless of tan and freckles, shorten your trails, take some stout shoes, and abide at Sissons' until the wild strawberries flavor your dreams, and you are at home in that hospitable wilderness. Sacramento. Mav 10. 1876 Jeanne C. Carr A GASTRONOMIC INQUIRY The response to J. Parker Huber's delightful essay on Muir's wilderness diet (Sierra, November/December 1994) has led him to begin work on a follow-up that explores Muir's total dietary habits. Parker and others have noted that Muir "ate quite differently indoors" than he did on the trail. To pursue this idea. Parker asks to hear "from anyone who has found descriptions of what Miur ate at home or when traveling (tho not in wild)." If you have any information or ideas, contact J. Parker Huber, 35 Western Ave., Braltleboro, VT 05301. WILD PRODUCTIONS EXPANDS OFFERINGS TRANSPORTATION THE THEME FOR CHI 95 Lee Stetson's "Wild Productions," now in its eleventh year, has expanded to include two new presentations in addition to the three on Muir performed by Stetson. "Sarah Hawkins Contemplates a Fourth Marriage," performed by Connie Stetson, presents stories drawn from journals and diaries of pioneer women. "John Wesley Powell: Down the Great Unknown," includes a monologue on Powell's innovative ideas for western water development. For further information and booking arrangements, contact Lee Stetson, Box 811, Yosemite, CA 95389, phone [phone]. NORWEGIAN SCHOLAR EXPLORES MUIR PAPERS Recently Fredrik Chr. Brogger, Professor of American Studies at the University of Tromso, visited the Holt-Atherton Library while preparing a manuscript entitled "Conceptions of Nature in American Literature and Culture." As he noted in correspondence, "John Muir's writings have an important place in my project as my exemplary representative of late 19th century nature writing." He can be reached by e-mail at fredrik(«)mack.ult.no. California Transportation: Past, Present, Future 49th Annual California History Institute University of the Pacific (Stockton and Feather River Inn campuses) APRIL 21-23, 1995 This three-day conference addresses the importance of transportation in California history, and considers both present and future needs. The program begins Friday afternoon on the Stockton campus with sessions on "Transportation and Urbanization" and "Transportation and the Environment." An evening program on "California's Steamboat Era," held aboard the Ferry Boat "Klamath" in the Stockton Channel, will conclude the day. On Saturday and Sunday, the Conference will continue with a field trip to Feather River Inn, built by the Western Pacific Railroad in 1915. Sessions both at the Inn and en route will explore various aspects of trans-Sierra transportation. For more information, or for registration details, contact CHI95, in care of The John Muir Center for Regional Studies, Univ. of the Pacific, Stockton, 95211, ph. 209-946-2895; fax [phone]. BE A MEMBER OF THE JOHN MUIR CENTER FOR REGIONAL STUDIES Costs are a problem everywhere, especially in academia today. We can only continue publishing and distributing this modest newsletter through support from our readers. By becoming a member of the John Muir Center, you will be assured of receiving the Newsletter for a full year. You will also be kept on our mailing list to receive information on the annual California History Institute and other events and opportunities sponsored by the John Muir Center. Please join us by completing the following form and returning it, along with a $15. check made payable to The John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA 95211. Yes, I want to join the John Muir Center and continue to receive the John Muir Newsletter. Enclosed is $15 for a one- year membership . Use this form to renew your current membership. Outside U.S.A. add $4.00 for postage. Name Institution/Affiliation Mailing address & zip_ Muir Newsletter The John Muir. Center For Regional Studies University of the Pacific, Stockton CA, 95211 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1038/thumbnail.jpg