The John Muir Newsletter, Fall 2009

• Main Author: The John Muir Center for Environmental Studies
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarly Commons 2009
• 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; Pacific; Slaughter; Traveller; Elliot; Atherton; Milky Way; San Jose; Sever; Wendell; Eastman; Bancroft; Diablo; Pollan; Drus; Pilot Peak; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/90; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1089&context=jmn

THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA Muir Center Has a New Home & New Staff This past June, Marilyn Norton, Administrative Assistant and Budget Accountant for the Division of Social Sciences, retired after fifteen years at Pacific. She and her husband, Dan, along with pets Abbey and Bear live in Mokelumne Hill, where they remain active in Restore Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Associates, and many conservation issues. We wish her the best in the years ahead as she explores more of the high country so familiar to Muir. During August, John Muir Center was moved to a new home within Wendell Phillips Center. Formerly on the second floor in the original home of the Modern Languages laboratory, the Center now is located on the ground floor at the entrance to the building on Brubeck Way (old Stadium Way). The new space is a welcome change in that visitation has increased and the Center benefits from proximity to the new GUESS Center, home to Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies and the Humanities Center. In addition to the change in location, the Center's staff also has a new faces in Jaiya Ellis, Sustainability Coordinator for Student Life and Administrative Assistant in Muir Center, and Katie Holcomb, who provided the layout and graphic design for the current Newsletter. A native of Washington State, Jaiya earned her B.A. from Washington State University and a Master's in Environmental Education from Western Kentucky University. Katie is a senior in Graphic Arts at Pacific and has experience in media print design and layout. We welcome both this academic year. Jol The new Muir Center John Muir Newsletter has a New Look! Beginning with this issue, the John Muir Newsletter will no longer be printed as a quarterly. For several years we have been behind in publishing a true quarterly four times a year, and we apologize to librarians and those who have archived the newsletter by volume and issue. The current issue is Fall, 2009. Our last issue was volume 18, number 2 (Spring, 2008). In the future, please expect the newsletter two-to-three times per year, as news and articles merit layout and printing. Thank you for your understanding of this "new look." William R. Swagerty Director of John Muir Center University of the Pacific PAGE1 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 Rambles of a Botanist Among the Plants and Climates Of California by John Muir Yosemite, California Note: The original article first appeared as "Rambles of a Botanist Among the Plants and Climates of California," Old and New [Boston], v.5, no.6, June, 1872, pp. 767-772. With reference to sight-seeing on the Pacific coast, our so-called trans-continental railroad is a big gun; charged with steam and cars it belches many a tourist against the targets of the golden State, — geysers, big trees, Yosemite, &c, among which they bump and ricochet, and rebound to their Atlantic homes, bruised and blurred, their memories made up of a motley jam of cascades and deserts and mountain domes, each traveller voluntarily compacting himself into the fastest cartridge of car and coach, as if resolved to see little as possible. Last year tourists were whizzed over plain and mountain from San Francisco to Yosemite in two days; and I learn that arrangements are being made for next season whereby the velocity of the shot will be increased to one day. Thus is modern travel spiritualized. Thus are time and space - and travellers - annihilated. I have lived in Yosemite Valley three years, and have never met a single traveller who had seen the Great Central Plain of California in flower-time: it is almost universally remembered as a scorched and dust-clouded waste, treeless and drear as the deserts of Utah. This magnificent plain is slandered; scarce any of its beauty is known, even to Californians; and we are therefore eager to speak in its praise, all the more because its plant inhabitants are so fast disappearing beneath gang-plows and trampling hoofs of flocks and herds. John Muir sketch of "Horned Lark." Muir noted the lark throughout his journey to Yosemite in 1868. (James Eastman Shone Collection of Muiriana 1.3.1.2.02, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. ©1984 Muir-Hanna Trust) On the second day of April, 1868,1 left San Francisco for Yosemite Valley, companioned by a young Englishman. Our orthodox route of "nearest and quickest" was by steam to Stockton, thence by stage to Coulterville or Mariposa, and the remainder of the way over the mountains on horseback. But we had plenty of time, and proposed drifting leisurely mountainward, via the valley of San Jose, Pacheco Pass, and the plain of San Joaquin, and thence to Yosemite by any road that we chanced to find; enjoying the flowers and light, "camping out" in our blankets wherever overtaken by night, and paying very little compliance to roads or times. Accordingly, we crossed "rhe Bay" by the Oakland ferry, and proceeded up the valley of San Jose. This is one of the most fertile of the many small valleys of the coast; its rich bottoms are filled with wheat- fields and orchards and vineyards, and alfalfa meadows. It was now spring-time, and the weather was the best that we ever enjoyed. Larks and streams sang everywhere; the sky was cloudless, and the whole valley was a lake of light. The atmosphere was spicy and exhilarating; my companion acknowledging over his national prejudices that it was the best he ever breathed, - more deliciously fragrant than the hawthorn hedges of England. This San Jose sky was not simply pure and bright, and mixed with plenty of well- tempered sunshine, but it possessed a positive flavor, — a taste, that thrilled from the lungs throughout every tissue of the body; every inspiration yielded a corresponding well-defined piece of pleasure, that awakened thousands of new palates everywhere. Both my companion and myself had lived and dozed on common air for nearly thirty years, and never before this discovered that our bodies contained such multitudes of palates, or that this mortal flesh, so little valued by philosophers and teachers, was possessed of so vast a capacity for happiness. We emerged from this ether baptism new creatures, born again; and truly not until this time were we fairly conscious that we were born at all. Never more, thought I, as we strode forward at faster speed, never more shall I sentimentalize about getting out of the mortal coil: this flesh is not a coil, it is a sponge steeped in immortality. The foothills (that form the sides of our blessed font) are in near view all the way to Gilroy; those of the Monte Diablo range on our left, those of Santa Cruz on our right; they are smooth and flowing, and come down to the bottom levels in curves of most surpassing beauty; they still wear natural flowers, which do not occur singly or in handfuls, scattered about in the grass, but they grow close together, in smooth, cloud-shaped companies, acres and hill-sides in size, white, purple, and yellow, separate, yet blending to each other like the hills upon which they grow. Besides the white, purple, and yellow clouds, we occasionally saw a thicket of scarlet castilleias and silvery- leaved lupines, also splendid fields of wild oats {Avenafat- ud). The delightful Gilia (G. Tricolor) was very abundant PAGE 2 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 in sweeping hill-side sheets, and a Leptosiphon (L. andro- scd) and Claytonias were everywhere by the roadsides, and lilies and dodecatheons by the streams: no wonder the air was so good, waving and rubbing on such a firmament of flowers! I tried to decide which of the plant-clouds was most fragrant: perhaps it was the white, composed mostly of a delicate Boragewort; but doubtless all had a hand in balming the sky. Among trees we observed the laurel {Oreodaphne Californicd), and magnificent groves and tree- shaped groups of oaks, some specimens over seven feet in diameter; the white oaks {Quercus lobatd) and (Q. Dougla- sii), the black oak (Q. sonomensis), live-oak (Q. agrifolid), together with several dwarfy species on the hills, whose names we do not know. The prevailing northwest wind has permanently swayed all unsheltered trees up the valley; groves upon the more exposed hillsides lean forward like patches of lodged wheat. The Santa Cruz Mountains have grand forests of red-wood [Sequoia sempervirens), some specimens near fifty feet in circumference. The Sugar Pine was considered by Muir as "the king of all pines." Its distinctive branches reach outward and drop pine cones that can easily measure over a foot long. (Fiche 41-2334 John Muir Papers, Holt- Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust) The Pacheco Pass was scarcely less enchanting than the valley. It resounded with crystal waters, and the loud shouts of thousands of California quails. In size these about equal the eastern quail; not quite so plump in form. The male has a tall, slender crest, wider at top than bottom, which he can hold straight up, or droop backward on his neck, or forward over his bill, at pleasure; and, instead of Bob White, he shouts "pe-check-a," bearing down with a stiff, obstinate emphasis on "check." Through a considerable portion of the pass the road bends and mazes along the groves of a stream, or down in its pebbly bed, leading one now deep in the shadows of dogwoods and alders, then out in the light, through dry chaparral, over green carex meadows banked with violets and ferns, and dry, plantless flood-beds of gravel and sand. We found ferns in abundance all through the pass. Some far down in dark canons, as the polypodium and rock fern, or high on sunlit braes, as Pellaa mucronata. Also we observed the delicate gold-powdered Gymnogramma tri- angidaris, and Pellaa andromedafolia, and the maidenhair (Adiantum chilense), and the broad-shouldered bracken (Pteris aquilind), which is everywhere; and an aspidium and cystopteris, and two or three others that I was not acquainted with. Also in this rich garden pass we gathered many fine grasses and carices, and brilliant pentstemons, azure and scarlet, and mints and lilies, and scores of others, strangers to us, but beautiful and pure as even enjoyed the sun or shade of a mountain home. The summit of this pass, according to observations made by the State geological survey, is fourteen hundred and seventy-two feet above the sea. Pacheco Peak, on the south side of the pass, is two thousand eight hundred and forty- five feet high, sharp, and capped with trachyte. It forms an excellent landmark for the San Joaquin and Sane Jose valleys for a great distance; and I have frequently seen it from the summit of El Capitan and Sentinel Dome, Yosemite. Mt. Hamilton, north of the pass, and easily reached from the town of San Jose, is tow thousand four hundred and forty-eight feet in height. San Carlos Peak, some distance to the south, is nearly five thousand feet high, and is about the highest point on the Monte Diablo range. After we were fairly over the summit of the pass, and had reached an open hill-brow, a scene of peerless grandeur burst suddenly upon us. At our feet, basking in sungold, lay the Great Central Plain of California, bounded by the mountains on which we stood, and by the lofty, snowcapped Sierra Nevada; all in grandest simplicity, clear and bright as a new outspread map. In half a day we were down over all the foot-hills, past the San Luis Gonzaga Ranch, and wading out in the grand level ocean of flowers. This plain, watered by the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, formed one flower-bed, nearly four hundred miles in length by thirty in width. In order that some definite conception may be formed of the richness of this flower-field, I will give a harvest gathered by me from one square yard of plain, opposite Hill's Ferry, a few miles from the coast-range foot-hills, and taken at random, like a cupful of water from a lake. An approximation was made to the number of grass flowers by counting the panicles, to the flowers of the Composite by counting the heads. The mosses were roughly estimated by counting the number growing on one square inch. All the flowers of the other natural orders were counted one by one. pears in this article." Article Continued on Page 4 PAGE 3 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 Natural orders. No, of (lowers. No. of species, Gramirjetrj 29,830 Panicles 1000 3 Composite 132,125 Heads 3,305 2 Legmmnosfc. 2,620 2 Umbellitbrio 620 1 t'olemnniuceiB 401 . 2 Smiplmlariaeero 169 . j Rubtacea. .40 1 Gerahiacett 22 1 Mflsci 1,000,000 Funuria and Dicranum . 2 dumber of natural orders, 9 to 10. Of species, 16. Total nnmberofopen flowers, 165,912. Mosses, 1,000,000. Tally from "one square yard of plain" as it appeared in first publication of "Rambles" in June, 1872. In the above estimate, only open living flowers were taken into account. Those which were still in bud, together with those that were past flower, would number nearly as many more. The heads of the Composite are usually regarded as one flower. Even then we would have seven thousand two hundred and sixty-two flowers, together with a thousand silky, transparent panicles of grasses, and a floor an inch thick of hooded mosses. The grasses have scarce any leaves, and do not interfere with the light of the other flowers, or with their color, in any marked degree. The yellow of the Composite is pure, deep, bossy solar gold, as if the sun had filled their rays and flowerets with the undiluted substance of his very self. In depth, the purple stratus was about ten or twelve inches; the yellow, sever or eight, and the moss stratum, of greenish yellow, one. But the purple stratus is dilute and transparent, so that the lower yellow is hardly dimmed; and only when a horizontal view is taken, so as to look edgewise through the upper stratum, does its color predominate. Therefore, when one stands on a wide level area, the gold immediately about him seems all in all; but on gradually looking wider the gold dims, and purple predominates. In this botanist's better land, I drifted separate many days, the largest days of my life, resting at times from the blessed plants, in showers of bugs and sun-born butterflies; or I watched the smooth-bounding antelopes, or startled hares, skimming light and swift as eagles' shadows; or, turning from all this fervid life, contemplated the Sierras, that mighty wall uprising from the brink of this lake of gold, miles in the higher blue, bearing aloft its domes and spires in spotless white, unshining and beamless, yet pure as pearl, clear and undimmed as the flowers at my feet. Never were mortal eyes more thronged with beauty. When I walked, more than a hundred flowers touched my feet, at every step closing above them, as if wading in water. Go where I would, east or west, north or south, I still plashed and rippled in flower-gems; and at night I lay between two skies of silver and gold, spanned by a milky- way, and nestling deep in a goldy-way of vegetable suns. But all this beauty of life is fading year by year, - fading like the glow of a sunset, — foundering in the grossness of modern refinement. As larks are gathered in sackfuls, ruffled and blood-stained, to toy morbid appetite in barbarous towns, so is flower-gold gathered to slaughter-pens in misbegotten carcasses of oxen and sheep. So always perish the plant peoples of temperate regions, - feeble, unarmed, unconfederate, they are easily overthrown, leaving their lands to man and his few enslavable beasts and grasses. But vigorous flower nations of the South, armed and combined, hold plantfully their rightful kingdom; and woe to the lordly biped trespassing in these tropic gardens; catbriers seam his flesh, and saw-palmettoes grate his bones, and bayonets glide to his joints and marrow. But, alas! Here only one plant of this plain is armed; a tall purple mint, speared and lanced like a thistle. The weapons of plants are believed by some to be a consequence of "man's first disobedience." Would that all the flowers of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, were "cursed, -" thorned and thistled in safety! February and March is the ripe spring-time of the plain, April the summer, and May the autumn. The first beginnings of spring are controlled by the rains, which generally appear in December. Rains between May and December are very rare. This is the winter, — a winter of drouth and heat. But in no part of the year is plant-life wholly awanting. A few lilies with bulbs very deep in the soil, and a rosy-compound called tar-weed, and a species of erigo- num, are slender, inconspicuous links which continue the floral chain from season to season around the year. Ere we were ready to recommence our march to Yosemite, May was about half done. The flowers and grasses, so late in the pomp and power of full bloom, were dead, and their parched leaves crisped and crackled beneath our feet, as if they had literally been "cast into the oven". They were not given weeks and months to grow old; but they aged and died ere they could fade, standing side by side, erect and undecayed, bearing seed-cells and urns beautiful as corollas. After travelling two days among the delightful death of this sunny winter, we came to another summer in the Sierra foothills. Flowers were spread confidingly open, and streams and winds were cool. Above Coulterville, forty or fifty miles farther in the mountains, we came to spring. The leaves of the mountain-oaks were small and drooping, and still work their first timings of crimson and purple; and the wrinldes of their bud-folds were still distinct, as if newly opened; and, scattered over banks and sunny slopes, thousands of gentle plants were tasting life for the first time. A few miles farther, on the Pilot Peak ridge, we came to the edge of a winter. Few growing leaves PAGE 4 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 were to be seen; the highest and youngest of the lilies and spring violets were far below; winter scales were still wrapt close on the buds of dwarf oaks and hazels. The great sugar-pines waved their long arms, as if about to speak; and we soon were in deep snow. After we had reached the highest part of the ridge, clouds began to gather, storm- winds swept the forest, and snow began to fall thick and blinding. Fortunately, we reached a sort of shingle cabin at Crane Flat, where we sheltered until the next day Thus, in less than a week from the hot autumn of San Joaquin, we were struggling in a bewildering storm of mountain winter. This was on or about May 20, at an elevation of six thousand one hundred and thirty feet. Here the forest is magnificent, composed in part of the sugar-pine {Pinus Lambertiand), which is the king of all pines, most noble in manners and language. Many specimens are over two hundred feet in height, and eight to ten in diameter, fresh and sound as the sun which made them. The yellow pine [Pinus ponderosd) also grows here, and the cedar [Liboce- drus decurrens); but the bulk of the forest is made up of the two silver firs [Picea grandis and Picea amabilis), the former always greatly predominating at this altitude. Descending from this winter towards the Merced, the snow gradually disappeared from the ground and sky, tender leaves unfolded less and less doubtfully, violets and lilies shone about us once more, and at length, arriving in the glorious Yosemite, we found it full of summer and spring. Thus, as colors blend in a rainbow, and as mountains curve to a plain, so meet and blend the plants and seasons of this delightsome land. John Muir sketch, "Nov 18th 1868. White Oak of Sierra Foothills. Near Rock River Ranch." (Fiche 03-0170 John Muir Papers, Holt- Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. ©1984 Muir-Hanna Trust) Muir-Hanna Family Honored with Pacific Alumni Outstanding Family Award On November 7th, 2009, eight relatives of John Muir, all graduates of the University of the Pacific, were honored with the Outstanding Family Award by the Pacific Alumni Association. The honorees are: Virginia (Young) Hanna, Class of 1934 (College of the Pacific), wife of the late John Muir Hanna, grandson of Muir Ross E. Hanna, Class of 1949 (Business), grandson of Muir Gladys (Stoeven) Hanna, Class of 1947 (Music), wife of Ross E. Hanna William T. Hanna, Class of 1967 (College of the Pacific), great-grandson of Muir Claudia Jo (Cummins) Hanna, Class of 1967 (Pharmacy and Health Sciences), wife of William T. "Bill" Hanna Ross E. de Lipkau, Class of 1972 (Law), great grandson Thomas R. Hanna, Class of 1976 (Law), great grandson Harlan C. Powell, Class of 1997 (Law), great great grandson Bill and Claudia Hanna with Shan Sutton (Head of Holt-Atherton Special Collections) Family members gathered in Holt-Atherton Special Collections after a celebratory luncheon. The group also toured the new Muir Center prior to the Awards Banquet, held in the grand ballroom of the DeRosa University Center. Over two hundred invited guests honored the Muir- Hannas for their service and careers as Pacific alumni. PAGE 5 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 John Muir's Stickeen Of Martinez by Michael Wurtz University of the Pacific Holt-Atherton Special Collections John Muir had many dogs throughout his lifetime. Stickeen was never "his" dog, but that dog he met on a trip to the glaciers of Alaska in 1880 was his most famous. Years later in Martinez, the Muir family dog was named Stickeen in tribute. When Linne Marsh Wolfe was writing about Muir she asked his daughter Helen to tell her about the family dogs (John Muir Papers microfilm 51 frame 106 "Helen Mur" Series VB Wolfe Papers). She mentioned four dogs, but focused on the Stickeen of Martinez. "He was a fine Collie dog, given to me [when he was about 4 months old] by a family friend named Elliot, who had a ranch in Franklin Canyon and raised fine Collie dogs. The name Stickeen was given him because it seemed a nice thing to hand it on to another dog of ours, but we never called him the full name in every day life, it was too hard to call, so Stickeen was shortened down to Keenie and we always called him that. He was a wonderful dog, truly noble, brave and true. My heart aches whenever I think of the sorrow I had to bring into his life. For he was my dog and as a loyal to me as the Boston I have now, and I got sick and had to leave him, first in 1905 when I went to Arizona for a year, and later after being home a year, [Aug. '06 - Dec. '07] I had to leave him again and now he was growing old, and I doubt if he was ever really happy again. For he was sent to Daggett with my saddle horse in the spring of 1908, and of course was glad to be with me again, everything there was so different from his old home where he spent his entire life, he could not adjust himself. He was now 13 years old. His dear little heart seemed broken and he merely drifted along scarcely caring what happened till the summer heart came on, and then one day he simply went off somewhere and died. [I never found him.]" Keenie was one of the "outstanding ones in my life. Papa was very fond of Keenie and did his best to comfort him when I was away, and spoke of him in many of his letters to me. He said that Keenie stayed for a while after I left for Daggett, at Wanda's, even after Papa returned from getting me settled, but later returned to the house on the hill to be near Papa and in his old home surroundings till he was taken in the box car with my horse to Daggett." Here are four of the ten photographs in the John Muir Papers that include Stickeen. Muir and Keenie on front steps of the Martinez home (F23-1288) John and Helen Muir with Keenie (F24-1343) (F27-1499) (F27-1498) All images from the John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. © 1984 Muir- Hanna Trust. John Muir Correspondence Now Online http://library.pacific.edu/ha/digital The University of the Pacific Library recently completed a major initiative creating online access to the correspondence of famed naturalist John Muir (1838-1914). This project was managed in partnership with the University of California-Berkeley's Bancroft Library, and was funded with an $111,181 Library Services and Technology Act grant from the California State Library. As a result, over 6,500 letters to and from John Muir can be viewed on the web, including full-text transcriptions that can be searched as well as viewed alongside images of the original letters. Muir's correspondence can be viewed at the Digital Collections web site of the University of the Pacific Library's Holt-Atherton Special Collections department (http:// library.pacific.edu/ha/digital), as well as the California PAGE 6 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 Digital Library's Online Archive of California (http://www. oac.cdlib.org/) and Calisphere (http://www.calisphere. universiryofcalifornia.edu/) web sites. John Muir Correspondence ■:■■■- About the Collection View All Images in images Jaa^?i',.! i :i* -■' -i thdCollection/ ^Iff I •*£' i>f~t'[ tm-mm Full transcriptions of the Muir correspondence are now available online. Images of the original letter can be viewed with the transcription. John Muir's correspondence offers a unique first-hand perspective on his thoughts and experiences, as well as those of his correspondents, which include many notable figures in scientific, literary, and political circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Online access to his letters will enable people around the world to learn more about Muir and his impact on important issues such as the development of the National Park System and the evolution of the environmental movement. The University of the Pacific Library's Holt-Atherton Special Collections department is home to the John Muir Papers, which account for over 70 percent of existing Muir documents. This collection is heavily used by scholars and authors, and was featured in the recent Ken Burns film "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." John Muir's digital correspondence augments other portions of this papers that were previously posted on the Digital Collections web site, including his journals, photographs, and drawings. Photographs Over 6,000 images of the letters of John Muir are now available online through the Holt-Atherton Special Collections' website. President Eibeck visits New Muir Center On November 10, 2009 only three days after Pacific honored seven living and one deceased member of the Muir-Hanna family as "Outstanding Alumni Family," President Pamela Eibeck toured all of the centers and programs within College of the Pacific. A graduate of Stanford University in mechanical engineering and former Dean of Engineering at Texas Tech University, President Eibeck joined Pacific this past July replacing Donald DeRosa upon his retirement. From the first day of her interview this past spring, it became clear that Eibeck knew something of Muir and was enthusiastic about his prominence at Pacific. Only a few months into her administration, she has shown sincere interest in better connecting Pacific with the outside community. As part of her inaugural year, President Eibeck is sponsoring several special events, including support from her office of the upcoming spring symposium on "John Muir as Naturalist & Scientist," April 22-24, 2010. We are enthusiastic about her presidency and look forward to reporting many new "Green" initiatives during her tenure at Pacific. President Pamela Eibeck talking with Program and Center directors. PAGE 7 THE JOHN MUIR CENTER FOR REGIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC 3601 PACIFIC AVE. STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA 95211 Contents of this Issue Rambles of a Bontanist Among the Plants and Climates of California by John Muir John Muir's Stickeen of Martinez by Michael Wurtz Muir-Hanna Family Receive Award Pacific's Muir Center News 111 Pi ^PX 0 2 I 000 I MAILED FROM ZIP CODE 95210 ll.lml.lml.lmllmllll.nll.nll.mnllWnl.LnlU Holt-Atherton Library University of the Pacific Stockton CA 95211-0001 THE JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER FALL 2009 Muir Center Will Host 58th California History Institute On April 22-24, 2010, Muir Center will host the 58th California History Institute at Pacific. Now a bi-annual, this year's symposium will focus on "John Muir as Naturalist & Scientist." Co-sponsored by the Division of Student Life, the University Library, and the Office of the President, the symposium promises to bring together scholars, students, and specialists on Muir from the community. Keynotes will be given by Richard Beidleman, Professor Emeritus, The Colorado College and author of California's Pioneer Naturalists; Donald Worster, Professor of History, University of Kansas, and author oiA Passion for Nature: The Life offohn Muir, Bonnie J. Gisel, author ofNatures Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy; Graham White of Coldstream, UK, author otjohn Muir, The Wilderness Journeys and Sacred Summits: John Muir's Greatest Climbs; Royal Robbins, Yosemite climber and outdoor gear designer; Richard "Dick" Shore, zoologist and Muir educator and impersonator; and Harold Wood of the Sierra Club, among others. Special guests in association with the symposium are Berkeley-based Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food; and Rick Bass, Montana- based environmental writer, described by one admirer as a twenty-first century John Muir! More information on how to register for the symposium will appear in our next issue; or contact [e-mail] PAGE 8 https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/1089/thumbnail.jpg