Essay On Muir

Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century

Muir is often seen as one of the most pro-preservation

His often utilization of words such as wild, paradise, and pristine in describing these naturalscapes, provided a misinformed idea of what the American West was truly like. This misinformed idea rapidly changed into what people expected from wilderness. They expect to see scenes reminiscent of the Hudson River school and be cleansed by the healing power of Mother Earth (Muir). Through Muir’s expensive definitions on what constitutes a wilderness he has altered the meaning of it. In the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, the wilderness served more as an idea than a definable work, Muir and his writing played a major role in defining the wilderness to the city bound masses. Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the

While this was most likely not his intention, his rhetoric would lay the foundation of what the average American expected to experience, and see, when out in nature. Muir’s definition of wilderness was grounded in the most aesthetically pleasing a specific environment could be, not human presence; although humans do have a habit of natural destruction. While discussing the found in Black Hills Reserve he includes arnica as one of plants, which, “Give abundance of color and make all the woods a garden” (Muir). Interestingly, Arnica, also known as Wolfsbane, is an invasive species brought over from Northern Europe. To Muir the components of a wilderness, “as pure as paradise” do not necessarily have to be traditionally native as long as it is beautiful. By placing this emphasis on beauty in the wilderness the American people expected to see a beautiful wilderness, although in reality these two are not mutually exclusive. Muir supported a form of natural improvement in which alterations to the natural world are made, but not with any economic value in mind. Interestingly, Muir suggests that our wildness is a commodity to which, we are glad to see how much of even the most destructible kind is still unspoiled”. (Muir) By the time the National Park Service was founded in 1916 the American people wanted to be entertained by, and in, nature