Читать книгу The John Muir Trail. Through the Californian Sierra Nevada онлайн

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One of the numerous mountain tarns below Silver Pass (Day 9)

Through his writings and eccentric lifestyle Muir became widely known throughout the United States. He was an influential figure who received the rich and famous to his simple Californian home, including the poet and essayist Ralph Emerson, the author and naturalist H.D. Thoreau and the eminent geologist Joseph Le Conte (see Le Conte Canyon, Day 14 of the JMT). Muir was a confidant of congressmen, presidents and other influential people, and in this way was able to persuade the most powerful men in the country of the urgent need to protect the wilderness areas of western America from commercial exploitation. He pushed for the establishment of Yosemite as the first national park in 1890. In 1903 Muir encouraged President Roosevelt to spend several nights camping out in Yosemite with him, during which time they agreed on a programme of conservation for the area.

Muir was also instrumental in the fight to set up Sequoia, Grand Canyon and other national parks for reasons of conservation and access, and is today dubbed the founding father of America’s national park system. The debate over national parks was really a debate about exploitation versus conservation. In a land where capitalism and the work ethic reign supreme it is perhaps surprising that Muir’s views won the day and that the national parks in America were established to protect and conserve the great wildernesses so early on in the country’s history.