Sublimity and Alienation

In his chapter on “Sublime Nature,” Cosgrove describes the reaction of artists in the Romantic period against the increasing mechanization of England, as it was being transformed by capitalist production.  These artists began to privilege the organic and natural over the mechanical and manufactured.  Suffering alienation in society due to the capitalist order of production, they sought to flee society altogether and find integration in a natural, moral order.  This led them to more and more wild and remote places, which seemed to exemplify some essential moral order, which was being corrupted by the man’s greed.  As Cosgrove observes, “Romanticism seeks divinity in the mountains and sermons in the stones” (232).  This tendency is clearly evident in John Muir’s description of his stay the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the summer of 1869.  Like Turner and Ruskin, Muir’s emotional responses to nature are intimately connected to his careful and learned observation of plants, animals, rocks, and all kinds of natural phenomena.  Indeed, what Cosgrove says of Ruskin could be applied to Muir: “It is the duty of every individual to observe and seek to understand the messages written by divinity into natural forms and of that individual’s life and work to submit to them” (249).  Close observation of nature could also one to “see into the life of things,” that is, perceive the moral and providential significance of nature.

Alone in the wilderness, Muir does not feel alone. Deep in the mountains above Yosemite Valley, he paradoxically feels close to his friends and family: “The deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends” (81).  Nature offers him an unalienated existence, but he can only experience it when he is separated from society and other people.  However, one must have the sensitivity and perception to see and feel the beauty and meaning  of nature, for he earlier had noted that the shepherd in California, “seeing nobody for weeks or months …finally becomes semi-insane or wholly so” (19).  Muir, on the other hand, attempts to read God’s writing in the pine trees: “Definite symbols, divine hieroglyphics written with sunbeams. Would I could understand them!” (18). He can also hear the “sermons” in the stones. The animals and plants seem to call to him, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song” (44).  The particulars of nature reveal the very being of the divine: “Every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator” (94). 

Many of us might have a tendency to look down upon such beliefs and such raptures as Muir expressed.  They must be self-induced, we say.  And indeed they might, since it is impossible to know the truth of his subjective experience.  However, the positivism -- “with its separation of subject and object and its search for causal laws modeled upon Newtonian physics” -- that came to dominate in the 18^th century is not more valid as a schema for understanding the phenomenal world (252).   Cosgrove effectively argues that causal reasoning was an ideology tied to the rise of capitalism: “The shift from analogical to causal reasoning is logically related to changes in social organization between pre-capitalist and capitalist formations” (252).  Thus as a hegemonic ideology, this form of reasoning cannot bring us closer to “truth” than previous forms of reasoning. 

I was troubled, however, by some elitist implications in Muir’s book.  He says that the shepherd Billy is “asleep, or smothered and befogged beneath pleasures and cares” because he does not want to see Yosemite Valley (90).  Billy considers the valley “a lot of rocks” where one would be exposed to the danger of falling.  Similarly, the Native Americans are seen as degraded, unappreciative of nature’s beauty: “A strangely dirty and irregular life these dark-eyed, dark-haired, half-happy savages lead in this clean wilderness” (124).  He’s most troubled by their uncleanliness, which he interprets as a sign of their unnaturalness, since “nothing truly wild is unclean” (135).

He goes into nature to escape alienation.  In the wilderness, he can experience his ecstasies and raptures before its divine beauty.  But he cannot tolerate those who don’t have the same sensibility as his, and so he experiences another kind of alienation: “To prefer the society of squirrels and woodchucks to that of our own species must surely be unnatural” (132).

John Muir's Environmentalism

          Having never heard of John Muir or his book My First Summer in the Sierras, I really didn't know what to expect. (The fact that it was published in 1911, in the United States, gave me somewhat of an indication as to what the style may be like, but as for the content I was without any preconceived notions.) I wasn't sure if it was fiction, autobiography, epic poem or anything else. As a matter of fact, my conception of "what the book was" or in what genre it properly belongs to changed more than a few times even after I began reading it; however I am now satisfied with the category I have come up with for Muir's book: philosophical travel literature slash nature porn. (Please don't waste your time looking for this genre/section in your local bookstore.)
           I say travel literature because the journal entry-style narrative follows Muir and Co. (a herd of "hoofed locusts" and their shepherds) on their way through California's most famous and grandiose wild regions; the action of the novel is a journey (traveling). I say philosophical because along with the facts, scientific name-droppings and observations of nature recorded by Muir during his trek, the reader is treated to his thoughts, opinions, musings and interpretations as well (which in my view constitutes the most interesting part of the work). And finally I say nature porn because the whole book is more or less an orgy of all that could be called wilderness: exhaustive cataloguing of every tree, shrub, rock, river, plant, bug, grass, animal, and even cloud, down to the most mind-boggling detail, such as the exact depth and circumference of the acorn of a particular acorn-bearing tree (which tree it was exactly is beyond the scope of this blog entry). The man had a serious green fetish; the leering excitement he feels when encountering some new shrub or other borders on inappropriate.
          Up to this point I have been (half) jokingly referring to Muir's relationship to nature as that of a lover to his beloved, and indeed in many ways it is, but his relationship to nature is also just as accurately characterized as that of a devout worshipper to his or her god. Words like "glorious, noble, sublime, and holy" are routinely used by Muir to describe trees, rivers, mountain ranges and the like. Those who go into the wilderness are entering a "temple," a temple wherein the "holy mountains" and the "psalms of the falls" will undoubtedly cause one to become "devout." This is all vocabulary of the sacred, and sacred is how Muir views the natural world; his environmentalism is a worship of the natural creation.  
   

Romantic Paintings, Sublime Landscape

Cogrove’s article, “Sublime Nature: Landscape and Capitalism,” outlines the 18^th century British Romantic movement as a response to the expanding industrial capitalism of the British state. As land and natural resources like wind, water, and fossil fuels were now being utilized for commercial production, Romantics regarded this as a degradation of the natural environment. Cities grew, and the liberal laissez-faire philosophy of Adam Smith failed as a concept in the midst of capitalist drive. In pushing for the most efficient means of production, which included the use of natural resources, business owners essentially alienated the masses from nature. According to Dr. Jan Oosthoek, “people and nature were objectified and reduced to commodity status.”

In response, the Romantics opted to view nature as an essential source of spirituality and renewal. Cosgrove argues, “In seeking to escape the alienation implied by the isolation of the individual, Romantics failed to locate its origins in the new social relations of production…because they could not accept society as ‘organic.’ Therefore, no resolution was open to in the social order; it had to be found in the natural, moral order which harmonized the individual soul with unspoiled external nature.” In the Romantic sense, land became synonymous with self-preservation and survival instinct, two abstracts that Burke stressed as being individual as opposed to social.

The most accessible means through which Romantics could view sublime nature was the sense of sight. “If the sublime could be apprehended through the senses,” says Cosgrove, “then it could be seen, not directly, but through the sight of those objects which excite the passions of self-preservation.” Romantic painters, therefore, communicated “exalted” ideas of the human experience through the humanized representation of landscape.

I came across this painting in my research, and I find that it embodies a majority of Romantic elements explained in Cosgrove’s article.

It's titled "The Wanderer Above the Sea and Fog," painted by Casper David Friedrich in 1818. It not only illustrates the grandeur and terror so closely associated with the sublime, but it also represents the alienation of man from the natural experience. The subject of the painting stands high above on the rocks overlooking the dark, foggy sea, emphasizing man’s foreign subjectivity in nature. The dark colors enhance feelings of awe and fear associated with the inconceivable greatness of nature, and the fog symbolizes the mystery of the landscape’s sublimity. However, the location and vantage point of the man also suggests human superiority over nature, and thus, the painting as a whole depicts the Romantic conflict between society and the natural world.

The Picturesque is Pure Intentionality

     In “The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System,” Alison Byerly discusses the idea of the American wilderness as a cultural myth rooted in the aesthetic category of the picturesque. Byerly notes the shift of the American wilderness from the sublime to the picturesque. The wilderness was increasingly “contained and controlled” making it impossible to see the landscape as extending to infinity. The picturesque framing of the wilderness becomes embodied in the national parks. Byerly argues that the aestheticization of the wilderness as national park removes the landscape “from the realm of nature” and transforms it into a “legitimate object of artistic consumption” (53). Byerly provides a brief history of the picturesque movement and notes the paradox of the picturesque as both aesthetically democratic and elitist. The picturesque allows anyone to become an artist and frame a picture, however, money and leisure time was (and is still) needed to go on picturesque tours as well as a large estate in order to participate in picturesque landscaping. Byerly illustrates how our national parks also operate under this paradox. The national park are available to everyone, however, the activities aimed at experiencing nature are not. The idea of “experiencing” nature or the wilderness takes a comical turn in the essay when Byerly discusses the Sierra Club’s 1966 ads against congressional proposals to build dams in the Grand Canyon to make the river deeper for visitors to use powerboats to view the canyon walls. The full-page ads ran with the headline: “SHOULD WE ALSO FLOOD THE SISTINE CHAPEL SO TOURIST CAN GET NEARER TO THE CELING.” As the headline illustrates, in order for nature to be appreciated or preserved it must be linked to art. The headline argues that the Grand Canyon is an aesthetic object that we have framed and “must therefore be protected for the same reasons that we protect all parts of our cultural heritage” (59).
I really enjoyed Byerly’s analysis of the national parks as embodying the cultural myth of the wilderness. The wilderness is defined in opposition to the realm of civilization, in other words, the wilderness is where humans are not. However, Byerly notes the paradox of this definition because “spectatorial presence is essential to the idea of the wilderness” (58). Byerly finds the “old question” of a tree falling in the forest perfectly capturing the paradox: “a tree standing in the forest is not part of the wilderness unless a civilized observer is there to see it” (58). Byerly links appropriation of the framing of the wilderness with the framing of the picturesque. Like the picturesque landscapes of “counterfeit neglect” where “the passage of time was artificially introduced and carefully controlled,” the national parks are artificially and carefully controlled to appear “wild” and pristine. The picturesque is therefore not an accident of “found art” but “pure intentionality” (55). Byerly notes the invisible hands constructing the picturesque wild. A. Starker Leopold’s report on the philosophy of wildlife management claimed that “observable artificiality on any form must be minimized and obscured in every possible way” so “a reasonable illusion of primitive America could be re-created” (60). However, when Yellowstone was allowed to burn the public was outraged. The public preferred the artificiality and wanted it preserved rather than see the “true” wilderness.

John Muir: The Original Tree Hugger Reignites Class Divide

 With John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierras, the class finally turns towards the type of nature that American culture has relied upon up until just the past decade when the urban-naturalism movement began to pick up steam (ironic use of steam engine metaphor for urban-naturalism intentional). I am referring to Nature as the largely uninhabited areas where the wild things are, an unspoiled space where humanity can be reminded that we are "truly an inseparable part" of the natural beauty that resides there that was passed down through the Romantics to Transcendentalists to Muir(15). Or at least that was my first impression; upon further consideration I began to suspect that Muir was somehow undermining at least one aspect of the Romantic tradition of Nature: the lack of class distinctions.

Muir appears to call for an end to the elevation of the common man, the ordinary rural worker that Wordsworth praised as a man more in tune with Nature than his urban contemporaries. This can be seen in his inversion of the shepherd motif. While shepherds are usually a frequent component of the pastoral settings favored by Romantics, Muir's Shepherd Billy debunks the concept of the shepherd being closer to nature.

 Shepherd Billy is not the humble, hard working individualist dedicated to protecting his flock and grateful for a lifestyle that affords him so much time in nature.  Billy is an immigrant worker who is hired to tend to the flock of Delaney, and Muir is hired primarily to watch Billy - in other words, Muir is management. Billy is not dedicated to the care of his sheep, insisting that Muir and the dog go after the sheep who stray from the flock. In an interesting contrast to Muir's worshipful praise of nature, Billy regards nature as a place for bad things. His flock of sheep have "more of the evil one than any other flock" - a reference to Satan (41). Yosemite, to Billy, is a "d----d good place to stay away from." Billy certainly won't be paying to see the place - which seems to point to a possible reason for Muir's harsh depiction of the Shepherd. Muir is suggesting that nature tourism is something that can be appreciated only be those who had an educated palate - it is wasted on rustics such as Billy.

I was surprised that Muir and Billy both bemoaned the lack of variety in their diet when their beans and flour run out. More to the point, I wasn't surprised that Billy was complaining, he seems the type to be especially fond of the First Amendment, at least as it relates to the conditions of his employment, but Muir's joining in was unexpected yet hilarious. Their larder is limited to tea, sugar, and mutton (of which they have a conveniently fresh supply). Both men are entirely over mutton and seem to be close to losing their sanity due to a lack of variety in their diet. True, this matches the popular post-Thanksgiving turkey overdose where people quickly tire of turkey but it separates  Muir from the pioneers, whom he notes were surely a sturdier folk, capable of living solely on various types of game for months on time.

The portion of his diet that Muir really misses is bread. He later speaks of returning to Yosemite with enough bread to explore the canyon at his leisure. Bread was probably the first processed food, and as such, it signifies civilization. Muir's nature is not apart from man, it is a place where he visits. The day of the pioneers has gone and Muir writes from the point of view of a man who wants some to bring at least some level of civilization with him into the wilderness, a man who wants to find a piece of Eden for a weekend camping trip - preferably without the riff-raff like Billy and absolutely with a good quantity of bread.

A Reflection on My First Summer in the Sierra

Muir displays an obvious connection with nature in My Fist Summer in the Sierra that goes beyond mere personification or appreciation of nature. His descriptions sway to and fro between that of a theologian and a talented naturalist poet. In “North Fork of the Merced,” June 14, Muir describes an area once ravaged by floods as covered by “the testimony of trees growing on flood boulder deposits” (48). Eventually the effects of the flood “came to awaken everything movable to go swirling and dancing on wonderful journeys” (48). Furthermore, he describes the area as “holy [and] where one might hope to see God” (49). Such a passage, though brief, displays a connection with the Biblical story of the flooding of the earth by God. The force of the flood from the Merced caused not only destruction but also a catharsis for nature. Muir does not mention a rainbow but the trees are quite capable of delivering a testimony in the wind.

Muir’s experiences capture feelings and emotions with grandiose and palpable dialogue when he describes his experiences with the nearby pines. He is struck by a “throbbing, thrilling, overflowing [sensation where] the gods of the planet kingdom, living their sublime century, live in the sight of Heaven” (52). The trees are, according to Muir, “our inheritance” which almost leaves him paralyzed with joy and grandeur. Muir parallels his descriptions of nature with the sublime. Cosgrove, in “Sublime Nature: Landscape and Industrial Capitalism,” observes that “holy fear, majesty, exultation are the adjectives of the sublime” (226). The discussion of inheritance and the implied notion of paralysis at the hands of nature lead to yet another Biblical implication of humans as sheep. Sheep, described as gentle but hungry, move about the landscape while devouring every plant in sight and get away from Muir. After gorging, the sheep soon return to him. Muir observers that sheep, like people, having escaped restraint “were afraid of their freedom and did not know what to do with it, and seemed glad to get back into the old familiar bondage” (57). This metaphor seems infused with both aspects of nature and individual enlightenment. Natural spaces, such as Yosemite, provide a place for reflection and contemplation of life away from the bustle of the city. Yet this exposure to beauty and the sublime soon give way to a “freedom” that individuals cannot or will not process. Muir suggests individuals need the bondage of routine localized in activities away from the captivating features of nature to function in everyday life.  Furthermore, it seems Muir acts as a naturalist poet for the common individual. He unlocks a brief glimpse into the sublime that was previously rooted only in classic works of literature that might be described as “erudite and elitist [and] hardly attainable by ordinary mortals” (Cosgrove 226).

Overall, Muir does well in blending the aspects of nature, spirituality, and the sublime by writing an account which is both accessible and relatable even to city dwellers. He both engages with the complex expression of the sublime while not alienating those unfamiliar with the like of Dante, Homer, or Milton.     

My First Summer in the Sierra and “The American Forests”

My First Summer in the Sierra

John Muir presents nature commentary blended with scientific notations.  Muir’s blending of flora and fauna is novel because animals are made to seem natural while man, suffering from a veneer of civility, must struggle to reacquaint himself with the outdoors and, in turn, his own God-given innate qualities.  I say Muir is novel because animals theretofore (before Muir) had been represented as primal and uncivilized while man was God-like and needing to be increasingly civilized (including various native peoples around the world).  Muir prefigures, in a pre-Modernist sense, the idea that Western man as animal is capable of primal instincts, and that our innate, God-given qualities allow us to accomplish much or destroy much.  Muir takes off his shoes and stockings at one point—he becomes one with nature, and in the process the various layers of staid, nineteenth century civilization fall to the wayside.

Muir actually attributes human qualities like happiness to the animals.  In fact, happiness seems to the abiding anthropomorphic quality of the various creatures he observes.  Muir re-attributes purpose to animals and gives man a new role: chronicler of natural history and observer of present-day plants, trees, and animals.  The theme of the commentary is conservation—that plants and animals must be cherished, protected, and enjoyed, not disregarded and forgotten.  For example, at one point Muir mentions mastodons from a former era.  The mastodon would have been a new concept to nineteenth century readers because the science of reading old bones was so new.  Muir embraces the science of natural history because he believes that studying the past is the key to preserving and protecting the future.

Muir as nature diarist incorporates multiple disciplines: scientist, rhetorician, poet, and chronicler.  Muir’s writings have the ring of the Book of Genesis in that the animals seem as new as the day God created them.  Muir seamlessly blends past and present in nature such that images conjured in our imaginations make us more appreciative of what we can go out and see today.  Muir drapes his commentary in origins: that of nature and that of man, and that both come from God.  The latent allegory here is that the happy creatures of God need protection by man and must not be hunted to devastation.  Man is capable of much evil.  His attitude towards nature is the best encapsulation of his own nature.  In other words, only by reacquainting ourselves with nature may we as mankind rid ourselves of the evils of the twentieth century: genocide, world-wide wars, exploitation, and extinctions.

Perhaps if Muir were to talk to us today he would say that the twentieth century was indeed a lost cause, but we have the power to make the twenty-first century worthy of the majesty summed in his pages.  We are indeed worthy of this marvelous responsibility but only by working together.  Muir does not forget the Lord, nor does he forget man’s personal role in caring for the Lord’s creation.  What a wonderful, wonderful message!  And I think that is something of which we as a people are capable.

“The American Forests” (From Selected Essays*)

Part environmental panegyric, part outdoors American jingoist sendup, part geographical overview of emergent, trans-national conservation trends, “The American Forests” is John Muir’s treatise on the importance of government intervention in protecting forestry by inscribing first in laws and also in industry the protections endemic to saving our national treasures, to wit the redwood, the live-oak, and the cedar.  Muir looks not only to Europe but also to Asia in his survey of late nineteenth century governments seeking to protect forestry as a means of not only sustaining natural resources but also burnishing national heritage.  Muir prefigures in a very prescient way the connection between ruination and contamination; in other words, that by destroying a forest, we destroy our God-given blessing and in turn corrupt the God-given nature inherent in the soul of everyone.  The American forest is Muir’s stand-in, his synecdoche, his pars pro toto, for the American approach to conservation and protecting the environment.  The forest is such an impressive stand-in for the totality of nature, that when Muir opens his piece by describing the breathtaking, seemingly endless beauty of American topography, my mind immediately returned to my pre-matriculation days as an undergraduate when I trekked through the Appalachians.  I remember climbing to the top of a mountain and observing the sea of green in front of me.  I was amazed.  Muir’s writing recalls in me that same feeling.

Muir acknowledges the inevitability of man’s ownership of nature.  In a very Progressive fashion, Muir privileges government over private ownership; it is no surprise the manner in which the seeds of conservation might have been sown in the mind of then-Vice President and soon-to-be President Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 when this essay was published.  Muir excels in metaphor.  When he concludes with the “Uncle Sam” personification, Muir summons the mythical, allegorical fighting spirit of the nation to remind us that the best of what we are as a people is what the pilgrims found upon their landing: green forests, lush landscapes, and untouched vistas.  (In Muir’s estimation, the Native Americans arrived significantly close to the pilgrims’ landing so as not to have much of an effect on the environment.)  The major challenge of the twentieth century was, then, preservation, conservation, and environmentalism.  Muir masterfully uses metaphor to make the nineteenth century reader environmentally self-aware, a quality we as twenty-first century readers take for granted.

Symbolism continues to be very important in environmentalist rhetoric because it not only focuses the attention of the lay reader, it also allows the essayist to engage in discussion of the effect of the military-industrial complex on the environment by usage of familiar terms like “Navy” and processes like logging which conjure images of environmental desolation.  The thread of Muir’s argument is that only American laws will protect the environment from ruination at the hands of private industry and the military.  What is ironic is that Muir’s words continue to be as powerful as any specific piece of pro-environment legislation.  Inspiration trumps legislation.

*I didn't realize we were restricted to the first portion of the book until after I had completed writing this.

Reflections on Muir's Curious Prose Style in My First Summer in the Sierra

My First Summer in the Sierra is John Muir's fascinating account of his walking trip one summer through late nineteenth century Merced, California while accompanying a herd of sheep and their shepherds. Right away one is struck by his unusual prose style, which in light of modern conventions of taste and what makes for suitable academic rhetoric appears paradoxically both naive and learned. Reflecting the era's nascent Darwinian understanding of biodiversity, his observations mix the poetic with the scientific, thrilling readers with his richly emotional sense of the Central Valley landscape. For example, much in the manner of a child, Muir records early in his journey his thoughts as to the motivation behind the existence of poison ivy, as if the plant were something personally conceived of and created by divine revelation: ("Like most other things not apparently useful to man, [poison ivy] has few friends...Why was it made....?'"). Conversely, on other occasions, he describes examples of biological life with an altogether different tone and purpose, ones more materialist and less Romantic: ("The flowers of this species (Saxifraga peltata) are purple, and form tall glandular raceme that are in bloom before the appearance of the leaves."). Now, on the one hand, I understand both the need and wisdom of say, the science writer in doing his best to minimize his ideological beliefs in what he writes professionally. After all, when recording or presenting information for experimentation purposes, it is important to try hard not to be distracting by writing in an ostentatious prose style that might obscure the point of a set of data or a theory. However, it is the very embrace by Muir of his subjective experience that makes Summer so timeless a piece of conservationist writing. To be fair, he is not writing a scientific research paper but rather a personal journal of sorts, where he marks his thoughts, feelings, and impressions of the world around him. Although not exactly a young man at the time, (the average lifespan by the turn of the twentieth century 31 years later was 49 years of age), he manages to present a boyish enthusiasm for the natural world, unafraid of peppering his observations with the occasional exclamation mark to more effectively register his emotion: (“How deep our sleep last night in the mountain’s heart, beneath the trees and stars, hushed by solemn-sounding waterfall and many small soothing voices in sweet accord whispering peace!). 

My curiosity and appreciation for Muir’s prose deepened as I continued to consider the reasons why one seldom if ever encounters such a style in modern academic writing. Partially responsible is the twentieth century's greater emphasis on specialization, objectivity, and abstraction in standards of professional writing. In the trade-off for the more rarified brand of understanding that specialization tends to bring is the lesser valuing of the idea of beauty. As the focus in the discourse communities of the natural sciences has grown more necessarily narrow, aesthetic concerns about the natural world appear to have become less relevant. Most academic writers would probably be too embarrassed to ever discuss their subjective experience of the beauty of the natural world in their professional writing, thinking the concept of beauty itself largely a matter of social construction, and therefore subject to or indicative of cultural bias. And given our age’s obsession with political correctness and the consequences professionally for not internalizing what has been deemed acceptable by the arbiters of what makes for socially acceptable discourse, such a reluctance is understandable, however disappointing. 

I do not claim to see a way around this problem, if it is indeed a problem, nor am I making an argument that academia's current direction toward greater specialization and cultural sensitivity does not in fact represent by and large social goods from an intellectual and cultural perspective. But I do suggest that such a loss as Muir's prose's amalgam of the romantic and the scientific constitutes a kind of imaginative poverty for many readers and writers, as his words in Summer testify to the rhetorical power that is possible when a writer boldly embraces their sense of the beautiful while balancing their objective understanding of the material processes that allow the wonder that is nature to be intelligible to the sensitive observer.

General thoughts on Muir's My first summer in the Sierra

I started reading My first Summer in the Sierra when I happened to be at a park just beneath the Burbank foothills. As Muir was describing his natural setting, I couldn’t help feeling more in tuned to my environment. His narrative makes numerous connections with nature and the sublime, but what really caught my eye was the way he describes the Native Americans. He initially explains that the natives have lived for centuries with scarcely hurting Nature “hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats...” (38). He seems to admire the way they have preserved their land without inflicting permanent damage. He then compares the Native Americans’ treatment of the landscape with the Anglo-Americans who have “imprisoned [the natural world] in iron pipes to strike and wash away hills and miles of the skin of the mountain’s face, riddling, stripping every gold gully and flat” (38). Muir expresses his disappointment with how white Americans have in a “few feverish” years imposed irreversible damage to the earth without giving it a second thought. When I first read these two particular passages, I didn’t pick up on any racial undertones. In fact, I thought it was quite refreshing to read positive remarks being made toward our indigenous neighbors. It wasn’t until I finished reading the next few pages that I thought I might have over estimated Mr. Muir. As soon as he praises them for their respect for Nature, he then precedes to describe an old native woman dressed in rags as being “far from clean” (40). He says that “In every way she seemed sadly unlike Nature’s neat well-dressed animals, though living like them on the bounty of the wilderness” (40). I was honestly surprised and bothered by these remarks and other racial statements he makes throughout the text. On one hand, he applauds them for maintaining the natural order of things, but on the other hand he is perfectly comfortable with calling them savages and highlighting their so-called inadequacies; I wasn’t sure what to make of this. 

The other thing that I thought was interesting was how Muir associates music with Nature and the sublime. He makes many references to birds, waterfalls, and streams singing softly to him. He also discusses the natural setting as if it is alive and connected to him. Toward the end of his journey, he articulates that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe” (96). This comment immediately reminded me of Neil Evernden’s  “Beyond Ecology” where Evernden argues that since we are intermingled with natural world, we need to reconsider how we contend with Nature. I think this idea of intermingling or interconnectedness provide a nuanced way of examining our relationship with Nature, and it seems that Muir was also interested in exploring these very same ideas. 

John Muir - My Summer in the Sierras

Reading John Muir’s “My Summer in the Sierras” made me want to go out and hike all weekend. Unfortunately, finals are looming so my butt is glued to my desk but my love of the outdoors has been reawakened. It made me remember spending so much time outside when I was younger. I used to run around my backyard inspecting bugs and chasing garter snakes and lizards. I loved working with my mom in the garden and with our neighbor who was even more into plants than my mom is. I learned plant names and characteristics, how to care for them, what they like and don’t like, what works well together from them. Muir’s journal entries also reminded me of taking Marine Bio in high school. Our teacher had several of these big tanks that were actually saltwater tanks filled with animals and different kinds of kelp. Several times over the year we took field trips and spent the whole day studying tide pools close up. Part of our assignments for that class was that we had to do these observation cards. We needed to pick an organism and then give its classification, common name, some other info and then do a sketch of it. Reading Muir’s entries made me think of those observation cards.

There were a few moments in the text that caught my attention for different reasons. The first was the way that Muir confronts the idea of utility in the text. A few different times he looks at different things and speculates on why they were created. He is observing how poison ivy runs rampant and how it coexists peacefully with other parts of nature. He notices that even though poison ivy is seen as a bane to humans and a nuisance it has a part in nature, it is even “intertwined” with it. He gently raises the question of the validity of utility as a measure of the value of nature or even if we have the right to place a value on nature. He defers that question to God. The idea of nature as having value only if it’s useful to humans goes back to the secondary readings we’ve done this quarter, most obviously for me, Evernden.

Another thing that caught my attention was the way that Muir positions himself in comparison to the shepherd. He talks about the difference between how being a shepherd in Scotland is this almost ideal way of life. It allows man to be outdoors, provides him a living, and affords him the opportunity to still nourish his soul through reading and interacting with his neighbors and family. However, the shepherd that Muir observes has a relatively unhappy life. His living is exhausting, from before morning to well after night he is forced to work, alone and unsupported. The difference I see in the two is a question of scale. The Scottish shepherd works for himself and his family. His business (his herd) will only grow to the size that he can comfortably handle. It’s more of a “natural” approach to business, the undertone is that it isn’t a lifestyle motivated by greed. In contrast, this shepherd is working for someone else. He is working to make that someone else rich. Since the point of this sort of business venture is wealth and not survival the shepherd is pushed to work to the end of human limits. His lifestyle is in opposition to nature, motivated by the greed of capitalism. This goes back to the idea of sucking the marrow from the bones of nature in the service of making money. What Muir’s journal does is raise the question: “is this the best way to live?”  This approach to nature is exhausting an essentially blinds those taken in by it. The shepherd Muir observes is blind to all of the beauty that Muir sees in the land around them and by extension he is also excluded from the knowledge and deeper reflection that Muir acquires and experiences by observing nature.

Another thing that caught my attention was the brief anecdote about the Frenchman and the cave. The story is that a Frenchman passing along sees this cave and seeing no one else there decides to fence and gate the entrance to the cave and then charge admission. At first I laughed at the story but almost at the same time I got angry. That story is so typical of the Western/American relationship to land. The idea that a cave can belong to a person is ludicrous. It also reminds me of some texts that I’m reading for Dr. Karafilis’ class. So much of the justification for the Indian Removal Act is rhetoric that centers around ideas of discovery and possession. Essentially, America justified evicting the Native Americans because of the hallowed principles of “finders keepers” and “possession goes to whoever has the bigger gun”. 

Suburban Fields Forever

Before reading Cosgrove’s “Sublime Nature: Landscape and Industrial Capitalism,” I knew that the romantics’ extolment of natural and uncultivated places in many ways was a reaction to the social and economic ills of industrial capitalism, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the romantics themselves were implicated in these changes. As Cosgrove explains, with the transition from a patron-based to a market-based economy for the arts and literature, artists found themselves in the position that had been previously occupied by tradesmen, having to appeal to an anonymous customer base largely drawn from the ranks of the emerging middle class. So, to prevent the erosion of the privileged status of his work, Wordsworth claimed that he didn’t write for the public’s tastes  but for their “embodied spirit.” (Well, at least Wordsworth’s readers had the satisfaction of knowing that the tastes of their embodied spirits were satisfied even if their corporeal bodies were not.) Cosgrove goes on to say that the romantics’ conception of genius as organic  comported with their attitudes toward nature. Cosgrove stops short of saying that the romantics’ ideology was consciously self-serving, but his chapter did cause me to look in a new light at their penchant for writing extensively on aesthetics.

I also liked Hugh Blair’s concise and direct definition of the sublime (226). Leave it to a Scotsman to define a complex term like the sublime without befouling a single tree. Not that Cosgrove faults Wordsworth et al for the verbosity of their prose, but he does imply that “romantic expression” might have broadened its perspective. Cosgrove notes that for all the romantics’ celebration of the organic, they failed to accept that society is also organic. His criticism is even more pointed when he (sarcastically?) applauds the “success” of “romantic expression . . . in avoiding analysis of capitalist relations while criticising their consequences.” This seems to me like shorthand for saying that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Cosgrove doesn’t say just how the romantics could have gone about this analysis. Should Wordsworth have written a lyrical poem about a child pulling a coal tub in a mine galley? Well, maybe yes. Isn’t this essentially what Dickens later did?

But Cosgrove does provide some psychic relief to those of us who wondered whether we were lording over nature when we plant lilacs on our front lawns. Cosgrove depicts the home garden as a relatively recent innovation, an attempt by the new, urban middle class to bring take advantage of their new wealth to bring the sublime closer to home. In fact, these collections of exotic plants and dense shrubberies were not landscapes at all, since they did not direct the eye across the land but focused it on the vegetation. Thus, instead of exerting hegemony over the land, the home garden required attention to the “processes and forms of nature.” A welcome insight, just in time for spring.