The Invention of Nature

Muir, by contrast, interpreted Humboldt’s ideas differently. He advocated preservation, by which he meant the protection of nature from human impact. Muir wanted to keep forests, rivers and mountains in pristine conditions, pursuing that goal with a steely persistence. ‘I have no plan, system or trick to save them [the forests],’ he said, ‘I mean simply to go on hammering & thumping as best I can.’ He also galvanized public opinion and support. As tens of thousands of Americans read Muir’s articles and as his books became bestsellers, his voice reverberated boldly across the North American continent. Muir had become the fiercest champion for the American wilderness.

One of his most important fights concerned the plan to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a lesser known but equally spectacular valley within Yosemite National Park. In 1906, after a major earthquake and fire, the city of San Francisco, which had long struggled with water shortages, applied to the US government to dam the river that ran through Hetch Hetchy in order to create a water reservoir for the growing metropolis. As Muir took up the battle against the dam, he wrote to Roosevelt, reminding the President of their camping trip in Yosemite and the urgency to save Hetch Hetchy. At the same time, though, Roosevelt received reports from the engineers whom he had commissioned, claiming that the dam was the only solution to San Francisco’s chronic water problem. With the battle lines drawn, this became the first dispute between the claims of wilderness and the demands of civilization – between preservation and progress – that would be fought on a national level. The stakes were high. If parts of a national park could be claimed for commercial reasons, then nothing was truly protected.

As Muir wrote more rousing articles, and the Sierra Club urged people to write to the President and politicians, the fight for Hetch Hetchy became a nationwide protest. Congressmen and senators received thousands of letters from concerned constituents, Sierra Club spokespeople testified before government committees and the New York Times declared the fight a ‘universal struggle’. But after years of campaigning, San Francisco won and the construction of the dam began. Although Muir was devastated, he also realized that the whole country had been ‘aroused from sleep’. Though Hetch Hetchy was gone, Muir and his fellow preservationists had understood how to lobby, how to run a national campaign, and how to act in the political arena – thereby setting a model for future activism. The idea of a national protest movement on behalf of nature was born. They had learned hard lessons. ‘Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded,’ as Muir said.

Throughout those decades and battles, Muir had never stopped dreaming of South America. In the early years after his arrival in California, he had been certain that he would go, but something else had always intervened. ‘Have I forgotten the Amazon, Earth’s greatest river? Never, never, never. It has been burning in me for half a century, and will burn forever,’ he wrote to an old friend. In between climbing, farming, writing and campaigning Muir had found the time for several trips to Alaska and then for a world tour to study trees. He had visited Europe, Russia, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand but had not made it to South America. In his mind, though, Humboldt had remained with him throughout these years. During his world tour Muir stopped in Berlin, and had walked through the Humboldt Park which had been built after the centennial celebrations and paid his respects when he went to see the Humboldt statue that stood outside the university. His friends knew how much Muir identified with the Prussian scientist and therefore called his expeditions ‘your Humboldt trip[s]’. One even shelved Muir’s publications in the explorer section of his library ‘under Humboldt’.