John Muir and America's Wild Places

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In August 1916, the US Congress created the National Park Service to protect America's finest landscapes and encourage people to visit them. One of the inspirations for the Park Service was the work of the Scottish-born naturalist, John Muir, whose lyrical writings about the Yosemite Valley gained huge popularity. Simon Watts tells John Muir's story through readings from his work and contributions from Mary Colwell, author of "John Muir: The Scotsman who saves America's Wild Places".

PHOTO: John Muir (Getty Images).

NOTE: The wildlife audio in this programme is used courtesy of the National Park Service, the National Audubon Society and Kevin Colver.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the Witness podcast with me Simon Watts. In 1916 the National Park Service
0:06.2	was formed to protect wild places in the United States. Today I'm looking back at the influence of
0:12.1	John Muir, a Scotsman who became one of the first environmentalists in America.
0:20.0	Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and praying, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul like.
0:32.0	He wanted people to be fundamentally part of the natural world,
0:35.8	to go into it, to tread quietly and leave nothing behind.
0:39.9	It was in the summer of 1869 while working as a shepherd in California that John Muir first saw the landscape that would change his life.
0:50.0	He found himself at the head of the Yosemite Valley, surrounded by huge granite cliffs and plunging waterfalls.
0:58.0	I made haste to high ground and came at length to the brow of that massive cliff that stands between Indian Canyon and Yosemite Falls. The noble walls sculptured into endless variety of domes and gables, spires and battlements and plain mural precipices,
1:17.0	all a tremble with the thunder tones of the falling water.
1:21.7	This is an account from the Nature Diaries which John Muir kept all his life.
1:26.7	The level bottom seemed to be dressed like a garden, sunny meadows here and there and
1:32.3	groves of pine and oak.
1:34.0	The great half dome rising at the upper end of the valley to a height of nearly a mile
1:41.0	is nobly proportioned and lifelike, holding the eye in
1:45.8	devout admiration, calling it back again and again from falls or meadows or even the mountains beyond.
1:55.0	John Muir had been born in the Scottish town of Dunbar.
1:58.3	His family were strict Protestants, but he found an escape in the natural world around him.
2:04.0	Mary Colwell, author of John Muir, the Scotsman who saved America's wild places.
2:10.0	His early life was a combination of real freedom because he had the sort of Scottish East Coast to explore,
2:17.6	but then you have to contrast that with the fundamentalist faith of both his mother and his father. In a sense his father was guilty of child abuse really.
2:27.0	He was quite violent, he hit the children a lot, he beat them if they couldn't recite the Bible,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.