John Muir & Lee Stetson – An Early American Conservationist
The Wild Muir
One of the greatest early conservationists of America was a Scottish immigrant named John Muir who, as a young boy, went first to Wisconsin and then later, as a young man in the 1860s, moved onward to California. A friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, he successfully sought to preserve the spectacular Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada range; it was joy in his lifetime. Yet the loss of the equally spectacular Hetch Hetch Valley to a dam to provide water for San Francisco was his greatest sorrow. John Muir founded the Sierra Club and is credited with founding the National Park System in the United States.
I visited with John Muir in the person of Lee Stetson in the studios of Radio Curious in October of 1995 and discussed his life and observations.
We begin with his comments on the effect that extinction of so many species during and since his lifetime has had on the Earth’s remaining species.
The book that Lee Stetson recommends is his own, “The Wild Muir,” by Lee Stetson
The book that John Muir recommends is “Sixty Miles From Contentment,” by M.H. Dunlop.
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