Wilderness and the American Mind

Nash dedicates an entire chapter to the famed preservationist and the Sierra Club’s first president. A tireless, energetic, and assertive supporter of wilderness protection, Muir tended to view his experiences in the wilderness from a spiritual perspective, and his outlook was significantly influenced by Transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson, with whom he was friends. Muir was among the leading opponents of the Hetch Hetchy dam project, and while his opposition suffered a stinging defeat, the political momentum that he helped generate only grew after that. His impact on American preservationism is monumental.

The separate chapter allotted to Muir is significant, as he is one of the more famous preservationists in American history, and his name is even now synonymous with the movement, which might not have evolved without his relentless advocacy. From a functionalist perspective, Nash’s devoting chapters to Muir, Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold is a framing technique. By focusing on one figure, Nash illustrates where the movement stood in their era. Just reading the chapters consecutively would directly indicate how the wilderness protection debate evolved over the 19th and 20th centuries. With Muir especially, Nash reveals a decisively pro-wilderness position.