{"id":684,"date":"2008-07-22T03:35:53","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T03:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisammon.wordpress.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2008-07-22T03:35:53","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T03:35:53","slug":"the-peoples-glorious-revolutionary-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/?p=684","title":{"rendered":"The Peoples’ Glorious Revolutionary Wilderness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Without question, John Muir was a catch. Had I been alive in the late 1800s, when he was traipsing through Yosemite, I am positive that — if we met on a trail in view of Half Dome — I would have swooned. <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>I am, in a sense, swooning even now over Muir\u2019s muscular legacy: how he founded the Sierra Club in 1892,<\/strong> and in 1905 led President Theodore Roosevelt on the backpacking trip that ultimately preserved Yosemite as the National Park we love today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Struck as I am by the alpenglow of these great achievements, I\u2019m equally charmed by the small details of his life: his literary leanings and the famed image of him <\/strong>wandering the Sierras with a crust of bread in his pocket. His priorities <\/span>were clearly <\/strong>in order. A giddy romantic, he wasted no time on banalities such as dinner. Who has time to for food when there are so many mountains to climb, sunsets to watch, and streams to cross? Muir\u2019s vision was too big for mincing garlic and peeling potatoes.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Obviously, I\u2019m not the only one smitten by this Prince of the Mountains. It seems we cannot pay him enough homage. So many places are named in honor of Muir — hospitals, museums, hiking trails. In 2006, astronomer R.E. Jones even named a planet “Johnmuir.” So great is the temptation to honor him that the U.S, Geological Survey has had to discourage further attribution of his name to the landscape. If every place carries his namesake, how will we distinguish one place from another?<\/span><\/p>\n

And, yet, as I wandered the John Muir Wilderness last week, scrambling over the famous blue granite, swimming in tule-lined lakes, and gawking at the wildflowers, I had the sensation that no person\u2019s name\u2014not even John Muirs\u2019\u2014was large enough to contain the magnificence around me. Nature, I find, is too timeless, too universal, and too irreducible for even the greatest pronoun. <\/span><\/p>\n

And so, as my hiking companion and I followed the trails that led through the wilderness, we sought to rename it. \u201cHow about\u2018The Peoples\u2019 Glorious Revolutionary Wilderness?\u2019 he quipped. <\/span><\/p>\n

It had a Soviet-era ring, but I liked it. I could imagine the sign arching across every trailhead: <\/span><\/p>\n

THE PEOPLES’ GLORIOUS REVOLUTIONARY WILDERNESS <\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder if a title so grandiose and all-encompassing might broaden our concept of the place, might even change our relationship to it. I wonder if perhaps we would start treating wilderness less like a borrowed tent, and more like what it really is: a place of our own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without question, John Muir was a catch. Had I been alive in the late 1800s, when he was traipsing through Yosemite, I am positive that — if we met on a trail in view of Half Dome — I would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}