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>> Welcome to University Place
Presents.
I'm Norman Gilliland.
Whether it's a tiny piece of
land somewhere in Wisconsin
that's been restored or somehow
saved in its original form, or
something as big and monumental
as Yosemite National Park, there
is a tribute behind them to a
single man who spent a good deal
of time in Wisconsin, in fact
some formative years.
His name: John Muir.
He was one of the co-founders
of the Sierra Club.
For that matter, he has many big
firsts to his credit when it
comes to our relationship with
the land.
And what was it about his early
years in Wisconsin that shaped
the thinking and the actions of
John Muir?
We'll find out from somebody who
has spent a good time studying
the life and work and even the
artifacts of John Muir.
He's Daniel Einstein.
He's the manager of historic and
cultural resources at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Welcome to University Place
Presents.
>> Glad to be here.
>> What got you interested in
John Muir?
>> Well, John Muir has been a
figure in my life for many
years.
I actually grew up in the
Midwest and moved to California,
and one of my first places that
I visited was Muir Woods just
north of San Francisco.
And I went on to work at Redwood
National Park and fall in love
with Yosemite and the Sierras
and Redwood National Park.
John Muir's imprint is all over
California.
Later, I came to Wisconsin to go
to the Nelson Institute for
Environmental Studies and
discovered that there was a
Wisconsin connection to Muir,
and I've had a chance to pursue
that connection over the last
few years.
>> I was not too long ago in
Scotland, and lo and behold
there is a tribute to John Muir
there, not surprising since he
came from Scotland, and what was
his life like there?
>> Well, he was in a large
family, eight children.
A fairly prosperous family in
the town of Dunbar, Scotland.
>> Not too far from Edinburgh.
>> From Edinburgh, right.
And his father was a successful
merchant.
But he was constrained in his
ability to practice his
religious interests in Scotland
and decided that he would take
his family to America.
So here was a boy, 11 years old,
who very much scampers about the
countryside, an urban lifestyle,
who's yanked out of school
one day and boards a boat,
comes to America.
>> Was their intention to come
originally to America?
I mean, these are British
citizens.
>> Well, that's interesting.
As I say, the father was looking
for religious freedom, and as a
British citizen his initial
thought was he would go to
Canada, that that might be the
easiest route for him.
But on the boat over, he's
talking it over with some fellow
emigrants and he's told that,
no, Canada is much too difficult
a place to make a living.
>> They weren't trying to sell
him land, were they?
>> No, there were just too many
trees.
But there was this place in the
Midwest called Wisconsin, where
in a short while you could clear
the land and plant your first
crop of wheat.
And, more importantly, in this
area of southern Wisconsin you
could access the two great
watersheds of the continent:
the Mississippi basin
and the Great Lakes basin.
Only separated by a mile between
the two watersheds and the town
of Portage.
And as someone who was looking
to become a farmer and to grow
wheat, he thought being able to
access the waterways and export
through the Gulf of Mexico or
out through the Atlantic, this
would be the place to go.
So he changes his plans
midway across the Atlantic.
>> And this would have been,
what, about 1849 or so?
>> 1849.
The story goes that it was quite
an abrupt departure.
That he didn't really announce
this to the family.
He comes home one day and he
says forget about your studies
tonight, tomorrow we're going to
America.
And John, of course, is 10 years
old at the time, is delighted,
and he runs out into the streets
and screams I'm going to America
in a Scottish brogue of course.
Every time I've tried Scottish
brogue it comes out a hybrid
between Italian and Yiddish, so
I'm going to spare you that.
He goes with his sister and
brother, and they board a ship,
a six-week passage across the
Atlantic.
They arrive in America.
They get another boat, travel up
the Hudson, travel across on the
Erie Canal, another boat from
Buffalo, land in Milwaukee, and
get on an oxcart, and they head
towards Marquette County.
>> And so they have bought or
are soon to buy this piece of
land?
>> They buy the land once they
arrive.
>> Sight unseen.
>> Sight unseen.
They use their Scottish clan
connections, and they hear about
this place near Montello,
Wisconsin.
It's about 50 miles north
of Madison, where there's a
combination of grasslands and
widely scattered open oak
openings.
And wheat, at the time, was the
primary crop in Wisconsin.
A lot of folks are unaware
because of our dairy heritage
that dairying was not the first
crop, but wheat was.
>> They weren't even using wheat
for beer at that point, were
they?
>> I don't know.
>> And does, well, farming of
any kind, but in the mid-19th
century in a place that's never
been farmed before has got to be
notoriously difficult.
>> Well, it was backbreaking
work.
In Muir's autobiography, he
writes a little bit about what
it was like to arrive in this
wilderness of Wisconsin.
And let me read to you about his
first impressions as he arrives
at what they would later name
Fountain Lake.
He said: To this charming hut,
in the sunny woods, overlooking
a flowery glacier meadow and a
lake rimmed with white
water-lilies, we were hauled by
an ox team across trackless
carex swamps and low-rolling
hills, sparsely dotted with
round-headed oaks.
This sudden plash into pure
wildness, baptism in nature's
warm heart, how utterly happy
it made us.
Nature streaming into us,
wooingly teaching her wonderful
glowing lessons.
Here, without knowing it,
we still were at school.
Every wild lesson a love
lesson, not whipped,
but charmed into us.
Oh, that glorious Wisconsin
wilderness.
You get a sense for his writing
style, but this was, in many
ways, a spiritual awakening for
this young boy.
>> It makes me wonder if he had
been reading Thoreau.
>> Well, he didn't have access
to books as a young boy.
His father was, well, to be
generous, a religious zealot who
insisted that all of his family
read the one good book, the
bible.
And they were required to
memorize it.
And Muir writes quite critically
of the teaching technique that
his father imposed.
He said something to the effect
that what the mind forgets the
flesh remembers.
Which is to say he was whipped
quite brutally on a regular
basis if he did not mind his
father, if he did not tend to
his biblical lessons.
>> It must have been difficult
for him, and we have a view here
of the place that he came to.
It must have been difficult for
him as such a lover of the
outdoors to be so strictly
controlled by his father.
He seemed to have right away the
impulse to just go running off
into the woods and meadows.
>> Well, he was, what, 12 years
old before his father put him to
the plow.
And he would work on this farm
and another farm for the next
11-12 years, sometimes 17 hours
a day, from sun-up to sundown.
Meanwhile, his father was a
preacher and would leave the
farm on a regular basis to work
the circuit, leaving his
children to work the fields.
>> Was this the proverbial log
cabin American boyhood story?
>> Well, initially there was a
shanty, a burr oak shanty that
they created.
We saw the view from that shanty
out across Fountain Lake.
This combination of sedge meadow
and bog and prairie.
And eventually they did build a
fairly substantial home at
Fountain Lake, and it was there
that they raised animals and
raised their wheat.
>> Those look like a pretty
substantial and, if the picture
is right, a fairly trim family
home for the Muirs.
>> They were fairly prosperous,
but, remember, he had all the
children working for him.
They worked the land pretty
hard.
And wheat is a kind of crop that
exhausts the soil fairly
rapidly.
>> Presumably, they just have to
move pretty soon.
>> They lived there for about
seven years before the father
decides to pick up and move
away.
And this was heartbreaking to
John because of all the work
they had put in to building this
place, and, yet, here they were
moving on to the next farm.
>> Which, I assume, was at least
fairly nearby.
>> Yeah.
The farm was about five to six
miles down the road.
But this Fountain Lake farm had
this unique combination of
different habitats and water,
water in particular.
>> And we get a view of the lake
here.
>> The lake plays an important
role in his understanding of the
landscape because we have these
different ecosystems.
We have the sedge meadow.
We have the prairie.
We have the bog.
The farm they moved to, Hickory
Hill, is on a hill and no water
to be found there.
The lake plays an interesting
role in one of his early
adventures, which he writes
about in his autobiography,
"The Story
of My Boyhood and Youth."
He didn't know how to swim, and
he's out on the lake one day and
he's about to scare a friend of
his who's on a boat.
He approaches the boat, but
instead of being able to grab
the boat, he's drawn underwater,
and he doesn't know how to swim.
And he falls lower and lower
into the lake, and he thinks
he's about to die.
And he has this epiphany that he
has to swim, that he must find
the courage to drive himself
back up to the top.
And he's able to do this,
gasping for breath, nearly
drowning.
But he's terribly embarrassed by
this experience, and he wills
himself to swim yet again the
next day and the day after.
>> That's a real exercise in
overcoming fear.
>> Here is a man whose exploits
later in life are well
documented that he would go off
into the wilderness for weeks at
a time all by himself with but a
crust of bread and a pouch of
tea.
And he would just will himself
to survive in these very trying
situations.
>> Is this, what we're seeing
here, a look at Fountain Lake
today?
>> Fountain Lake today has been
preserved.
>> And is there water in there?
>> There is water.
That's a 30-acre lake which is
just over the horizon of this
view of the former home site.
The property has been preserved
as a county park and a state
natural area.
And then the original homestead,
the home 80, has been purchased
by someone who is helping to
preserve the site and has been
able to get the home site
designated as a national
landmark.
>> Did he bond as well with the
Hickory Hill property as he had
with the Fountain Lake?
>> Well, Hickory Hill, as I
said, was the second farm, a
different landscape, a dry,
sandy landscape.
And he talks about that
transition to the new farm.
He writes: After eight years
of dreary work of clearing the
Fountain Lake farm, fencing it
and getting it in perfect
order, building a frame house
and the necessary outbuildings
for the cattle and horses,
after all this had been
victoriously accomplished and
we had made out to escape with
life, father bought a half
section of wild land about
four or five miles to the
southeast and began all over
again to clear and fence and
breakup the fields for a new
farm, doubling all the
stunting, heartbreaking
chopping, grubbing,
stump-digging, rail-splitting,
fence-building, barn-building,
house-building.
We called our second farm
Hickory Hill Farm for its many
fine hickory trees and the
long, gentle slope leading
up to it.
The land was better for
farming, but it had no living
water, no spring, or stream,
or meadow.
So, clearly, his association
with the Fountain Lake property
was much stronger,
but he did as he was told.
They built this fine house, fine
brick house, and it was here,
from the time he was, oh, let's
see, 17 to about 22, where he
lived.
>> Now, this is starting to look
like a classic 19th century
Wisconsin farmhouse.
>> It's a substantial house and
barn that they built there.
One of the iconic stories from
his time on Hickory Hill Farm
was digging the well.
As he says, there's no water.
They're at the top of the hill,
and one of the first assignments
that his father gives him is to
dig the well through the solid
sandstone rock.
And each morning he would go out
with a hammer and a stone
chisel, and he would literally
chip away at the solid stone.
And he worked at this for weeks
each morning.
>> Without knowing how far down
the water would be.
>> It's down there somewhere.
>> Could be 50 feet; could be
250 feet.
>> They had no way of knowing.
It was close to the house.
You want the well close to the
house.
But, no, he had no way of
knowing.
They set up a tripod with a
pulley and a bucket and rope
system so that midday John would
load the little chips of rock
into the bucket and his father
would haul them up to the
surface and they would empty the
bucket and then have his lunch,
he'd go back down into the hole
and work by himself in this
three-foot diameter shaft.
>> Three feet, and he's 40, 50,
60 feet down?
>> He got to 80 feet, and one
morning his father is lowering
him down into this dark, narrow
shaft and he's immediately
overcome by what is referred to
as choke damp, which is an
accumulation of carbon dioxide
gases.
And, for some reason, they knew
nothing of this threat.
He immediately losses
consciousness, and right before
he goes blank, he calls out to
his father and his father
instructs him to grab hold of
the bucket.
And clinging to the bucket, his
father hauls him 80 feet to the
surface, unconscious, near
death.
Well, what they learned from
their neighbors who were miners,
this accumulation of gas in the
mine can be cleared away.
It can be stirred up, and you
can return to the shaft.
After just a few days of
recovery, what does his father
do?
He sends him back down to finish
the job.
>> So just as he has overcome
his fear of drowning, he has to
overcome this fear of
suffocating at the bottom of a
mine.
>> I can't imagine after being
that close to death to being
told this is what we do.
You have no choice.
Go back down and finish.
Apparently it was only another
10 feet before they struck
water.
And that well is still present
on the farm.
They've built a windmill over
the top of it.
>> We saw that.
>> Of the well head.
The farm is privately owned by
the same family that bought it
from the Muirs.
>> Oh, really.
>> Back in the 1870s.
>> Well, it must be a good spot
then.
Well, as John Muir gets into his
teens, he faces a decision as to
whether to stay on the family
farm or strike out on his own.
>> You know, he stays on the
farm until he's 22 years old,
which is longer than most young
men would have stuck around.
But he's very attached to his
family and his brothers and his
sisters.
But he hungers for something
more.
Now, I said that he had no books
as a young boy, but through his
teen years he is able to find
books that he borrows from
neighbors.
Sometimes surreptitiously,
sneaking them into the house.
>> Is he home-schooled through
these years, or does he actually
go to a local school?
>> The only record we have is
that he might have attended
school for a couple of months
between the time he is 11,
leaving Scotland, and the time
he leaves to go to Madison.
So he's teaching himself.
He's home-schooled in a sense,
but he has no formal
instruction.
He teaches himself algebra and
trigonometry and physics, and he
starts reading the great poets
and the classics, teaching
himself Latin and Greek.
>> Does his father approve of
this learning?
>> His father initially is
restricting his education
because the bible has all the
truth that one might need to
live a good life.
There are stories of him taking
time in the middle of the day to
scribble out math problems in
the dirt in between the harvest
and the planting season.
He begs his father to allow him
to study, allow him to work on
some of his inventions.
He becomes very interested in
mechanical contrivances.
>> Is he starting to invent
things on the farm then?
>> Pardon me?
>> Is he starting to invent
things on the farm?
>> He does come up with some
inventions that help feed the
animals, but his primary
inventions seem to be centered
around clocks.
He doesn't have, I think there
may have been one clock in the
household, but mostly he learns
about clocks and time from these
books that he's able to borrow.
>> Here's one of these devices
that he has put together.
Something called a scythe clock.
>> A scythe clock, right.
It's a whimsical contraption
that he invents.
A scythe is a tool that one uses
in the fields to cut wheat.
That implement that father time
and The Grim Reaper carry around
with them.
And he uses just a whittling
knife to carve gears and cogs
which he assembles on the blade
of his scythe, and suspended
from the blade is a pendulum
which he makes out of arrows
that are counterweighted with
old copper pennies that he
pounds out into arrowheads.
And this arrowhead pendulum
drives the gears that provide
both the seconds, minutes, the
hours on his scythe clock.
>> What is the actual function,
a purpose for this scythe clock?
>> To tell time.
>> To tell time.
>> And what's, I think,
fascinating about this very
early invention of his, he
carves on the handle, the
re-curved handle, the biblical
verse all flesh is grass, which
I think can be interpreted many
different ways.
>> Yes.
>> Don't be so vain, you may be
flesh today but tomorrow you're
grass, that life is fleeting.
But I also think it portends
some of his thinking about
immortality.
That flesh is grass
and grass is flesh.
>> This cycle.
>> This cycle of life,
this carbon cycle, this
interconnectedness of all
things, which is an important
theme in his later writings.
>> And he would be very aware of
that as being on the farm over a
period of time where he could
see this annual cycle or
lifetime cycles taking place.
>> Absolutely.
His connection to farm animals
but as well as the birds and the
animals that live in and among
the fields where he is working.
He's very aware of both the
animals and the trees and the
flowers.
Fascinated from his very
youngest days.
>> How does it come about then
that he leaves the farm at the
age of 22?
>> Well, he's inventing.
Let me just tell you about one
of his earlier inventions that
he creates.
It's a self-setting sawmill.
>> There it is there.
>> The self-setting sawmill, say
that 10 times, is a model that
he creates in his early teens.
At the time, sawmills had a
single blade and you would drive
the log through the sawmill.
>> A circular blade.
>> A circular blade.
But each time the log goes
through the sawmill, you'd have
to reset the spacing so that you
would get a standard dimension
lumber.
>> Right.
>> And so he sees that there's
an opportunity to create a
carriage that will allow a
standard offset to be created
each time the log passes the
blade and so you get a standard
board.
>> A standard board each time.
>> Right.
So he takes this model, and I
think this is a wonderful story,
he takes this model down to a
stream, he's still living at
Fountain Lake, and he dams the
stream to create the water power
to drive this model sawmill.
And he sees that it is good.
Almost biblical sounding.
>> Yeah, I was going to say,
right.
>> He sees that it is good, and
he decides that that's enough.
That his concept for this
machine is good and it works and
he moves on.
Of course, later in life, the
irony here is that he works
tirelessly against damming
projects throughout the west.
And his ire is often raised
against the clear-cutting of
trees.
But here he is building a
sawmill in his youth.
Well, he is known in the
neighborhood for inventions.
He builds clocks.
He builds the sawmill.
And one day he meets a friend on
the road, and the friend says,
you know, down in Madison
they're about to have the State
Fair.
I bet that if you gather some of
your inventions, go to the State
Fair, put them on display that
many people will approach you
and offer you a job as an
engineer or someone to work in
their factory.
And this is the opportunity that
he's looking for.
So he announces that he's going
to Madison.
His parents are not necessarily
enthused about losing their son,
but they realize that he must
go.
So he bundles up his inventions,
and he heads to Pardeeville.
>> Sort of the train line ends.
>> That's where the train is.
It's about nine miles away.
And the interesting thing about
this is that here he has been in
Wisconsin now for 11 years, and
he's never traveled more than a
few miles away from the home
farm.
>> Yeah, probably not at all
unusual back then.
>> In fact, his father only
allowed him Sundays off and two
days of vacation throughout this
11-year period.
New Years and the 4th of July.
Those are his only days off.
>> Not even Christmas.
Too lavish, too garish a
celebration.
>> I don't know.
But here he is, he's been
cloistered on this farm for 11
years.
He remembers the trains from
Scotland, but he has not seen a
train.
He has not traveled more than a
few miles from home.
He attracts attention
immediately in Pardeeville.
They say, who is this boy, and
what are you doing with this
strange bundle of inventions?
And when the trains arrives, the
stationmaster asks the engineer
if this boy, who's going to
Madison to exhibit at the State
Fair, could travel up in the
engine.
And, reluctantly, the engineer
allows him to climb up onto the
locomotive, and they head south
to Madison.
Well, it wasn't good enough to
be traveling with the engineer.
He asks if he can climb out onto
the engine to get closer to the
wheels and the drive mechanisms.
>> This is before liability
laws.
>> Yeah.
And, again, reluctantly the
engineer says sure.
He climbs out and that's not
good enough.
He climbs out onto the
cowcatcher on the front of the
train, and this is how he rides
into Madison.
>> That's how he comes into
Madison.
>> He comes into Madison.
>> This is some idea of what
he'll see there.
He'll see this view of Madison
at about that time.
>> So, it's September 1860, and
he goes to the fairgrounds.
On the hill is the Fine Arts
Hall.
The Fine Arts Hall is where all
of the exhibits are being held.
The Fine Arts Hall is roughly
where the west stands of the
Camp Randall Football Stadium is
along Breese Terrace, the
largest structure at the
fairgrounds.
And he's met there, again, all
according to his unbiased
autobiography, he's met with
with intrigue and excitement.
What is this that you have?
And he says, well, I've got some
inventions.
And the professor who's minding
the hall says, pick any place
for your exhibit, I'll get you a
carpenter and we'll build you a
shelf.
And he sets up his scythe clock
and he sets up one of his other
clocks which he attaches to
something called his early
rising bed.
>> Ah, the early rising bed.
>> The early rising bed is at
the exhibit.
And this is a great sensation.
In fact, the Wisconsin State
Journal writes and article about
this man, this man-boy from the
hinterlands who's come to
Madison, the ingenuous whittler
and his early rising bed.
>> How was it supposed to work?
>> How is it supposed to work?
It's a clock again.
It's a series of cogs and wheels
that are attached to a
counterweight.
It's a three-legged bed.
Two legs are at the head of the
bed and a third leg in the
center.
And that third leg has an elbow.
The elbow joint is held in place
with a peg, and attached to that
peg is a cord.
And so he sets the clock for a
few minutes and asks one of the
young boys in the audience to
come and lay on his bed, and
after a few minutes the pendulum
drives the gears which trips the
escapement which allows the
counterweight to drop, pulling
the cord, yanking the peg out of
the elbowed joint, and the
bottom of the bed falls to the
ground, and the unsuspecting
occupant falls in a heap.
People loved this.
In fact, he writes later that he
tries to patent this idea, and
several of these beds he
fabricates and sells as a
student trying to make a little
extra money.
I'm still looking for that bed.
I'm persuaded there's one of
them sitting in someone's attic.
>> If not their dorm room.
[LAUGHTER]
>> In their dorm room.
Well, this experience at the
fair is successful in as much as
the other great attraction at
the fair is a man who brings an
iceboat.
This is a boat that would allow
someone to traverse the frozen
rivers of Wisconsin.
And this man invites him to come
to his shop in Prairie du Chien,
and he will mentor him and he
will teach him the mechanical
trades.
And so he leaves Madison after
the fair and heads out to
Prairie du Chien.
Well, it turns out that this
ice-breaking steam-driven boat
is a technological failure,
and it sinks.
>> We'd call that a failure for
any boat.
>> Yep.
>> Except maybe a submarine.
>> And so he makes his way back
to Madison.
I imagine him, without
projecting too much, like so
many young men who are lost.
He doesn't know what to do.
He knows he has to leave his
family.
His first venture into the
working world is a failure, and
he wanders over to the campus.
And of course he's enthralled by
what he sees there.
Here's what he writes about
seeing the university campus.
He says: No University,
it seemed to me, could be more
admirably situated, and as I
sauntered about it, charmed
with its fine lawns and trees
and beautiful lakes, and saw
the students going and coming
with their books, and
occasionally practicing with
a theodolite in measuring
distances, I thought that
if I could only join them
it would be the greatest joy
of life.
I was desperately hungry and
thirsty for knowledge and
willing to endure anything to
get it.
And he chances upon a student
who'd seen him at the fair,
said aren't you that John Muir?
And he said, yeah, yeah, I would
love to come study here,
but I don't know how to get in.
>> Don't have the tuition
either, perhaps.
>> I don't have the tuition.
I've never gone to school.
I haven't been to school since I
was 11 years old.
He says, no problem.
Go and talk to Professor
Sterling, who was the acting
chancellor of the university,
and plead your case.
And he said, but I don't have
any money.
He says, no problem.
He says, very little is
required.
I'm presume you're able to enter
the freshman class and you can
board yourself as quite a number
of us do at a cost of about a
dollar a week.
The baker and milkman come every
day, and you can live on bread
and milk.
This is the 1860s version of a
student diet based on Ramen.
>> There you go.
>> In fact, there are stories of
students chipping in and buying
a barrel of crackers and cooking
a potato on the furnace and
getting by with very little.
So, Professor Sterling asks him
to recite a little Latin, a
little Greek, and has him do a
few problems.
He says, you know, I think you
have what it takes.
And he goes to what is called
the preparatory school to bring
him up to speed.
Apparently, he only needed a few
weeks and he enters the freshman
class.
He moves into North Hall,
North Hall at the time.
>> And here's what it looks like
pretty much today and then.
>> It hasn't changed that much.
The exterior of the building
hasn't changed.
Unfortunately, the interior of
the building has been modified
pretty significantly.
>> Is his room there, I haven't
been in, but I imagine one of
those velvet cords and a little
plaque on the wall and maybe
some Victorian furniture.
>> No, not quite so glamorous.
Although, as we can see in the
picture here, his room was in
the first floor northeast
corner.
And it was just recently in the
last year that, in conjunction
with the local Sierra Club's
50th anniversary, we were able
to get into the room and they
cleared the furniture out for
us, and we were able to kind of
reconstruct the space to imagine
what it looked like back when
John Muir was a student.
His bedroom was about nine feet
by nine feet.
There was an adjacent study
room, and he shared a second
bedroom.
So it was kind of a suite.
So he had two windows in his
bedroom, one which could look
out across the lake, one which
looked out towards town.
By the way, in the 1860s there
were only three buildings on
campus.
There was North Hall,
South Hall, and the main edifice
which we now refer to as Bascom.
>> Right.
>> So campus is quite small.
There are 80 students.
Most of them are living
in North Hall.
Some of the classes occur in
Bascom Hall, but there is a
recitation hall in North Hall
as well.
>> And what about the proverbial
student desk?
You have a bed.
We've got that figured out.
And then the only other thing
you need as a student is a desk,
right?
>> Well, the student desk is, I
think, one of the more wonderful
inventions.
He, of course, continues to
whittle.
And there are descriptions of
his dorm room being something of
a museum, and in the corner was
this student study desk.
And a pile of wood shavings in
the corner and bottles and vials
on the window sill and buckets
of botanical specimens.
So keep up with his studies,
because he's an easily
distracted young man, I can
imagine he might have a
diagnosis as ADD because he's
just so fascinated and so
brilliant but easily distracted.
He builds himself another clock.
There's always a clock involved.
Time is a theme that plays out
in so much of his writing and
his thinking.
And, of course, these gears and,
again, this theme of revolution
and cycles.
Well, this clock is attached to
a tabletop which has a slot in
it.
And below the slot in the
tabletop is a book rack.
And he would set his clock at
15-minute intervals, and every
15 minutes a counterweight would
drive a piston which was below
the book rack and drive a book
up through the slot in the
tabletop and it would flop open.
>> The book, for that 15
minutes.
>> That 15 minutes.
And he would study for 15
minutes, the gears would rotate,
the piston would retreat, the
book would drop through the
hole.
The bookcase was on a carriage,
it would move over a slot kind
of like the self-setting
sawmill.
It would move over.
The piston would drive the next
book up on the table, and he
would have 15 minutes for his
next lesson.
>> A fascinating idea.
I suspect not really that
practical given the way most
people study.
>> Well, we did some research
recently to try and find in the
UW Archives references to his
time here, and there were only a
few catalogs.
They actually printed the
catalog after the term.
So they would have the names of
the students who had attended in
that term and the coursework.
And although Muir spends the
equivalent of two and a half
years in study at UW, he never
advances beyond being a first
year student.
And he's categorized in the
catalog as an irregular gent.
[LAUGHTER]
Which I think is a wonderful
term.
He was not normal in the sense
that he had any particular
notion about how he was going to
navigate his time on campus.
>> As he's doing all this
inventing, do we have any sense
that he still has this inner
glow of fascination for things
natural?
>> Well, his studies were
standardized, in some sense,
where in the 1860s you learned
the classics.
You learned Greek.
You learned Latin.
You learned mathematics.
And natural history, as a
discipline, was relatively new.
His main instructor was Ezra
Carr, who taught chemistry but
also natural history.
And this is where he starts to
pick up some of his ideas about
glaciation and geology and the
natural world.
But much of his studies were in
that classical mode.
>> So a good complement to his
what might intuitive studies.
>> He does have an epiphanic
experience.
Probably occurring in his first
or second year on campus.
A fellow student meets him
outside of North Hall, and this
student has a reputation for
being a little full of himself
and wants to share his
knowledge.
And he asks Muir if he knows
anything about trees.
Well, he writes about it in his
autobiography.
Let me just read this.
One memorable day in June,
when I was standing on
the stone steps of the north
dormitory, Mr. Griswold
joined me and at once
began to teach.
He reached up, plucked
a flower from an overspreading
branch of a locust tree, and,
handing it to me, said,
"Muir, do you know what family
this tree belongs to?"
"No," I said, "I don't know
anything about botany."
"Well, no matter," said he,
"what is it like?"
"It's like a pea flower,"
I replied.
"That's right," he said, "it
belongs to the Pea Family."
"But how can that be,"
I objected, "when the pea
is a weak, clinging,
straggling herb,
and the locust a big,
thorny hardwood tree?"
Now, of course, this is written
50 years after this experience.
And Muir is a wonderful
storyteller, and these stories
change over time.
Was there a locust tree?
Yes.
Did he have an epiphanic botany
lesson?
Well, he'd always loved flowers.
He was always aware of the
natural world, but what Griswold
introduced to him was the plant
science, the taxonomy, which,
for someone who has these
mechanistic views of the world,
genus species.
>> Yes.
You have to have the
organization that goes with the
knowledge.
>> So now he's learning about
the reproductive parts of a
flower and how they're similar
and dissimilar and how you can
group these together.
He writes: This fine lesson
charmed me and sent me flying
to the woods and meadows
in wild enthusiasm.
I can imagine him literally
being off the ground a few feet.
He writes about his botanizing
expeditions.
He would traverse the lake
shore, Lake Mendota, gathering
flowers, gathering plants that
he would bring back to his dorm
room to identify.
By the way, there are some
accounts of him swimming along
the Lake Mendota shoreline out
to University Bay and back.
>> As long as you stay near the
shoreline.
>> As long as you stay near the
shoreline.
This is where he's really
awakened to this natural world.
>> And what becomes of that
legendary Muir locust?
>> Well, the book, his
autobiography comes out in 1914.
And by that time, they're not
sure where this Muir locust is.
During an alumni parade they
walk around North Hall and they
look for the biggest black
locust they can find and they
declare that that would be the
black locust that John Muir
received his first botany lesson
under.
>> I don't recall there being a
locust there now.
>> It was cut in 1953.
And that's a picture of it on
the front page of our tree walk
brochure.
>> That's what became of the
locust.
Some wood products.
>> The locust had to be cut
down, but because it was a
revered tree, President EB Fred
worked with others to have
mementos crafted from the tree.
They made gavels and they made
letter openers out of these
gavels which then were
distributed to benefactors
across the country and people
who loved or knew John Muir.
And there was a wonderful
collection of these letters of
acceptance.
Oh, thank you, President Fred,
for remembering me and
remembering John Muir with this
gavel.
>> So he was having the time of
his life at the University of
Wisconsin circa 1860-1861.
It's a time in which a lot of
young men are going over to Camp
Randall for processing to the
front during the Civil War.
What about John Muir?
>> Well, John does not
volunteer.
In fact, he arrives on campus
February of 1860.
It's only a couple of months
later that the shot
at Fort Sumter is heard.
Immediately, many of his
classmates drop out of school
and join the Union forces.
They head over to what used to
be the fairgrounds, now
converted to a Civil War
training ground.
And he's torn.
He doesn't want to go to war.
It's not in his constitution to
do that.
He visits Camp Randall, and he
writes that he was absolutely
appalled by these young men.
Some of them students that he
knew, some of them neighbors
from up in the Montello area.
They are drinking.
They are swearing.
They are visiting the local
bordellos.
>> I'm tell you, it's the
beginning of the end for
Madison.
It all ended with the 1861.
>> It was a rough stretch.
But what distresses him the most
is sitting around the fire at
Camp Randall with these young
recruits, and they're talking
about how glorious a time they
will have killing the
southerners.
And he ministers to them, and he
tries to calm their nerves
because they're scared, they're
frightened, their hubris is
beyond what one might expect
from a reverent person heading
off to war.
Later in the war, he visits Camp
Randall again at a time when the
wounded and the sick are being
brought back to the hospital,
and he tends to the sick and
wounded and it's at that time
that he imagines that he might
become a medical doctor.
That might be his path in life.
>> Not far fetched given his
ability to improvise devices
and, of course, his
understanding of the organic.
His reputation as the best
chemist on campus certainly sets
him well for a career as a
physician.
There are stories about Muir
being a draft dodger, that he
avoided service.
He leaves campus in 1863.
And he returns to the family
farm, and he's waiting out the
draft.
At this stage in the war,
no more volunteers are coming
forward, and they need new
recruits.
>> They do, yes.
They have repeated calls.
>> They have repeated calls,
in 1863 in particular.
So he's thinking maybe I want to
go to the University of
Michigan.
They have a medical school
there.
But perhaps he decides that his
chances are better if he stays
in Wisconsin when the draft
comes up that his number will
not be as high, and his chances
will be better.
So he waits in Wisconsin until
the draft is satisfied, the
local draft is satisfied.
And he pledges to leave
Wisconsin when the first flower
emerges that following spring.
>> An interesting way of
thinking of the time.
>> And come early February, late
February of 1864 the flower
blooms in his yard, and the next
day he takes off for Canada.
Now, his younger brother had
already, in the parlance of the
time, skedaddled across the
border to Canada.
He, it appears, was dodging the
draft, but Muir seems to have
stuck around long enough to know
what his chances were and was
not so much avoiding the draft
as sidestepping it.
>> And is this the point at
which he leaves Wisconsin?
>> He leaves Wisconsin, heads to
Ontario where he works for a
while, then makes his way down
to Indianapolis, Indiana, where
he gets a job working in a
carriage factory.
And he's well liked in his job
because, of course, he's coming
up with new ways of
manufacturing and time studies
that he's doing to improve the
efficiency of this operation.
But he has an industrial
accident.
A tool flies up and catches him
in the eye, and he's blinded.
And he spends the next month
recuperating, not knowing if he
will regain his sight, and it's
at this time that he vows that
if he should regain his sight,
he will look towards nature and
leave this industrial world
behind.
And he does regain his sight,
and, from there, he leaves on
his first great adventure, what
he later calls his thousand-mile
walk to the Gulf.
>> Down to Cedar Key, Florida.
>> Right.
>> This is, I think, 1867.
>> Right, right.
So he makes his way down,
eventually arriving in Cuba.
He contracts malaria.
It's not such a great trip.
Then finds his way back to
New York where he boards a ship
and makes his way to California.
And, of course, California is
where he spends his adult life
and is most closely associated.
But he's, what, 28, I believe,
by the time he gets to
California.
>> And, of course, by this time
his formative years, well in
terms of Wisconsin, are behind
him.
Does he ever go back to
Wisconsin?
>> He makes his way back on
several occasions.
Once, he's hoping to buy back
the Fountain Lake farm.
And his brother-in-law has
purchased it.
And he recalls, many, many years
later of course, that his
brother-in-law would not sell
him the farm.
He wanted to preserve the farm,
and his brother-in-law tells him
that it's folly.
That you can't stand in the way
of progress.
That you can't fence off this
place.
That it's inevitable that it
will be a farm forever.
Fortunately, many, many years
later, the farm is purchased, as
I mentioned, by Marquette
County, and through the work of
many volunteers conducting
ecological restoration, the
sedge meadows and the prairie
has been restored.
And it's a beautiful time of
year to go and visit the old
Fountain Lake Farm, now known as
the John Muir Memorial Park.
>> He's really best known, isn't
he, for his work out west,
though, with Yosemite and then
starting the Sierra Club, which
is a concept which must have
been foreign to a lot of people
when he did it.
>> Well, John Muir is, for many
people, the foremost iconic
figure in the early conservation
movement.
He was an early advocate for
forest reservations which become
our national forests.
He advocated for the
establishment of national parks.
He writes hundreds of articles
in what at the time was the
equivalent of the major
networks.
Atlantic Magazine,
Century Magazine.
He was appearing on all of
those.
>> Talk shows of the time.
>> Talk shows at the time,
right.
And he has a powerful influence
in the establishment of the
Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest,
Mount Rainier, Sequoia National
Park, and of course Yosemite.
And this earns him the title
father of our national parks.
>> Now, in order to do that,
in order to have that much
clout, he had to have some
political connections somewhere.
Where did he get them?
>> Well, this is where his
friendship with Ezra Carr and
his wife Jean Carr becomes so
important.
Ezra Carr was his teacher in
geology and natural history, and
his wife really took a strong
interest in John.
They leave the University of
Wisconsin, move to Berkeley to
teach at the University of
California, and they reunite in
California.
And they are well connected, and
they introduce John to folks
like Emerson.
>> Ralph Waldo Emerson.
>> Yeah.
And other movers and shakers and
magazine editors and political
contacts.
He spends a night
with Teddy Roosevelt.
>> That seems inevitable,
doesn't it?
>> Right.
>> Because Roosevelt was such a
big proponent of parks.
>> Right.
And the Antiquities Act and the
National Park System Organic
Act.
These are all things that Muir
was able to influence through
his writing, through his
politics, through his
relationship with the Sierra
Club.
>> And I think this is, is this
the Carr's house here that we're
seeing?
>> Coming back to Madison, Jean
Carr was one of the people who
was judging the inventions back
at the Fine Arts Hall.
>> Oh, is that right?
From his very first days in
Madison.
>> Very first days.
And her son was one of the kids
that was used to demonstrate the
early rising bed at the fair.
And so they invite him to come
over to his house, and he's the
chore boy and the babysitter for
the Carr children.
And, of course, they have this
remarkable library.
>> Where's the house?
>> It's on West Gilman Street.
>> West Gilman in Madison.
It's still there.
>> It's still there.
It's been converted, like so
many grand houses in Madison,
has been converted to student
housing.
I'd love to go take a look
there.
But wall to wall books and this
wonderful wraparound sun porch.
And that's why I'm persuaded
that early in his Madison career
he must have been learning about
botany because Jean Carr was a
botanist and introduced those
ideas to him.
>> He lives until 1914.
How long before the first
memorials to John Muir start to
show up?
>> Well, here on campus
the first recognition that
he receives is with an honorary
doctorate.
I think it was 1897.
Never graduates but he receives
an honorary doctorate, which,
interestingly, he doesn't come
to Madison to retrieve.
But we do have a letter in
Archives where he very politely
acknowledges his alma mater and
thank you very much for the
diploma.
He receives honorary doctorates
from other universities as well.
So not bad for a dropout.
>> Right.
>> In 1916 the sculptor
CS Pietro sculpts a likeness of
Muir, and, in a dramatic
ceremony held at Music Hall, the
dedication occurs with a special
address from Chancellor
Van Hise, who recalls Muir's
great achievements.
It's important to remember that
during the first 75 years of the
university's existence, John
Muir is the greatest man to have
ever passed through the
university's doors.
That bust, that bronze bust is
over in Birge Hall.
If you enter the main lobby and
go up on the mezzanine, you can
see the Muir bust.
A couple of years later, he was
honored again with the
designation of Muir Knoll.
Muir Knoll being directly across
from North Hall.
And another dedication, I think
we have a picture of the
ceremony.
There it is.
And who is that at the podium?
That's Milton Griswold, the man
who provided John Muir with his
first botany lesson.
>> That's appropriate.
>> Yeah.
And this photo is kind of a
who's who of Madison
dignitaries.
Birge and Van Hise
and Elizabeth Waters.
They're all...
>> Familiar names.
>> All at the podium to
dedicated Muir Knoll.
The adjacent park is also now
named for John Muir.
John Muir Park was designated in
the 1960s, interestingly, as a
result of a controversy on
campus when a social science
building was being constructed
in this woodland, then known as
Bascom Woods.
The compromise was that no more
buildings would be built in
these woods and that they would
be renamed John Muir Woods.
So John Muir Knoll,
John Muir Woods.
>> Which is where we find you
getting inspired by the work of
John Muir, as many have over the
years and continue to be
influenced by John Muir.
Well, Daniel Einstein, it's been
a pleasure walking through the
Wisconsin footsteps of that
great environmentalist and so
many other things he has to his
credit too, John Muir.
>> If I can just close with the
very last lines in John's
autobiography about departing
the university.
From the top of a hill on the
north side of Lake Mendota
I gained a last wistful,
lingering view of the beautiful
university grounds
and buildings where
I had spent so many hungry
and happy and hopeful days.
There with streaming eyes
I bade my blessed alma mater
farewell.
But I was only leaving one
university for another, the
Wisconsin University for the
University of the Wilderness.
>> Well, it's a very poetic
statement of a turning point
in the life of John Muir
by the man himself.
I'm Norman Gilliland.
Thanks for joining me, and I
hope you'll be with me next time
for University Place Presents.