Natural Order

John Muir

“The grand show is eter­nal. It is always sun­rise some­where; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is for­ever falling; vapor is ever ris­ing. Eternal sun­rise, eter­nal dawn and gloam­ing, on sea and con­ti­nents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” This is but one of the boun­ti­ful and saga­cious epipha­nies put to paper by nat­u­ral­ist, writer, inven­tor and vision­ary, John Muir (1838–1914). He emerged from a child­hood of tedious labor, an over­bear­ing father and an indus­trial acci­dent that nearly claimed his eye­sight to become one of the most pas­sion­ate, curi­ously obser­vant and intu­itive voices for the preser­va­tion of wild places. More than any­thing, he enjoyed the sim­ple plea­sures of nature as an inno­cent observer. Yet his real­iza­tion of the destruc­tive nature of an indus­tri­al­iz­ing nation awak­ened in him a tena­cious and impas­sioned lit­er­ary and polit­i­cal fig­ure. This strange young Scotsman who wan­dered the land talk­ing to rocks and flow­ers became an American hero — the “Father of the National Park System”.

After an ado­les­cence in the Midwest, a free-spirited wan­der­ing even­tu­ally landed Muir in California. It was there that John was seduced by the beauty of the Yosemite Valley. Inspired by other eru­dite minds, he wrote and pub­lished per­sua­sive essays on the need to sus­tain the unblem­ished land. Along with other awak­ened intel­lects, he formed a group ded­i­cated to pro­tect­ing the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club today is the old­est, largest, and most influ­en­tial grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion in the United States.

Stirred by these sen­ti­ments, President Theodore Roosevelt engaged in jour­neys with John through the huge groves of Mariposa trees in the Yosemite Valley. In 1906, President Roosevelt signed leg­is­la­ture birthing America’s first fed­er­ally pro­tected land — Yosemite National Park.

Stephen Mather, an incon­gru­ous yet pros­per­ous com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al­ist and con­ser­va­tion­ist, spear­headed a pub­lic­ity cam­paign to orga­nize a fed­eral agency to over­see National Parks.

John Muir Bookcover

This cam­paign resulted in the cre­ation of a National Park Service. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that man­dated the agency “to con­serve the scenery and the nat­ural and his­toric objects and wildlife therein, and to pro­vide for the enjoy­ment of the same in such man­ner and by such means as will leave them unim­paired for the enjoy­ment of future generations.”

Mr. Mather became the first direc­tor of the newly formed NPS. Currently air­ing on tele­vi­sion is a six-part doc­u­men­tary directed by Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”. This fas­ci­nat­ing series reveals  the com­plex­i­ties of a sys­tem of over 450 parks woven together and watched over still by many  per­se­ver­ing conservationists.

John Muir rec­og­nized mankind’s depen­dence — not just phys­i­cal, but emo­tional and spir­i­tual — on the glory of nature. In his many pub­lished vol­umes of elo­quent essays, he sug­gested that with­out the splen­dor of the wild, man would suc­cumb to pesti­lence, famine, anar­chy and uncon­trolled war. Not being ran­dom occur­rences, the grand syn­the­sis of all things wild is one of the purest forms of design. It is a del­i­cate and com­plex rela­tion­ship of ele­ments that cap­ti­vates and tames the psyche.

The evo­lu­tion of mod­ern aes­thet­ics are con­tin­u­ally inspired by our nat­ural sur­round­ings. All great visual designs are born from the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts whether aca­d­e­mic or intu­itive and instinc­tive. We, as design­ers, should pay homage to these earth­keeper heroes of past and present. We should step away from our tech­no­log­i­cal tan­gles as often as pos­si­ble. We should wan­der into the wild and become lost in the organic illu­mi­na­tions con­stantly occur­ring around us. As John Muir him­self stated, “Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a moun­tain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”