John Muir: Ecology of the Heart

"Fountain Lake Farm in central Wisconsin, the boyhood home of Sierra Club founder John Muir, was recently purchased for protection by a Wisconsin land trust. The newly protected area will adjoin the John Muir Memorial County Park and be part of a larger 1,400-acre natural preserve..." -Sierra Club Blog Notes

When I was in elementary school, K-6th grade, I attended John Muir Elementary in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.  At the time, being a wee one, I did not know what a profoundly lucky thing that was and only recently have I started to put together all the factors that made that experience the perfect one for me.  I learned about the man, John Muir, when I was young and have continued to be in awe of his foresightedness and what he did to make our wilderness areas protected sacred spaces.  When I learned today about the farm in Wisconsin where he grew up when his family immigrated from Scotland, I thought again about how fortunate I was to know something of his life's work when I was a child. The father of ecological activism taught us about preservation. His life was built on the belief  that our wilderness areas were to be valued, that the Redwood forests and the mountain tops were temples.  

I just read a powerful couple of paragraphs by David Orr from his book Earth in Mind: 

"It is worth noting that [environmental devastation] is not the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the results of work by people with [college degrees]. Elie Wiesel once made the same point, noting that the designers and perpetrators of... the Holocaust were heirs of Kant and Goethe, widely thought to be the best educated people on earth.  But their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity.  What was wrong with their education?  In Weisel's words, 'It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers rather than questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.'

     I believe that the same could be said of our education.  Toward the natural world it too emphasizes theories, not values; abstraction rather than consciousness; neat answers instead of questions; and technical efficiency over conscience."

Yet, we are all in this together. We all have had purchase in the Redwoods of California. We have all sat down for a meal at a picnic table, driven in automobiles, turned on lights in our homes and therefore contributed to the clear -cut Redwood story in one way or another through burning coal, cutting down the forests or petroleum use. I think John Muir would be saddened to know we learned so little from his words: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” We know by now the need to recognize the situation we find ourselves in today has been a story of unconscious consumption. The result of unbridled growth, overpopulation and greed--mainly, the fear that there is not enough to go around. 

    Even now in the midst of great awareness about global warming, renowned colleges and universities are unwilling to divest their portfolios of fossil fuel companies. What kind of education does that provide for the ones being educated in these centers for higher learning? What does it show by example? How can we transform when we are hanging on to a way of life which is unsustainable?  What would John Muir think if he knew that within the one hundred years since his death, we have covered the entire planet with concrete and asphalt and poisoned our water tables with chemicals, fracking, plastic and heavy metals?

    These are questions of ethics as well as matters of the heart. How can we connect on a level of solidarity with our global community and reinvent ourselves with greater conscience? How can we awaken as a higher collective together?   I am reminded of my teacher Jose Stevens's words about the false personality. We cannot rise in consciousness unless we let go of egoic desires.  If we live out of our false personality we are living in fear. Then we are afraid to divest our portfolios of the interests which bring environmental devastation and we are therefore educating our students to do the same. Learning of John Muir was my first schooling about a human being living from an awakened place with ecology.  I am grateful for his legacy and I hope we will have the inner vision to begin to live his wisdom teachings.