Steeped in Muir, a Volunteer Finds His Niche

Harold Wood was a teenager when he joined the Sierra Club in 1968. “My dad took me on a lot of camping and fishing trips, and I went camping with the Boy Scouts,” says the retired government attorney. "I remember when I was 14 or 15 my dad and I visited Wupatki National Monument in Arizona, and we took a nature walk with a ranger who mentioned the Sierra Club and John Muir.

“I was in a phase of reading biographies, and my interest was totally piqued; by the time I was in junior high I’d already read at least two biographies of Muir and several of the books that he authored. One of them was dedicated to the Sierra Club, but I mistakenly thought it was just a historical organization. When I found out that the Sierra Club was still in existence, I immediately contacted them and asked to join.”  

Wood started attending Angeles Chapter meetings and going on outings with his local Sierra Club group in Orange County, CA. Soon he was working on action alerts for the Club’s National News Report (now defunct), attending public hearings for wilderness proposals, and writing letters to his members of Congress—“all because of John Muir!”

As a college freshman, in 1970 Wood helped organize the first Earth Day at Chapman College in Orange, CA. Later, while studying natural resources management at UC Davis, he joined the leadership ranks of Active Conservation Tactics, a student eco-group that worked closely with the local Sierra Club on wilderness campaigns and protecting the redwoods.

While pursuing a graduate degree in forest resources and outdoor recreation (the precursor of environmental studies) at the University of Washington in the mid-70s, he met Dick Fiddler, a powerhouse Sierra Club volunteer leader who would later become a Club director. Fiddler mentored Wood as he got his feet wet as a grassroots activist, campaigning to establish the Clearwater Wilderness as part of the statewide Washington State Wilderness Act, which was finally signed into law after more than a decade of citizen pressure. Summertimes, Wood volunteered for the Club and Friends of the Earth, campaigning for the gigantic Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act that finally passed in 1980, protecting over 100 million acres of federal public lands as wilderness, national parks, and wildlife refuges.

After attending law school in hopes of working in the still-new field of environmental law, Wood returned to California and applied for a job with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, as it was then called. “They didn’t hire me, but they liked my resume and told me I could volunteer for them—an offer apparently rarely tendered—so I did that for a while. I ended up having a career in school law and volunteering for the Sierra Club on the side.”

In the ‘80s, Wood wood worked on a wide range of issues including preserving tropical rainforests as a member of the Club’s International Committee, to preserving urban oaks as a member of the executive committee of his local Sierra Club group in Visalia, CA. In the ‘90s he threw himself into the campaign to establish Giant Sequoia National Monument, and at the signing ceremony for the new monument in 2000, he gave President Clinton a copy of the John Muir Tribute CD he had been involved with.

In 1997 Wood was appointed chair of the Sierra Club LeConte Memorial Lodge Committee (now the Yosemite Conservation Heritage Center), which oversees the historic 1904 stone structure and educational programs in Yosemite National Park. Later, as a member of the Club’s Environmental Education Committee, he  edited the Committee’s newsletter and contributed to the Club’s website.

After the 1987 proposal by Interior Secretary Donald Hodel to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley fizzled, Wood and other members of the Club’s task force on restoring Hetch Hetchy decided in 1999 to establish an independent non-profit organization, Restore Hetch Hetchy. Wood became the group’s webmaster before serving as president for five years, and he remains on its advisory committee, advocating for the valley’s restoration.

Always a voracious reader, Wood began devouring back issues of the Sierra Club Bulletin (now Sierra magazine) when he was a teenager just starting out with the Angeles Chapter, and slowly but surely he became one of the Club’s foremost experts on John Muir and early Sierra Club history. In 1994, he and Harvey Chinn, a computer programmer at UC Davis, created the John Muir Exhibit website, focusing on all things Muir. Today the website has thousands of pages covering all possible topics related to John Muir.

“The original idea to start the exhibit came from Harvey,” Wood says. “I’d produce the content and Harvey would put it up online. It went live in June 1994, but as it began to grow, Harvey realized it would have to be moved off the UC Davis website. The Sierra Club was a logical host, so I asked if they were interested. They said, ‘sure thing,’ so we moved the exhibit to the Sierra Club’s website in 1996.”       

Chinn left the project shortly thereafter, occasioning Wood to learn basic web editing, and he's been the John Muir Exhibit webmaster ever since. He is quick to emphasize, though, that the exhibit isn’t the work of one person. “For instance, Dan Anderson, a Sierra Club member and programmer from San Diego, did most of the scanning and writing of code for the online editions of John Muir's books. [Note: It was Anderson who as a volunteer created the Sierra Club’s first website in 1994.]

“These days I add stuff to the exhibit every few weeks,” Wood says. “New things are coming out all the time—scholarly books, children’s books, documentary films, musical performances that combine readings from Muir with symphonic music or string quartets; I’m forever maintaining the website and updating the bibliography.

“One of the big benefits of the website today is that it helps people make connections,” he says. “I've had an unquenchable thirst to keep learning about John Muir ever since I first read his books, and I’m still motivated to share his inspirational life and writings. I love my role as a hub for people working on anything having to do with John Muir. It’s the perfect Sierra Club niche for me.”