by Hal Smith
In 2000, when mountaineer David Brower resigned in protest (again) from the Sierra Club’s board of directors, a California reporter ranked him third after John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt as one of the three icons of the American conservation movement.
The reporter couldn’t be faulted for omitting John Burroughs, the nature writer who invented the genre, because even many ardent environmentalists know little about him. In fact, Burroughs was an inspiration to both Roosevelt and Muir, with whom he was friends.
However, the fog obscuring Burroughs’ influence may be lifting as interest in him has been growing, nurtured by biographies, including Edward Kanze’s The World of John Burroughs: the Life and Work of One of America’s Greatest Naturalists(Sierra Club Books). It has been reissued in paperback since its publication as a coffee table book in 1999.
Burroughs is truly a seminal figure in the conservation movement and undoubtedly one of the most influential Americans to emerge from the Catskills. Fortunately, his drive to write about his love of the countryside was squelched by neither a Baptist father who frowned upon the corrupting influence of books (fearing his son would become a Methodist!) nor a wife who belittled his literary aspirations.
From roughly the Civil War until his death in 1921, this New Yorker wrote 28 books, mostly about the animals, plants, landscape and simple pleasures of living in the Catskills. Long before television made instant fame a possibility, he wrote with such elegance, simplicity and power that he became a celebrity, attracting visitors such as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to his humble rustic Catskills retreat, Woodchuck Lodge, in Roxbury.
By the time he died, he had also counted Walt Whitman and many other famous figures among his friends. Burroughs’ passing, deeply felt nationwide, prompted the New York State Senate to suspend its deliberations, and his loss was recorded in a full-page report in The New York Times.
These are the sort of telling historical details that Edward Kanze includes in his slim but elegant volume.
It’s ironic that Burroughs is less well known than his friend John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, whose fame grew only after Burroughs urged Muir to move from article writing to books. Biographer Kanze agrees with Henry James, who called Burroughs “a sort of reduced but also more humorous, more available, and more social Thoreau.” If that is true, why then is Thoreau generally put on a higher pedestal than Burroughs among those noted for writing about the joy of living simply, close to nature?
Kanze suggests that none of Burroughs’ essay collections acquired the stature of Walden because the Catskill writer had a habit of including his weaker writing along with his gems.
In the long run, how history ranks Burroughs’ literary stature among other naturalist writers is far less important than the tremendous impact he had on the environmental movement. For example, Burroughs inspired the author of the first field guide (on flowers) ever written, and while other conservationists (including his friend TR) were shooting wildlife and studying the carcasses, Burroughs saw the passenger pigeon disappear in the Catskills and made the transition to studying animal behavior, urging his readers to forsake their rifles for field glasses. Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring marked a turning point in America’s regard for the environment, was also heavily influenced by Burroughs.
The John Burroughs Association, administered by the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, is trying to save Woodchuck Lodge, Burroughs’ rustic summer home and retreat, about a mile outside of Roxbury. It has been in poor condition for many years but, thanks to small grants and volunteer efforts, it is still standing. Burroughs is buried on a hillside with a splendid Catskills view on the adjacent state property that includes an outdoor kiosk featuring photographs and a biographical sketch of his life. Admission to both sites is free.
Slabsides, another Burroughs rough cabin, is in the mid-Hudson Valley, about 80 miles north of New York City. It looks very much as it was when he built it in 1895, including his handmade furniture. The guestbook includes John Muir’s signature. Now a 170-acre sanctuary, Slabsides is a National Historic Landmark, open year-round. The cabin is open only twice annually: the third Saturday in May and the first Saturday in October. These open houses include an interpretative tour and talk. For details, go tohttp://research.amnh.org/burroughs/.
Hal Smith of Windsor is a freelance writer whose travel articles appear in major metro dailies, most recently the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He is a member of the Susquehanna Group, and co-editor of the Sierra Atlantic.