"Je m’essayais en tous lieux, a toutes occasions aussi bien professionnelles qu’au cours de rencontre privées, de relations humaines, sportives, d’exposer mes craintes sur l’avenir prospectif de notre réservoir naturel.  

Ces vérités évidentes, mais très en avance coupées d’appuis populaires, n’étaient pas faciles a diffuser, personne ne les entendait. [p 145]

11.1 Together with Thoreau and George Perkins Marsh, a third architect of the American environmental movement was John Muir. He took the two messages, from Thoreau, of the need for people to get back in touch with the rhythms and the spirit of Nature and from Marsh, of the need to protect Nature from the depredations of human industry, and produced a series of writings, beginning with ‘Studies in the Sierra’ in 1874 which were to establish him as the nation’s most loved and respected writers on nature, not least “ Putting these two messages together in a most practical way, he proposed creating nature parks where wild nature could be preserved from the depredations of human industry and people could visit to spend a few days or weeks, if not two full years, close to the beauty of nature. The years of his great campaigning work to preserve the beauty of wild countryside for his fellow citizens were more or less contemporaneous with the campaign over in England to preserve lake Thirlemere.

11.2 John Muir (1838 – 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile John Muir Trail, a hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honour. In Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130-mile-long route, was named in honour of him.

11.3 In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.^[3 He is today referred to as the "Father of the National Parks" and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life. Muir took the vision of William Wordsworth, born in the English Lake District at the turn of the nineteenth century and turned it into a practical, legal reality in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. It took the English government another fifty years, and a mass trespass at Kinder Scout in protest against government inaction, before they began to create national parks in Wordsworth home country.