John Muir

    

A few weeks ago I was writing about heroes and who they are for us as individuals and what they mean in our lives.  One of my heroes that I mentioned is John Muir.  Turns out that this week John Muir was featured in a PBS broadcast of American Masters.  Watching the show I was reminded of much of what I have read about him and why he is a hero of mine.

I think first and foremost is that we have a very similar approach to religion and the spiritual nature of man.  Like him, I too feel that I am very spiritual, but not religious.  He went to the wild places to touch the spiritual aspect of his existence and for him nature healed the body and soul.  He acknowledged that death is as beautiful as life.  He juxtaposed science and the divine by understanding that science can help us to understand the divine….they are not separate. 

He understood the divine aspect of nature.  He understood that the different forces of nature are connected, that we are all connected, not just man to man, but man to every element of our universe.  He saw in nature that the wild world has its own divinity and that the wilderness is a place where you go to worship.  He spent as much of his life as possible in the wild places of North America.

In 1867 he walked from Indianapolis to Florida, strolling along studying nature and on occasion meeting people.  He steered clear of cities and towns as much as possible as he observed that civilization chokes a man’s soul.  He was a contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson and they eventually met and spent time discoursing on their areas of mutual interest. 

By April 1868 he had arrived in San Francisco and it is reported he sought the quickest way out of town as possible.  He found his way to Yosemite Valley and it is there where he ended up spending many years of his life.  The valley reminded him that ‘The Earth tho made is still being made.’ and that this is still the morning of creation.     

He married.  He traveled to Alaska.  He helped to establish the National Park System under Teddy Roosevelt’s tenure.  He founded the Sierra Club.  And in the final years of his life he fought one last giant battle.  He had fought many battles noting in one to save the Redwood trees of Yosemite that God had saved them for over 3000 years, but he could not save them from the fools who are Man. 

His final battle was launched by the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.  Much of the destruction that culminated from that natural disaster was in the fires of the aftermath that could not be extinguished due to lack of water.  City fathers looked to the Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy Valleys for water sources.  From 1906 until December 1913 a fierce battle took place regarding the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley.  John Muir lost the battle but won the war.  After the controversy of damming Hetch Hetchy, no other dam has ever been constructed within the boundaries of a national park in the United States. 

This final battle took a huge toll on John Muir and on December 24, 1914, one year later, he died at the age of 76.

While the American Masters program was well done and I personally appreciated seeing such a fine broadcast on John Muir, if you really want to get to know the man…read his writings.  He was stellar.

Heirlooms & Heritage

There is a Grandmother Clock that stands in my living room.  I’ve had it now for more than 20 years and it is very special to me.  It cannot be considered an antique since it was purchased new by my Grandma Poff in the 1970’s…but it is special because it was hers and probably the only thing of hers that I have.

Because I have an avid interest in history and genealogy it is a disappointment to me that that I know so little about my Grandma Poff.  Her name in her youth was Susie Lake.  I know that she bore 14 children 12 of whom survived to adulthood.  She moved to Florida to be near my Mom after Grandpa died in 1960.  She was a big woman, these days she would be considered morbidly obese, but that lap of hers was a constant and a source of comfort for her many grandchildren. 

I remember her sitting on the porch of the family farm in Red Lion, Ohio snapping snap beans.  I remember her on the back porch plucking chickens and in the kitchen baking homemade breakfast biscuits over a wood-fired cook stove.  I remember her arms around me the day my 5 year-old niece Lisa was buried.  I have many memories of Grandma Poff, but I know very little of who she was before she was my grandma. 

The one tiny piece of information I have about her youth was shared with me a few days before I moved to Guam.  I had flown from Alaska to Cincinnati for a visit, then a road trip to Maine to see my friend Diane, then flew from Cincinnati to Florida for a visit with the family before my flight to Guam.

I made sure I saw Grandma before my departure and she seemed sad to me.  She made the comment that she would never see me again.  I assured her I would not be in Guam that long, but she must have had a premonition that her time was near, because it was just a few weeks later that she passed. 

That day I remember asking her to tell me about her childhood.  She picked just one story to share.  She told me that her family lived at the base of a mountain in Kentucky not too far from a large town.  One day a ‘mountain man’ came down from the mountains on his way to town.  He stopped to visit with her father.  On his way back a few days later he was driving a herd of horses and was having a hard time handling them by himself.  He asked Grandpa if he would help him drive the horses to his home.  Grandpa couldn’t leave the farm, but he told the Mountain Man that his daughter was an excellent rider and could help him.  So Grandma mounted her horse and off she went with a total stranger and his herd of horses.  That was the one story she told me of her youth.   Now I suspect that it was her equivalent of my adventures.

So, the Grandmother clock sits in my living room as a reminder of Grandma and her life.  An aunt asked recently what I planned to do with the clock since I did not have any children of my own to pass it to.  I had not thought about the clock’s future, but now that the question has been asked I’ve come up with a plan.  It may be coincidental, but the clock already has a tradition that has formed around it. 

Grandma purchased the clock and had it for a few years in her home.  Then, when she could no longer live on her own she moved in with my Mom and Dad, her eldest daughter, and the clock stayed with Mom after Grandma’s death.  As it turned out, when Mom and Dad were downsizing Mom passed it on to Grandma’s eldest granddaughter, me.  I’ve done the research and figured out that the eldest Great Granddaughter of Susie Poff is my cousin’s daughter.  So I plan to pass it on to her in my 70^th birth year. 

I am writing a little book to go with the clock, sharing what little I know of Grandma Poff’s life, Mom’s life and then my life.  I’m hoping that the next in line will add her life story to go with the clock and that she will do the research to see who is the eldest Great, Great Granddaughter of Susie Poff. 

I have no way of ensuring the clock moves from Granddaughter to granddaughter of Susie Poff, but I will at least try to get the tradition going and to share with future generations the heritage and heirloom of one remarkable woman.