On the trail of John Muir
Robert Burcher will walk the walk of a giant of environmental activism
ROBERT BURCHER
LIKES to keep an eye on the natural world around him, always on the lookout for something interesting sprouting from the ground.
If he likes what he sees — maybe it’s an interesting example of a honey locust, witchhazel or something unpronounceable — the amateur botanist with the big-brimmed hat might take a photograph or gently clip a sample to add to his collection of dried plants.
And sometimes he’ll imagine what Hamilton would have looked like more than 150 years ago when a young naturalist from Wisconsin with a big bush of a beard trudged through swamp and forest collecting specimens from a much more diverse landscape.
It’s not well known, but pioneering environmental activist John Muir (1838-1914) lived in what is now Ontario for a couple of years during the Civil War — apparently trying to avoid conscription as a “conscientious objector.” He spent most of that time in the Meaford area, in Grey County, where he worked at a sawmill with his brother. But for six months he “botanized” through southern Ontario with about a
month of that time in the Hamilton-Niagara area.
“The fact that one of the legendary founders of the environmental movement in North America lived in Ontario and was highly influenced by our geography is incredible,” says Burcher, 65, who is a retired professional photographer living in the Beaver Valley between Collingwood and Owen Sound.
“But more importantly he took his love of nature and moved it into action. The concept of conserving nature started with him and millions of people follow his lead to this day,” he said.
Burcher is vowing to retrace the August/September 1864 steps of Muir this summer through Hamilton and Niagara, by using documented plant samples “like a detective would follow credit card receipts.”
The 47 surviving specimens — that are kept at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, Calif., and reproduced in books and online sources — illuminate the trail because every time Muir gathered a specimen he recorded the location and date.
“Muir was a great writer and diarist, but all of his journals from the Ontario experience were destroyed in a fire at the sawmill in Trout Hollow where he was working in the winter of 1866,” says Burcher.
But Burcher is still confident he can walk the walk with reasonable accuracy using the plant specimens as well as five Muirwritten letters that escaped the fire.
“Of course it won’t be a perfect route, but it is still amazing what can be pieced together using these clues,” he said. He plans to wear a “Muir costume” of hat, old clothes and worn boots similar to what the naturalist would have worn “so I can feel the experience as well.”
Burcher, who describes himself as the “last standing member” of the Meaford-based Canadian Friends of John Muir, also plans to write a book on the adventure.
But his ultimate goal, he says, is to encourage a John Muir Trail to raise awareness of Muir’s time in Canada.
A 20-something man who looked like a hobo walking around collecting plants one and a half centuries ago may not sound all that interesting. But many of the samples he collected added to botanical knowledge of the time. And as naturalists go, Muir became a rock star.
Muir is known as the “Father of the National Parks” in the United States. He was a friend of U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt and a leading advocate of wildlife conservation. He successfully advocated for the preservation of Yosemite Park and other natural areas, as well as co-founded the prominent conservation group Sierra Club. His writings about nature have been read by millions and are still well-known today.
He was born in Scotland, which celebrates “John Muir Day” on his birthday April 21 each year. Some have said Earth Day missed the mark by a day being on April 22, when it would have made more sense to line it up with Muir
Day.
Burcher says he became interested in Muir after stumbling upon an abandoned, graffitiscarred plaque in Meaford in 1992 that recounted the naturalist’s time in the area. He arranged to have the memorial restored and his personal fascination with Muir grew from there.
Most notable about Muir’s time in what was then known as
Canada West was his discovery of an extremely rare calypso orchid in the Holland Marsh area.
He said the experience was one of the major events of his life. He later wrote, “I found the beautiful calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground, but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung ... I sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy.”
David Galbraith, the head of science with the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, says, “Muir was a clarion voice in the late 19th and early 20th century about preserving the beauty of the landscape.
“He spoke up at a time when a lot of people thought natural areas had no value and that they were best turned into some economic use, such as agriculture or mines.”
Muir’s work has a special resonance with the RBG. Like Muir, RBG botanists have brought together an enormous collection of plant samples over the years.
More than 60,000 of them are kept in a “herbarium” on the second floor of RBG Centre. As well as providing an opportunity to study the lineage of the plants, the collection also serves as a baseline to compare fauna today with plants of the decades. That’s particularly helpful when it comes to studying the effect of climate change on flora.
As for Muir’s work around Hamilton, Galbraith says, it is especially interesting because “he was here at a point of enormous transition. The forests were coming down to make way for agriculture. And some of that was being driven by markets for food in the United States during the Civil War.”
And interestingly, he says, “While he was doing his botanical work, there is a good chance the guy walked right past where we are now in Burlington at the RBG.”