John Muir's Birthplace

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Content updated Fri, 16 Jul 1999 18:56:13 GMT

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DJMA Newsletter #3

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Newsletter No. 3
Summer 1995

Scottish Charity No 022857

Contents

1. Editorial
2. President's Message
3. Wilderness and Plenty
4. DJMA Visit to Cove
5. Membership News
6. Editorial Address

Editorial

I am also grateful to Fred Last and Aubrey Manning for submitting contributions for this edition of the DJMA Newsletter and I'm also particularly pleased to have received a report on the recent DJMA visit to Cove from founder members Liz McLean & Philip Revell. I'd be very pleased to receive articles and/or letters for future newsletters - the editorial address is given at the end. Incidentally, all DJMA Newsletters are published on the Internet with the potential for world-wide readership. Budding contributors please take note! More details of progress with the John Muir Centre on the Internet will be given in the next issue. If there are any local community, youth or education groups that would like to contribute to the JMC WWW pages then please contact me at the editorial address

As regular readers will know much has happened since the public launch of the Association in late September last year. The time has come for the first DJMA Annual General Meeting and this has been arranged for the evening of Friday, 22nd September in Dunbar Parish Church Hall. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Family and friends are welcome. One item of business will, of course, be the presentation of the Annual Report - a copy of which will have been sent out to the membership along with this Newsletter. I look forward to seeing you there.

Ed.

President's Message

"God has cared for trees, but he cannot save them from fools"

"Few that fell trees plant them"

Who would have thought this time last year that the DJMA would have developed so rapidly? A very great deal has been achieved but I'm reminded of one of Winston Churchill's speeches -

"Never ... was so much owed by so many to so few"

This is one of the Association's failings - its members are reluctant to come forward. At the forthcoming AGM Members will be presented with the Association's Annual Report - we should be under no illusions. The deeds detailed in the Report owe an enormous amount to Winifred Sillitto's unstinting efforts.

Although retired I still cover a lot of ground. I carry with me a set of maps also the New Shell Guide to Scotland. I have two editions one published in 1970 and the other in 1977: lo and behold there is a significant difference. In 1970 there was no mention of John Muir but by 1977 the Dunbar entry refers to John Muir's birthplace alongside references to Mary Queen of Scots, Darnley and Bothwell - a step in the right direction and an example for us all. With progress being made with our applications to the Millennium Commission we must do more to heighten awareness of Muir's visionary thoughts about wilderness and the wise use of resources also increase the visibility of DJMA. The springboard has been prepared: now let's take full advantage of it without in anyway playing down the foresight of those concerned with the John Muir Country Park.

Like others reaching their dotage I'm increasingly aware of my abysmal lack of knowledge of history. For this reason I recently acquired an interesting volume The Timetables of History in which events are placed in one of 7 categories including: Science, Technology, Growth and Daily Life. I had no expectations of finding references to John Muir but I was pleasantly surprised. For 1838, and alongside the birth of Ferdinand von Zeppelin of Zeppelin airship fame, there is the following entry:

'Birth of John Muir, Scot.-Amer. Naturalist'

I'm not sure that Muir would have liked to be linked with 'Growth' but I'm sure that he would be comfortable with Science and Technology. I then scanned the year to 1914 hoping that I would find further references. At the very least I hoped that the Bill of the US Congress setting up the National Park System would have been recorded under 1890 alongside the opening of the Forth Bridge - but no such luck. But, rather more ambitiously, I hoped to find a reference to Muir under Daily Life. Surely it should be the aim of us all to ensure that Muir's perceptive visions of sustainability and biodiversity should become parts of our daily lives.

Fred Last

Wilderness and Plenty

[This is a precis of Aubrey Manning's talk given at the Spring Gathering in April. Ed.]

I think most people must from time to time have devised 'Imaginary Conversations', having two people from different ages meet and then inventing what they might say to each other - Anthony Trollope and Kingsley Amis perhaps, or W.G. Grace and Brian Lara! I like to think of two who actually overlapped a little in time, and almost totally in attitude and wisdom - John Muir (1838-1914) and Frank Fraser Darling (1903-1979). Both recognised so clearly the value of wilderness and they would instantly understand each other. Then, the warmth of greeting and shared enthusiasms exchanged, Fraser Darling could go on to inform John Muir on modern ecological issues, whilst Muir in return could provide some much needed grounding in the politics of persuasion, informed by his wealth of American experience, but directed at the Scottish Office and the Highland Regional Council!

It goes without saying that both men were, and to some extent still are, prophets without honour in their own country. The message they tried to put across is still widely misunderstood because the human species has, for the most part, lost any true sense of our place in relation to the environment that supports us. The wisdom which Muir and Fraser Darling shared was, in fact, part of our thinking for the great majority of our history on the planet. For tens of thousands of years we lived in small hunter-gatherer communities, who lived in harmony with the forests, the dry savannas or the arctic tundra. Only those cultures whose beliefs and practices were sustainable left any descendants and we have sufficient knowledge gained from the last survivors of the hunter-gatherers to recognise that they still see themselves as part of the living world, and indeed as part of the very rocks and soil and water around them. The emergence and rise of agriculture began an inexorable process of dissociation, of separation of humans from their environments and to ideas of the need to dominate the natural world if we were to survive.

The process has certainly gone a long way in our culture. I think of those writers and painters of the 18th and early 19th century who portrayed wilderness as a terrifying concept, hostile to human life. The Highlands, for example, seen with huge tottering crags looming over dank forests and dwarfing tiny settlements, or desolate, mist wreathed moorlands! We've moved on now, of course, and the Scottish Tourist Board can paint a different picture, because we love wild places for relaxation. However, this does not mean that we understand what wilderness is and what it means for us. Look with a more informed eye at those same Highlands and you can see an environment under severe strain from overgrazing, over burning and blanket forestry. (In 1955 Fraser Darling referred to the Highlands and Islands as 'a devastated terrain'). Meanwhile the richer areas are dominated by monoculture farming with greatly reduced biodiversity. For the most part the conservation of the natural world is managed in restricted, almost remnant areas.

I am most certainly NOT suggesting that a return to a hunter-gathering would be desirable even if it were possible. We live in a modern world which offers many huge advantages and which could not exist without modern agriculture. True conservationists like Muir and Fraser Darling are as concerned with the health of human societies as much as that of any plant and animal communities. Their vision is one of balance and it is that which is going so awry in much of Scotland let alone in the much more densely populated parts of the British Isles to the south of us. The key point that both men so clearly recognised is that the wilderness areas, those which are not directly exploited by our species are nevertheless vital as part of the planet's support system. Large tracts of forest, for example, act as a carbon sink, cycle and recycle again our water supply, distribute that water evenly over wide ranges of time and space, avoiding flooding, and play a part in recycling soil nutrients and in generating oxygen. They can do so and yield us modes crops of forest products in a genuinely sustainable way. Be it tropical moist forest or Caledonian pine, such areas of wilderness must no longer be seen as in need of exploitation, or harnessing in the service of humanity. They are, as Fraser Darling points out in the book published from his Reith Lectures, Wilderness and Plenty, already working for us if we only have the sense to appreciate how our planet works.

If we are to operate in such a sustainable fashion, our species will have to recognise that we must limit our demands both in terms of our numbers and of resource consumption. Just because the current trends are so manifestly not sustainable even given all the technology we have, and will continue to need, the wilderness message of John Muir is more vital than ever. We must hope that Dunbar's John Muir Association will be able to bring his ideas into the forefront of our thinking, not just for his native town but for Britain and the world.

Aubrey Manning

DJMA Visit to Cove

Ben bought the harbour and cottages from Borders Regional Council in 1991 as a means of saving it from being developed as a marina and holiday resort. Ben has a long family association with the harbour and during the afternoon shared with us some of the history and stories of this distinctive place.

Cove Harbour was built in the late 18th century by the enlightened Hall family of Dunglass estate. It was built to facilitate the transportation by boat of the coal which was mined there. Coal was that time was an extremely valuable resource, and the investment needed to construct the harbour and mine the coal is well documented.

The present harbour is the result of the third attempt to construct a harbour, earlier attempts having proved too vulnerable to sea storms. Traces remain, inscribed in the rocks, evidence of earlier attempts. The two piers are beautifully built and enclose what appears to be a picturesque fishing port, and it came as a surprise to some of us to learn of its industrial origins. Interesting details include a number of dove-tailed stones set into the harbour walls which originally held timbers which acted as buffers for the boats moored there. Ben also pointed out mysterious letters cut into the stone at the end of the Boyne ( as the south pier is called).

Coal seams were mined from two tunnels; the first started from the harbour side and is now blocked up; the second tunnel entrance is behind the cottages off the rocky foreshore. We were able to crawl along this tunnel to the bottom of the shaft which rises to come out beside the tarred access path above, now protected by chestnut paling, and obscured by brambles.

The harbour and surroundings are designated an area of Special Scientific Interest because of its unique geology. To a lay eye, the sculptured rocks around Cove are indeed unusual and exciting.

The advent of the railway brought an alternative and more reliable form of transporting coal and Cove declined in importance as a mining area. To-day, it still harbours local fishing boats, and provides inspiration to a wide range of visitors whether artist, geologist, walker or historian. It certainly whetted our appetites for more knowledge of the place. More than that, it made us aware of the need to learn about the hidden past of a place in order to be able to view its future.

Afterwards, we gathered in the sunshine outside Ben's cottage by the harbour for tea and wonderful cakes (baked by Betty who lives in the timber cottage opposite). We were able to see old photographs and study the old documents relating to the harbour's past. We also saw the proposals for the marina development and appreciated the fact that they were never realised.

Liz McLean & Philip Revell

Membership News

Please, please, please do renew your membership and, ideally, 'recruit' some family and friends to the cause. Demonstrating the support of the local community through a high renewal rate and an increase in membership will hold us in good stead for the next round of the Millennium Commission application process.

Duncan Smeed

Editorial Address

E-mail: djma@cs.strath.ac.uk
URL: http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/Contrib/JMC/