• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3219 0

to dismantle the expansive federal reserves. The administration now argued that clear-cutting federal reserves brought jobs. The forest-products industry, predictably, agreed. Then Gifford Pinchot, now serving as governor of Pennsylvania, stepped in. Pinchot, who had considerable standing among foresters, called for an emergency meeting of America’s best and brightest conservationists—including Marshall. They were to convene at Pinchot’s home in Washington, D.C., in late January 1930. Pinchot was furious about a “wishy-washy” report issued by the Society of American Foresters pertaining to woodlands preservation.22 To Pinchot, the report was disingenuous and was actually aimed at opening up public lands. Although he had retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1910, Pinchot was not at all hesitant to oppose clear-cutting. Pulling an activist committee together, he tasked Bob Marshall and Ward Shepard with drafting “A Letter to Foresters.” Marshall, a master of invective, gleefully lambasted foresters as infected by capitalistic greed. It was sacrilegious, Marshall wrote, for any real forester to condone the “spiritual decay” of America’s forestlands. Later, Marshall would accurately describe this open letter as “the most radical action any forestry organization had ever taken.”23

Pinchot’s summit had an inspirational effect on Marshall. Clearly, Marshall was more socialist than Pinchot, but their political differences—romantic preservation versus utilitarian conservation—were inconsequential compared with the differences between them and the Hooverites they were fighting. Actually, Pinchot and Marshall were both visionaries, were both nature lovers, and were both undoubtedly among the most colorful figures in the history of U.S. forestry. “Governor Pinchot,” Marshall declared, “is one of the most amazing men I have ever met. After 35 years of forestry battles, instead of being discouraged and cynical, he is entering this new fight with as much enthusiasm and interest as a boy of 20.” Perhaps after the loss of his father, Marshall had found a surrogate in Pinchot. At the very least Marshall enjoyed sharing enemies with the legendary Pinchot. “He thinks Hoover, Hughes, and Mellon are all terrible,” Marshall said, “believes in government ownership of natural resources, is strong for civil liberties and really is interested in everything a liberal should be.”24

Energized by Pinchot, Marshall published a landmark conservationist article in the February 1930 issue of Scientific Monthly: “The Problem of the Wilderness.” It was an immediate hit among conservationists. Marshall, who was just about to earn his PhD from Johns Hopkins, offered the notion that wilderness should be preserved for its aesthetic and spiritual values alone. He sounded much like Aldo Leopold. His message had elements of both prophecy and doomsaying. Echoing Thoreau and Muir, Marshall asserted that places like Arctic Alaska were far more valuable than a Rembrandt painting or Brahms symphony. (This was in line with the reasoning in Hornaday’s Our Vanishing Wild Life.) “The Problem of the Wilderness” article fitted nicely with a new initiative by the Forest Service. Matter-of-factly identified as Regulation L-20, it was a new policy aimed at establishing “primitive areas” within existing national forests.

Upon earning his PhD in the spring of 1930—his dissertation was “An Experimental Study of the Water Relations of Seedling Conifers with Special Reference to Wilting”—Marshall set his sights on the Arctic Alaska watershed. It was one thing to extol the virtues of wilderness in Scientific Monthly. It was quite another to demonstrate those virtues by analyzing the positive effects pristine nature had on people living in a remote Alaskan village. The single-minded Marshall wasn’t thinking about the Kenai Peninsula or the Alexander Archipelago. His mind was set on the land north of the Arctic Circle. Pulling together his interests in forestry and sociology, he decided to chronicle his firsthand experiences living among Eskimos and white settlers in Wiseman. He