The Quiet World_ Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 - Douglas Brinkley [152]
Owing to Marshall’s testimony, wilderness was now the new concept in serious land conservation circles. Nobody during the New Deal era was doing more than Marshall to persuade the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to preserve wilderness in the public lands they managed. Then, on November 11, 1939, Marshall died of heart failure on an overnight train trip from Washington, D.C., to New York. To have such a bright star vanish at only age thirty-eight was devastating. The prospect that he would write more books like Arctic Village and The People’s Forests had simply been assumed. Marshall, however, had known he had a serious heart problem. In preparation for sudden death he had made out a will bequeathing one-quarter of his $1.5 million estate to The Wilderness Society.
At Marshall’s burial service in Brooklyn, scores of foresters from the departments of the Interior and Agriculture came to pay final homage to the great man. They pledged to continue Marshall’s quest to protect Arctic Alaska. They agreed to devote their lives to protecting wild lands. A couple of lines that Marshall had written years earlier became the rallying cry for the burgeoning environmental movement. “As society becomes more and more mechanized,” Marshall warned, “it will be more and more difficult for many people to stand the nervous strain, the high pressure, and the drabness of their lives. To escape these abominations, constantly growing numbers will seek the primitive for the finest features of life.”65
The historical implications of Marshall’s conservationist philosophy were monumental. Twenty-five years after his death, largely owing to his advocacy, The Wilderness Society helped pass the Wilderness Act of 1964. Such pristine locales as the Grand Tetons, Two Ocean Pass, and the Middle Fork of the Salmon River region of central Idaho were designated by Congress as wilderness. And, lo and behold, the Clear Water Country in Montana where Marshall had been a forester in the 1920s was likewise declared roadless. Also in 1964, more than 1 million acres in Montana officially became the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Only a few administrative cabins for trail crews and fire rangers were allowed. With Glacier National Park bordering it on the north, the Bob Marshall Wilderness remained a protection zone for grizzlies.* And Montana was just one example. More than 109 million acres of America are now designated wilderness. One Adirondack wonder was named Mount Marshall in the state system—probably the most fitting tribute of all to the proud “forty-sixer.”
Chapter Twelve - Those Amazing Muries
I
Mostly it was Mardy Murie’s ability to motivate people and hold them accountable by her steadfast decency of spirit that set her apart. To know Mardy was to love her: she was deeply humble, with eyes sharp but innocent, always elevating others to conscientious endeavor, never worried over whether she got her due credit. As a girl, Murie fell in love with Arctic Alaska’s remoteness. She was intoxicated by the tearing wind. The wildlife and the desolation made her heart stand still. Though she received various honorary doctorates later in life for her pioneering work as a naturalist, she never grew smug or overbearing. Anybody who wrote to Mardy received the courtesy of a quick, handwritten reply. Affectionately known as the “mother of the American conservation movement,” Mardy, who lived to be 101 years old, was a true activist, opening people’s consciousness to the fragile beauty north of the Arctic Circle. In her old age, when her gray hair was braided into a bun and crows’ feet framed her hazel eyes, three U.S. presidents—Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—honored Mardy at White House ceremonies as nothing less than a national treasure, an embodiment of wild Alaska. Her kindness was intrinsic, but for all her