The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [325]
A few weeks later, Forest and Stream magazine published Roosevelt’s speech in its entirety. In his talk, Roosevelt had driven home the point that national parks were “essential democracy” at work. America’s treasures, like Yellowstone, had to be safeguarded from vandals and exploiters. Here was a place for city dwellers to restore themselves. The president lamented that Europeans were flocking to see Yellowstone more excitedly than Americans. He said that the United States needed to become “awake to its beauties.” And he praised the successes of the wildlife protection movement in the park.
“Here all the wild creatures of the old days are being preserved,” he said, “and their overflow into the surrounding country, means that the people of the surrounding country, so long as they see that the laws are observed by all, will be able to insure to themselves and to their children and to their children’s children, much of the old-time pleasure of the hardy life of the wilderness and of the hunter of the wilderness.”52
It was a bittersweet occasion for Roosevelt when, bound for Saint Louis, he had to say good-bye to Montana and part company with Oom John (who was going to Spokane for a prearranged lecture) at the Gardiner arch on April 25.53 Their wonderful times together in the open air were over. As a parting gesture, Roosevelt rallied to Burroughs’s defense against a cheap shot at him in the latest issue of Forest and Stream. Either in a fit of jealous pique for having been excluded from the Yellowstone trip or, more likely, simply as a result of editorial misjudgment, George Bird Grinnell had run a cruel, devastating personal attack on Burroughs in the magazine. Angrily, Roosevelt responded that Burroughs was a true man, a saint of the woods, a human being of breathtaking sincerity and a naturalist of unparalleled skills. Whitman had once said that Burroughs was “in a sense almost a miracle.” For weeks, Roosevelt and Burroughs had observed deer, elk, wild geese, wild mice, chickadees, and red squirrels. Together they had laughed at the jargoning Canadian jays (or camp robbers, as Burroughs called them) in the mornings and watched the sun set over the Yellowstone River gorges at dusk. They had inhaled the fragrance of scattered pines and had been silenced for hours by the beauty of secluded valleys. Now, in Grinnell’s magazine, in an article written by someone in New Hampshire who wrote under the name “Hermit,” slammed Burroughs—of all people—as a bad naturalist.*54
Burroughs, who was averse to conflict, assured Roosevelt that the attack didn’t matter; a single day’s news of other matters would erase it from people’s memory. The president was not so easily mollified, however. He wrote Grinnell a long letter defending Burroughs and lambasting the magazine for allowing the “Sage of Slabsides” to be ridiculed. The letter was postmarked Gardiner, Montana, and immediately fast-mailed to New York. Its reception marked the beginning of a serious rift in Roosevelt’s personal relationship with Grinnell. This was a risk that Roosevelt was evidently ready to take. “I have just seen the long letter by ‘Hermit’ in the Forest and Stream attacking John Burroughs, and incidentally furnishing the most ample reason for utter distrust of Hermit’s truthfulness in narrating or else his power of accurate observation,” Roosevelt wrote. “I will say frankly that I am surprised that a paper of the standing of the Forest and Stream should publish such