An idea that is not so very old, yet antique by today’s standards, was advanced by a fellow named Muir and another, a president, Theodore Roosevelt.  These two wanted to save the rapidly diminishing forest lands being clear cut by energetic lumbermen.  This latter group, tried to satisfy the need for building materials and later, for print journalism.  This was BEFORE the turn of the 20^th Century. In the last quarter of the 19^th Century there was a concern by groups who wanted to conserve and preserve our natural wealth, the forests and the creatures that dwelled in them.  They were called conservationists and they had to fight the builders and expansionists.

One cherished memory of my elementary education was the story told by one of my teachers.  It was about a forested America before the arrival of Europeans.  The story involved a fictitious squirrel who wanted to travel south from the top of Main to the southern tip of Florida.  That squirrel could make the trip without once touching the ground; the forest was so pervasive, dense and ubiquitous.  In America, settlers deforested the land.  In other parts of the world, warriors did the deed.

If we are interested in laying blame, it was the publishers of newspapers and books, while trying to satisfy the insatiable thirst for news, information and enlightenment as to the latest arrival of merchandise, who caused the forests to fall.  Later, the sub-dividers laid out villages, towns, and cities.  From oceans’ edges they moved along the banks of rivers and streams, turning inward to invade the boondocks and hinterlands so urban metropolises grew into megalopolises.  Tentacles of teeming anthills of humans stretched to join other surging centers of “civilization” so Middle America became one with its distant borders – three thousand miles of defenestrated land.

If you have traveled through Europe and the Middle East you probably have noticed the bare and dry hills in Italy and Israel, just two examples of human carelessness about the fragility of life – both flora and fauna.  Ancient warriors cut down the trees to manufacture their weapons, feed their fires and deny their enemies sanctuary of once impenetrable jungle-like forests.  If you read about the advance of “civilization” in rain forest countries, you have heard warnings that destruction follows taming the land for farms.  We should conclude that unless we destroy human life, all other life on this planet will be made extinct.  I think there will never ever again be the pristine land where cooling shade protects crawling, clinging, walking, grazing and flying life that broad branches and leafy canopies have always protected.

Maybe the squirrel knew the glory of living in harmony and feasting in the lap of Mother Nature even though it was but one of the links in the food chain.  It is an old idea, now antique, to save what we have before it is too late.