"Get In The Bucket, John!"

Cindy and I attended a presentation of "Celebrate Trees--An Evening With Naturalist John Muir" at the Balboa Theater in Balboa Park last night, presented by the Center For Sustainable Energy.

Doug Hulmes, a professor of environmental studies at Prescott College in Arizona, has studied John Muir extensively and performs an evening of storytelling and conversation as John Muir to promote environmental education and consciousness of the importance of urban forestry.

One of the stories he told in the personification of Muir was the story of the young Muir digging a 90 foot deep well on the family homestead in rural Wisconsin.  He had to dig the first thirty feet of the well through close grained sandstone using a hammer and chisel.  As the well progressed, his father would lower him in a bucket using a windlass.  One day when the well was nearing completion, his father lowered John into the well as usual, not realizing that carbonic acid gas (carbon dioxide) had collected at the bottom of the well during the night.  Muir had become so accustomed to being in the well that he did not recognize the danger and was soon overcome by the gas and unable to take effective action, but when his father realized that he wasn't hearing any sounds of digging or chipping, he began yelling, "Get in the bucket, John!" and pulled him to safety.

Would John Muir think that our society is now in danger of being overcome by poisons and unable to make intelligent decisions to get out of the mess?

O.K., that was a rhetorical question if there ever was one.

Anyway, it was a pleasant and entertaining evening.  And I think we could use a few more people with the eloquence and foresight of John Muir.