Dunbar’s John Muir Association

Friends of John Muir’s

Birthplace
Newsletter No. 5, April 2008
Dear friends,
Spring is now upon us and we look forward, hopefully to
balmier days than we have been experiencing recently.
Will’s new book, ‘Close to Nature’s Beating Heart’ was
launched on 7th March and is selling well. It is an excellent
addition to Friend’s publications. Will is already thinking of
his next project which is likely to be a book aimed at
children. Next up, however, will be a re-issue of ‘John
Muir’s Dunbar’, which is being updated by David
Anderson, and which will include a new map for those
wishing to walk the town trail.
Details of the spring and summer programme are shown
inside these pages and I hope as many of you as possible
will be able to come along. Have a good summer and don’t
forget to visit the Birthplace. Royalty did!
Sincerely,
Jim Thompson

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 HRH Prince Edward Visits John Muir’s Birthplace
Dunbar had a rare royal appointment on 27 February when HRH Prince Edward dropped
in to the Birthplace en route to appointments in Duns. It was a brief, low key visit but we
were determined to pack as much as possible into the allotted 45 minutes! We realised
that HRH would not have enough time for anything other than a brief overview but we
also felt that it was equally important that he learned about some of the activities and work
undertaken at the Birthplace. So Jo arranged for children and young people from Dunbar
Primary and Grammar Schools and Tynebank Resource Centre in Haddington who have
undertaken the John Muir Award to meet the Prince.

There was a tremendous buzz on the High Street as groups of people gathered on the
pavement to await the Prince’s arrival. The sun shone as Deputy Lord Lieutenant Stephen
Bunyan greeted the Prince and introduced East Lothian Council’s Provost, Sheena
Richardson, and Chief Executive, Alan Blackie. Prince Edward chatted with bystanders
before entering the Birthplace to meet Trustees and staff and start his tour of the house.
Our carefully worked out route, designed to give him time to meet with the young people,
looked destined to fail, as the Prince’s interest in John Muir’s family risked us running out
of time before we left the ground floor!

However, he did chat with Leeanne and Jason from the Grammar School and heard about
pond-dipping and mural-making from Sam, Honor and Scott from the Primary School
before making his way to the top floor where Kirsten and Graham were waiting. The
Prince was impressed to hear of Graham’s enthusiasm for getting recycling underway at
Tynebank and was delighted to be presented by Kirsten with a selection of books
including Muir’s ‘Stickeen’, which Kirsten explained was for his children!

Prince Edward seemed impressed with the Birthplace and its activities. His questions and
observations indicated that he was already familiar with John Muir and was keen to hear
more of his travels, discoveries and influences. He chatted to the young people with ease
and his relaxed manner belied the inevitable precision programming required for such
visits. We even succeeded in arriving back at the main entrance just five minutes behind
schedule – no mean feat! His equerry gave the thumbs up with a departing comment that it
had been a perfect visit! Perhaps his eldest brother might be inspired to drop by in the
future!

Liz Mclean, Chairman, John Muir Birthplace Trust

We have subsequently received a letter from Prince Edward’s equerry, Colonel Alastair
Bruce of Crionaich, dated 29 February, and the text is given below.

Dear Liz McLean,

The Earl of Wessex has asked me to write and thank you for the wonderful welcome
that you, your staff and guests gave when His Royal Highness came to visit the John Muir
Birthplace Trust, in Dunbar on Wednesday 27th February.

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 Prince Edward felt that the work that has been done in order to celebrate the man
and his achievement is tremendous and it was a great privilege for him to come and see
the result. Please will you pass His Royal Highness’s thanks to everyone in the Trust and
from outside that helped to make his visit such a success.

The Prince has asked me to thank you for the three books he was given: ‘The Story of My
Boyhood and Youth’ by John Muir, ‘John Muir’ by Will Collin and the wonderful
children’s book ‘Stickeen’, which His Royal Highness will read to Lady Louise soon.
They will represent the memory Prince Edward has of an impressive testament to a great
man that has been delivered in the heart of his home, Dunbar.

‘CLOSE TO NATURE’S BEATING HEART’

Friends Publish New John Muir Book
A winter’s work has resulted in the appearance of a new book on John Muir. Staff had
identified the need for a small, affordable book on Muir from the many requests from
visitors to the Birthplace. Friends member Will Collin began the task of writing the book
last summer but set to in earnest with the onset of winter.

The book provides the reader with a short but detailed account of Muir’s life in its first
eight chapters and its final chapter tells how his legacy has been passed on over the years
since his death in 1914. Chapter endnotes give the sources of the numerous quotations
and brief sketches of many of the persons mentioned in the text. A short bibliography
suggests further reading – all of those listed are available from the Birthplace.

The book was to be designed by Friend Trish Reeves but, following her untimely death in
December, design work was undertaken by her partner in Source Design, Emma
Westwater. The result is an attractive addition to Friends small but growing library, in the
‘house’ style established by Trish to whom the book is dedicated.

Friends are grateful for financial assistance from East Lothian Leader, Turcan Connell,
Dunbar Community Council, Dunbar Rotary Club and Springfield Guest House. This has
enabled the price of the book to be kept to £3.50, the same as the book of Muir quotations,
Still Walking the World, published by Friends in June 2007. Friends next venture is a
new edition of John Muir’s Dunbar currently being written by David Anderson.

Copies of Close to Nature’s Beating Heart and Still Walking the World are available
from the Birthplace, price £3.50 each (less Friends 10% discount on all Birthplace stock).
For Friends further afield, copies can be ordered by post from Will Collin, 2 Rosebery
Place, Dunbar, EH42 1AQ, at £3.50 p&p free. Cheques should be made out to DJMA.
(Unfortunately, because of postage costs of £2.19 per copy, this offer does not apply to
Friends in the US.)

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 photo courtesy of East Lothian Courier
HRH Prince Edward visits the Birthplace

Children find out about renewable energy at the Powerpod

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 Centre for Alternative Technology over the years
As part of our regular talks, Friend Liz McLean, who worked at the Centre for Alternative
Technology in the late 1980’s gave us a whistle stop guide from its origins in the 70s to its
place today as a centre for research and education in the realms of sustainable technology
and construction. She set the scene by drawing parallels between John Muir’s prophetic
vision for an environmentally sustainable world and CAT’s pragmatic desire to search for
globally sustainable, whole and ecologically sound technologies and ways of life.

“Brought into right relationships with the wilderness, man would see that his
appropriation of Earth's resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance
and begat ultimate loss and poverty by all.” John Muir

“If we want to survive in the future without a huge environmental and humanitarian
crisis, our best hope lies with understanding and working with natural processes, rather
than trying to conquer nature.” Centre for Alternative Technology

In the early days, the Centre was conceived as a project to show the nature of the problem
and show ways of going forward. It was originally a community dedicated to eco-friendly
principles and a test bed for new ideas and technologies - the Visitor Centre was a later
addition. The first pioneers arrived in 1974 but its remit couldn't be more current: to
demonstrate how everyone can live more sustainably. The centre leads by example -
almost all of its buildings and displays are powered by solar, wind or hydro energy and
toilets are waterless.

With the aid of lots of photographs of displays, old and recent, Liz took us on a virtual
guided tour of the Centre, from its early days becoming a community, re-building the old
slate quarry buildings, constructing experimental wind machines and water turbines, solar
collectors, photovoltaics, energy efficient and ecological buildings, a water powered cliff
railway and exhibits to explain all of this to increasing numbers of visitors. The displays
focus on power and energy, waste and recycling and improvements that can be made in
the home.

In 2000, CAT constructed the UK’s first community managed turbine which sits in the
hills behind the centre. CAT buys all the power generated (around 163 MWh each year),
using about half of this to supply its site with electricity and hot water and exports the rest
to the local grid. Now, CAT is at the forefront of research and education.
Zerocarbonbritain provides a blueprint for Britain to reduce its carbon emissions to zero
by 2027. The report draws on CAT's 35 years of experience as well as consultations with
world-renowned experts in climate science, climate policy and renewable energy
technologies. A new training facility, WISE (Wales Institute for Sustainable Education),
will provide 21st Century facilities and an exemplar building from which to meet the
growing demand for practical and academic education in the principles of sustainable
development.

CAT has certainly come a long way from its ‘hippy’ roots in the 70s to be an influential
organisation providing information, carrying out research and training and advising
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governments on how to meet the challenges facing our planet and people of climate
change, environmental degradation and diminishing resources. CAT has inspired
thousands of people over the decades to explore how we are connected with the planet and
with each other and to act to change their lives, most definitely in the lineage of John
Muir, whose writings and philosophy had such a strong influence on creating the modern
environmental movement.

!!!"#$%"&'(")* www.zerocarbonbritain.com

Ansel Adams – a Muir Disciple?

Ansel Adams (1902-1984), born in San Francisco and the son of a prosperous
businessman, was an intelligent but difficult child and his father withdrew him from
public school at age 12. He looked set to make a career in music but a visit to Yosemite
Valley in 1916 with his family and a Kodak Brownie box camera led to a love of
photography and Adams is regarded as one of the US’s leading photographers.

In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent four summers as curator of the LeConte
Memorial Lodge, the Club’s headquarters in Yosemite Valley. His first illustrated article
appeared in the ‘Sierra Club Bulletin’ in 1922. In 1927 he took part in the Club’s annual
outing, armed with a camera, and the following year was appointed the Club’s official
outings photographer.

Then in 1934 he became a Sierra Club Director, a position he held until 1971 when he was
made an Honorary Vice President, and was more involved in the Club’s political
campaigns. He produced a limited-edition book in 1938, ‘Sierra Nevada: The John Muir
Trail’, as part of the fight to have the Kings Canyon area of the Sierra Nevada declared a
national park. He was invited to testify before Congress and his book and testimony
played vital parts in the creation in 1940 of Kings Canyon National Park.

‘Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada’, with photographs by Adams and text by Muir, was
published in 1948. Two others which married his images with Muir’s writings followed -
‘Yosemite and the Range of Light’ (1979) and ‘America’s Wilderness’ (1997). In 1984,
230,000 acres of the Sierra Nevada, appropriately lying between Yosemite National Park
and the John Muir Wilderness (1964), was named the Ansel Adams Wilderness. In
December 2007, Adams followed Muir into the California Hall of Fame.

‘Adams Retrospectively’ by Kevin Addies

Next time you visit an exhibition, get thoroughly soaked beforehand for greater
enjoyment. Then again that may just apply to my visit on a showery Saturday afternoon to
the Ansel Adams exhibition at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre. It was a good sign that one of
the first photographs, the first of many featuring Yosemite, made me draw breath and
simply stare transfixed – a frequent occurrence that would have drawn looks from the
likeminded people choosing Adams’ scientific art over the rival affair at Murrayfield, if
they hadn’t been doing likewise.
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There are some sights in our eternally odd world that can arouse feelings utterly
impossible to communicate in words. The sight of waves crashing to the shore has that
effect on me, even in photography, and I can report that the Adams exhibit didn’t
disappoint with a sequence of three prints following the process of a wave from swell to
foam on the sand. As someone who has not yet visited, Yosemite appears stunning in any
photograph, one of few places on earth that looks better in wind and rain. Of the many,
equally beautiful prints of the Sierra Nevada, the one which I thought the most utterly
beguiling was that of the Yosemite Valley lit by a full moon.

The exhibition was pleasingly not divided into anything as mundane as categories. As
well as capturing the natural splendour of the American west, Adams also chronicled the
lives of the people he met. The domestic sights he chose to preserve for posterity were,
frankly, quite bizarre with fence posts and pipes represented. Deadened trees and large
rocky Arizonan outcrops may not have been to every visitor’s taste but the juxtaposition
of these seemingly quite abstract barren landscapes with the striking rugged mountains,
forests and wave scenes captured the essence of man’s complex relationship with nature
and kudos to the curators for their choices.

The accompanying exhibition of the work of Scottish photographer Lindsay Robertson

featured strikingly iconic images of Rannoch Moor and Yosemite. I refused to leave
without looking round the Adams exhibit once more, all three floors of it, for you can
never appreciate a scene the same way twice just as, I came to find out later, you cannot be
doused by a rain shower the same way three times in one day.
(Kevin Addies is a member of Friends - and part time exhibition critic!)

MARTINEZ CONNECTIONS
Links are being maintained with Martinez through the John Muir Association which is
their equivalent of Friends. On 20 January, JMA held their 30th annual John Muir
Conservation Award presentation at an up market, fundraising dinner. This year, they
presented four awards in place of the usual one – Conservationist, Environmental
Education, Non-Profit Conservation and Business Conservation. On behalf of the
Birthplace and Dunbar generally, Friends sent best wishes for 2008 and a message which
was read out on the night. In it we said:
“John Muir first learned to love nature here in the fields and woods, and on the cliffs
and beaches, around our small seaside town. That love found its full expression in your
country where he fought so long and hard to preserve the wild areas that he discovered in
so many places . . . Without him, the whole world would have been the poorer. In
Scotland’s Parliament building, opened in Edinburgh in 2005, his words are carved in
stone for all to see. “The battle for conservation will go on endlessly,” he wrote in 1896.
“It is part of the universal battle between right and wrong.” It is a battle still being
waged.
Although we are 5,000 miles apart, we are brought close by the common bond
between us - the example given to us all by Dunbar’s greatest son. We over here in
Dunbar join with you all in Martinez in honouring those who have been inspired by that
example and are receiving this year’s John Muir Conservation Awards.”
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 Talks and Walks
Sun 20th April Walk Celebrate John Muir’s birthday with a walk along the John
Muir Way. Join the East Lothian Walking Festival 2008 on a
guided walk along a choice of sections of the Way finishing at
JMB with tea and a slice of birthday cake! For more details and to
book please phone 0131-665-2240. Leaflets are available at
JMB.
Film night! Join Friends for a showing of ‘The Boyhood of John
Muir’ starring Gary Hollywood. Suitable for all the family. 7.30pm
in the Gibb Room, Dunbar Library. Please phone JMB on 865899
to book.
Fri 16th May Boat trip Enjoy an evening at sea admiring the landscape and
wildlife along the coast between Dunbar and Tantallon. Boats
leave Dunbar Harbour at 6pm and return around 8.30pm. Cost
£10. Booking essential. Please phone JMB on 865899.
Thu 12th June Social Join Friends for a ‘Trees and Wine’ hosted by East
Lothian Countryside Ranger Service. Enjoy food from the wild
along with a glass of wine. 7.30pm at JMB. Please phone
865899 to book.
Sun 29th June Conservation Task Ragwort pulling at John Muir Country Park.
Start time 10am. Please phone 01620 827459 or email
ranger@eastlothian.gov.uk
August Annual Sand Sculpture Competition
Date and time (and sunshine!) to be confirmed
Walk around John Muir’s Dunbar
Free guided walks leave from JMB on Wednesdays at 11am and Thursdays at
3pm. Find out more about Victorian Dunbar and visit Muir’s childhood haunts.
Please phone JMB on 865899 to book.

FRIENDS CONTACTS
Official address: Friends of John Muir’s Birthplace, 2 Rosebery Place, Dunbar EH42 1AQ:
tel: 01368 865899
Friends Website: www.muirbirthplacefriends.org.uk (This is currently being developed)
Birthplace Email: info@jmbt.org.uk Website: www.jmbt.org.uk
Convener: Jim Thompson, Secretary: Susan Panton, Membership Sec: Duncan Smeed,
Treasurer: Will Collin. All can be contacted through the Birthplace.

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John Muir’s Birthplace is now open every day – 10 am to 5 pm from
Monday to Saturday, and 1 pm to 5 pm on Sunday