MARYLEE MACDONALD

Hello Reader,

You may not know it, but the background in the photo above is Yosemite Valley. In my youth, I led backpacking trips into Yosemite's backcountry. And now, the federal government is quietly working to give a piece of Yosemite to a private developer.

Not the whole park. Nothing that obvious. Just a strip. About a quarter mile of ground along the western boundary, handed to a Las Vegas real estate firm so it can build a private road into the park. And at the end of that road, a resort. You can read the whole story--"Yosemite Is Not For Sale"--on my Substack post.

There's a simple step you can take right now to prevent the proposed land swap from going forward. Sign a petition before this turns into a done deal.

​https://www.yosemiterivers.org/defend-the-wild​

How did this even get on my radar?

For the past year, in between other projects, I've been working on a new critical edition of John Muir’s 1912 book The Yosemite. The book is finally out, but in researching it, I ran across a small news item about the proposed land swap. I was appalled.

Muir’s writing helped build the national park idea, and it remains persuasive a century later. It also reflects the blind spots of its moment. This illustrated and annotated edition pairs the full text with a 20,000-word critical foreword. My forward sets Muir in his historical context and traces the record of the park's deep history. This is information that rarely makes it into popular accounts: the Indigenous history of the valley, the Mariposa Indian War, the unratified California treaties, the damming of Hetch Hetchy, and the removal of Native people that continued until 1969.

For anyone interested in conservation history, public lands, or the gap between how we remember these places and what actually happened in them, I hope it’s a useful read. The book's not on Amazon, but here's where you can order a copy.

​https://grandcanyonpress.co/4iWOuEU​

Sincerely,

Marylee MacDonald

P.S. If visiting Yosemite is on your bucket list, you will definitely want to do your part to preserve it. Then, before you visit, read about John Muir's history with the valley, his particular view of wilderness, and the park-as-empty-wilderness idea that became a template for national parks around the globe.