Meeting the father of American conservation

NORFOLK — Paul Barten, executive director of the Great Mountain Forest in Falls Village and Norfolk, spoke at the Norfolk Library Saturday, March 2, on George Perkins Marsh, considered the founder of American conservation.Barten joked at the beginning that he was pleased to welcome himself, as the scheduled speaker — a National Park Service employee — was unable to make the trip because government travel had been cut by the “sequester.”Marsh was born in 1801 in the Ottauquechee Valley near present-day Woodstock, Vt., and died in Italy in 1882. Barten noted that Marsh’s life spanned a period “two years before Lewis and Clark to the second, technological, phase of the Industrial Revolution.”James Clark, George’s father, had a substantial library and the boy learned to read by age 3.At age 7, he had damaged his eyes by reading by candle and lantern light, and on doctor’s orders was locked out of the library. So the unusually precocious boy, reading at a high school level already, was sent outside, where he “directed his attention to observing nature.”This seeming setback ultimately resulted in Marsh’s most influential work, “Man and Nature,” published in 1864.The book sold out the initial printing run of 1,000 copies — to everyone’s surprise, including the publisher, Barten said.Marsh wrote several other books in the course of his life, on a wide variety of topics.Barten said the author’s bibliography “would normally indicate a first-class dilettante,” but the books were considered authoritative works. His book on Icelandic grammar, for instance, was written for native speakers.Marsh had an impressive and diverse career. In 1816, he graduated from Phillips Academy, and in 1820 from Dartmouth. In 1825 he was admitted to the Vermont bar, and from 1843 to 1849 represented Vermont in the U.S. Congress as a member of the Whig Party. While in Congress, he prevented the unfinished Washington Monument from being turned into either an equestrian statue or an arch, and, with John Quincy Adams, helped to establish the Smithsonian Institution.A rare flop for Marsh was the creation of the U.S. Army Camel Corps, deployed unsuccessfully in the American Southwest.In 1849 Marsh was appointed by President Zachary Taylor as minister to the Ottoman Empire (he spoke the language) and in 1852-53 he was sent to Greece to negotiate the release of a group of America missionaries (again, he spoke the language).In 1854 he returned to Vermont, where he served on commissions overseeing the renovation of the state capitol building, fisheries and railways.On his return to Vermont, Barten said Marsh was “aghast” at the changes that had occurred — particularly changes wrought by deforestation.“It was abundantly clear to him that the New World was blindly following the path of the Old” in mismanaging natural resources, Barten said.The result was “Man and Nature,” which Barten described as “tough sledding” for a contemporary audience. He recommended a biography by David Lowenthal as a way to begin.Marsh’s work was the “scientific underpinning” of the American conservation movement, Barten said. He cited the creation of the Catskill and Adirondack Forest Preserves (and their inclusion in the New York state constitution); the 1891 Forest Preserve Act; and President Theodore Roosevelt’s creation of national forests as direct results of the ideas spelled out in “Man and Nature.” Marsh influenced major figures in the conservation movement, from John Muir to Gifford Pinchot. (Not to mention the current management of the Great Mountain Forest.)In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed Marsh minister to the Kingdom of Italy, where he saw verification of his theories about land management — and the lack of it — in an Alpine setting.Marsh died in 1882 at Vallombrosa, near Florence, after serving as envoy for 21 years. Barten showed a photo of the old man sitting in his 25,000 volume library.Wallace Stegner wrote that “[Man and Nature was] the rudest kick in the face that American initiative, optimism and carelessness had yet received.” Less pugnacious are Marsh’s own words: “With the disappearance of the forest, all is changed.”