Afoot and Afloat
John Burroughs, Clifton Johnson
eBook
(, June 20, 2015)
John Burroughs (1837 – 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the U.S. conservation movement. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose resonance with the tone of its cultural moment explains its popularity.Many of Burroughs' essays first appeared in popular magazines. He is best known for his observations on birds, flowers and rural scenes, but his essay topics also range to religion, philosophy, and literature. Burroughs was a staunch defender of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but somewhat critical of Henry David Thoreau, even while praising many of Thoreau's qualities. His achievements as a writer were confirmed by his election as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In "Afoot and Afloat" Burroughs narrates a camping trip to Yellowstone with then President Theodore Roosevelt, and observes: "I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs, — men who regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints," — bears, cougars, and bobcats, — the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful and beautiful game. The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or a steer for the table at home."CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOHN BURROUGHS BY CLIFTON JOHNSON A SUMMER BOATING TRIP CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS This book originally published by Houghton Mifflin in 1913 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.