Scot Miller has been photographing the Katahdin region for almost two decades, a body of work that he uses in a new book exploring a “circle of ideas” about America’s natural heritage.
“We are fortunate that we don’t have to be wealthy in America to have the opportunity to appreciate wild beauty,” said Miller, a photographer based in Texas who spoke at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, where his photo exhibit “Thoreau’s Maine Woods” can be seen at the Reed Gallery.
Miller’s new photography and philosophy book, “Emerson, Muir, Thoreau: A Photographic Trilogy of American Wildness”, is an attempt to “visually connect the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir and Henry David Thoreau” and pay homage to their effect on America’s open lands and conservation movement.
Miller’s book includes his photographs of Katahdin, the east branch of the Penobscot River and mountains of the American west such as Yosemite, juxtaposed with passages from Emerson’s “Nature,” Muir’s “American Forests” and Thoreau’s “Walking”.
“It’s difficult to imagine the modern conservation movement without their influence,” Miller said. “All three men were freethinkers.”
The book traces “circle of ideas” between the authors that “begins and ends with Emerson,” whose 1836 essay “Nature” was “one of the first and most important works in the emerging conservation movement,” Miller said. “It was thought-provoking. It was messing with the status quo.”
Emerson, a Massachusetts native, “advocated for a direct experience with nature” in contemplative, creative and philosophical language — “In the woods, is perpetual youth” — that captured people’s attention.
“There are parts where I would think he was writing after an acid trip in the 1960s,” Miller said. “You can just imagine what people were thinking 180 years ago reading this.”
As a senior at Harvard in 1837, Thoreau discovered Emerson and later came under his mentorship. Among other things, Emerson encouraged Thoreau to keep a daily nature journal, whose records of spring flower blooming have been used by modern researchers to track warm springs.
Thoreau built on Emerson’s foundation and helped bring the appreciation of nature as an activity to public appeal, at a time when many viewed natural resources “as endless,” Miller said.
Thoreau was “the first American writer to advocate for preserving lands and creating national preserves,” and he also was a “saunterer,” Miller said. “He pretty much walked every day when he could, at least in the afternoon, which I think is something we can all aspire to.”
Thoreau’s “Walking” essay wasn’t published until after his death in 1862. He spent more than a decade presenting it as a speech, which was quite popular, “espousing the joys and benefits of walking” and “celebrating America’s wild lands,” Miller said.
Muir, a Scottish-born naturalist who founded the Sierra Club and lived to 1914, was influenced by both Emerson and Thoreau and channelled their New England-born philosophies “into the political process” as the vast American West was being allocated. Muir’s “American Forests” in 1897 was a “steaming rebuke to business interests” and helped support an executive order by Grover Cleveland setting up 13 national forest preserves in western states, Miller said.
These days, the modern conservation movement is facing uncertainty and challenges in pursuit of more open and public lands, and rural communities find themselves in disagreement over managing forests and open lands. But Miller said he’s optimistic about the future.
“We’ve inherited a wonderful legacy of wild spaces that are open to all,” said Miller. “It’s up to us, in my estimation, to carry this forward to new generations.”
Miller’s exhibit at University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Reed Gallery runs through early January.
