[PW] Environmental story/quotation stumper

[Kathleen Stipek]

Sounds like something Thoreau would have reported, although I may be the
only person in the USA who was in college in the '60s and did not read
him so can't give an exact citation.

Kathleen Stipek
Alachua County Library District
401 East University Avenue
Gainesville, Florida 32601
352-334-3931  (fax) 352-334-3948
 
     --Non, merci.
       Cyrano de Bergerac
 

-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-fm-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-fm-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On Behalf Of
Nancy Lucchese
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 11:49 AM
To: list at project-wombat.org
Subject: [PW] Environmental story/quotation stumper

And a good day to you, fellow librarians!

I just recieved this question via email:

*I once read in the writings of one of the great conservationists
perhaps John Muir or some one of his stature a simple little story that
stuck with me. One day, he (?  Muir ?) was walking in a grove of maple
trees and found a rusted  syrup pail that had collected stagnate water.
Into it many creatures including a mouse had crawled and died. It was
black and smelly and filled with death and corruption. The man kicked
the pail over and left. A couple days latter he returned and found all
the corrupted mater when it was out in the open with the flow of air and
water and other animals had been brought back into the  cycle of nature
and purified. He then thought that the same  principle applied to
people. When in the flow of nature people were alive, when stagnating in
a small world with no input they  were dead. I have searched for years,
even on the internet, to find this story again, but can t. Can you help.
*
**
I wrote back to the emailer and told him that it was probably not Muir,
who spent most of his his life in the Western US, where there is no
maple syrup production and that it was likely someone in New England or
Vermont. (For some strange reason, Robert Frost came to my mind.)  Then
I suggested looking a few reference books- some quotation compilations
plus an reference work with environmentalist biographies.

Any other ideas? Or by sheer chance, does this story sound familiar to
anyone?
Thanks in advance!

Nancy
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