Using what you learned in Chapter 1, you can begin by identifying the passage’s rhetorical situation. The speaker is naturalist and environmentalist John Muir speaking posthumously: the piece was published after his death. We don’t know who was meant to be the original audience or what the occasion. But we can consider the audience and occasion for the version published here. In an editorial in that issue of the Sierra Club Bulletin, the president of the club notes that Muir’s plea for the conservation of the redwoods (written years before) was “almost providentially preserved among his papers for the supreme occasion which has now arisen.” That occasion was a renewed effort to preserve the redwood forests in the early days of the Save the Redwoods League, whose efforts helped protect almost 190,000 acres of forests. The audience was comprised of the readers of the Sierra Club Bulletin, conservationists from all over the nation who supported the Sierra Club and read their publications. Muir’s purpose, to make the case for saving the redwoods, is served by his focus on the nearly mythical beauty of the trees, their spiritual qualities, and his belief in the innate goodness of man.

You can also consider the ways Muir appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. As founder of the organization, Muir was certainly known to the readers of the magazine, so his name and reputation quickly establish ethos for this audience. Nevertheless, when it was published, Muir’s piece was preceded by a note from John Campbell Merriam, founder, chairman, and chief executive of the Save the Redwoods League, in which he describes Muir as a “friend who fought so hard, so faithfully, and so long in this good cause.” Muir appeals to pathos by personifying the trees and making emotional pleas for their preservation. He appeals to logos, especially in paragraphs 3–5, by quantifying the magnitude of the redwood forests and the threat to them.