"I hope the United States of America is not so rich that she can afford to let these wildernesses pass by, or so poor that she cannot afford to keep them."
- Margaret "Mardy" Murie, 1902-2003
Wilderness lost a matchless champion on October 19, 2003, with the death of Margaret Murie at her home in Moose, Wyoming. She was 101.
Mardy, as she was known to all of us, stood as the inspiration, the mentor, the steadfast reminder for several generations of American wilderness advocates. Wilderness for Mardy was not avocation or abstraction. It was a life.
Mardy was born in Seattle in 1902 and moved with her family to Fairbanks, Alaska, while still a youth. In 1924, she became the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Also in 1924, she married naturalist Olaus Murie. They began a partnership that would literally change the face of American land protection over the next half century and beyond.
The Muries moved to Moose, Wyoming, in 1924 where Olaus would study elk. They built a log cabin there and it remained Mardy's home for the balance of her remarkable life. The Muries had three children.
Olaus left the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1944 to become director of The Wilderness Society, a post he held until 1962. He worked from their home in Moose, which became the organization's headquarters. A snippet from the Spring 1959 issue of "The Living Wilderness" offers a glimpse of their lives in those years:
"Just came in from a thrilling encounter with a moose," Mardy wrote. "I got several pictures of Olaus close to her, but then the moose decided this was enough and made a run at Olaus. He just stood there and yelled when she was about 10 feet from him. She swerved and retreated but only a few feet, and kept pacing up and down while we made a dignified retreat. I didn't run-but I didn't stand still, either!"
It is hard for those blessed to know her, either in person or through her books, to imagine that Mardy ever stood still. In those early years, she was quiet partner to Olaus, always in the background, but ever influential. The work of the still-young Wilderness Society in those days was principally that of organizing the American conservation community in support of what would become the Wilderness Act of 1964. Olaus died shortly before the measure became law; Mardy was present when President Lyndon Johnson signed it.
After his death, Mardy emerged in her own right as a leader in American land protection. She joined The Wilderness Society's Governing Council shortly thereafter.
Alaska was always uppermost in Mardy's mind. In 1956, she and Olaus spent a summer on the south slope of the Brooks Range. The fact that that place is now part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge owes much to the couple's impassioned advocacy for its protection. In 1960, the Muries received a telegram with word that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be created. She said later that she'd only seen Olaus cry twice; that was one of them.
Mardy also threw her energy into the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Act that became law in 1980, protecting millions of acres of wild Alaska as parks and refuges. "When I was a child," she once recalled, "Alaska seemed too vast and wild ever to be changed, but now we are coming to realize how vulnerable this land is. I hope we have the sensitivity to protect Alaska's wilderness..."
For 60 years, the Murie cabin in Moose has been a place of pilgrimage. That was so while Olaus was alive and continued virtually until Mardy's death. In one of her books, "Wapiti Wilderness," Mardy wrote of that:
"Every conservationist or friend of a conservationist, every biologist or friend of a biologist who happen to be travelling through Jackson Hole will come to call..."
Visitors to the ranch "have been fed a diet of wisdom, passion, and a good bowl of soup or homemade cookies," one description noted. The stream of visitors continued until Mardy became too frail to receive them.
A glittering array of awards has honored Mardy's inspirational life of conservation leadership: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998; the National Wildlife Federation's J.N. Ding Darling Conservationist of the Year award in 2002; The Wilderness Society's Robert Marshall Conservation Award in 1996. And the Murie Ranch is now the home of the Murie Center, dedicated to the example Mardy set for us all.
The honor that would count most with Mardy, though, would be for us to continue her work as she herself lived it: with passion and courage, but with generosity and kindness, in defense of wild places and wild things. Her life and her spirit endure in the very wilderness she worked so hard to leave us. Nonetheless, we shall miss her greatly.
For More Information
