Sierra Club: One Teaching in Wilderness

Love for nature is a driving force in the life of Ken Horner, a retired biology teacher who is chairman of the 57,000-member Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club.

As head of the chapter, Horner will be among conservationists and environmentalists attending the fourth annual convention of Sierra Club California, an umbrella organization for the state’s Sierra Club chapters.

The convention, which is expecting about 100 voting delegates from throughout the state, is set for June 16 and 17 at Rancho El Chorro near San Luis Obispo, said Claudia Elliott, head of Sierra Club California.

Horner’s Angeles Chapter, which Elliott said is the largest in the state, encompasses 13 regional groups and a variety of special-activities sections in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Nationally, the Sierra Club counts about 500,000 members.

People who join the Sierra Club usually “bring in some sort of appreciation and enjoyment of nature,” said Horner, who stands 6-feet-4 and peers over Ben Franklin glasses.

The club, he said, gives members a chance to “join in protecting nature, the wilderness, (and) more recently, our total environment.”

The Sierra Club first came to Horner’s attention more than 20 years ago while he worked as a summer park ranger in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Eastern California.

At the time, the Sierra Club was involved in a heated battle to stop a proposed ski resort development in the Mineral King area. Horner joined the club because he wanted to keep the area pristine. The club eventually won that fight, he said, and--over the years--plenty of others too.

“We’ve done a lot,” he said.

In addition to activist environmental goals, the Sierra Club provides opportunities for people to explore wilderness areas through backpacking hikes, mule trips, ski trips and other excursions.

In fact, said Horner, naturalist John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 as an outings program in the Sierras.

“He felt the only way he could combat the political strengths of the stockmen and the lumbermen, the sheepherders . . . was by getting people out into the Sierras to see what was there and see what was happening, (to) learn to enjoy it and appreciate it,” said Horner.

“He taught on the trail, and then those people would come back and want to work to help protect and preserve, and that’s still the basic reason we have our outings.”

The primary emphasis of the Sierra Club, which Horner defines as a “political-action organization,” hasn’t changed much over the last two decades, but the club’s influence has.

Only 20 years ago, the organization was centered in California. But larger issues--such as fighting a dam on the lower reaches of the Colorado River--drew it into national issues and allowed the membership to spread across the United States.

Now, Horner said, the Sierra Club has joined the fray over international conservation problems, such as the destruction of tropical rain forests along the Amazon River in South America.

And many Sierra Club members who started out interested only in the outings have ended up as avid activists for the preservation of the environment.

‘Wilderness and wide-open spaces are no good if the total environment is bad,” said Horner. “These are the motivations, I think, for most people in the club.”

Horner, 67, grew up on his parent’s citrus ranch in Ontario.

In those days, orange groves covered land now blanketed with tract houses and industry. He remembers when the only air pollution in the area was caused by smudge pots lighted to keep the oranges from freezing.

After 34 years as a biology teacher and 27 years in the same classroom at West Covina High School, Horner decided not to give up his profession when he retired.

Instead, he chose a volunteer job at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens in Claremont that combines his vocation with his instinct to preserve the environment.

In his “open-air classroom” at the botanic gardens, Horner reveals the secrets of the wilderness to visitors.

Once in a while, Horner will gather some of his six grandchildren for an excursion to pass on his outdoor knowledge to them, just as he did for his three children--Dan, Debbie and Lori.

Dan Horner eventually turned all those summers spent in national parks into a job as a ranger at Yosemite National Park. Debbie (now Debbie Ripley) inherited her father’s academic bent and is an assistant to the dean of continuing education at the University of La Verne. Lori (now Lori Stalians) is a student and a homemaker.

For the last 15 years, Horner and his wife, Margarita, have lived in a peaceful Claremont neighborhood shaded by a tall canopy of old trees. He jokes that he’s never gotten very far in life, saying that except for two years of military service, “I’ve lived within five miles of where I was born.”

But Horner has watched Southern California change over the years. The constant influx of newcomers with no emotional ties to the land, he said, makes the Sierra Club’s mission even more important.

“That’s one of the reasons for our outings--to get them out there and try and develop those ties,” he said.

In spite of the complicated and overwhelming nature of many environmental issues facing Earth’s inhabitants today, Horner remains a “pessimistic optimist” about the future of the planet. And he has no desire to flee his urban environment for the peace and solitude of the wilderness.

“Basically, I’m a social animal,” said Horner. Besides, “you don’t solve a problem by running away from it. You run away from a problem, sooner or later it catches up with you.”

* The fourth annual convention of Sierra Club California for all state Sierra Club chapters, from noon Saturday , June 16, to 10 a.m. Sunday, June 17, at Rancho El Chorro near San Luis Obispo. The public is invited, but registration is necessary, (818) 767-5983. For information on the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club, call (213) 387-4287.