Eskişehir, Türkiye
Sunday 21 April 2024
“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
(John Muir)
Above: John Muir
John Muir (21 April 1838 – 1914), also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks“, was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.
His books, letters and essays describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions.
Above: Sierra Nevada aerial
His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park.
Above: Tunnel View, Yosemite Valley
His example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas.
Above: General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world (measured by volume), Sequoia National Park, California
The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization.
In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to his wife and the preservation of the Western forests.
As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, “The Treasures of the Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park“.
This helped support the push for US Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park.
The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including Presidents and Congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.
“Where does it start?
Muscles tense.
One leg a pillar, holding the body upright between the Earth and sky.
The other a pendulum, swinging from behind.
Heel touches down.
The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot.
The big toe pushes off and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again.
The legs reverse position.
It starts with a step and then another step and then another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking.
The most obvious and the most obscure thing in the world, this walking that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory and heartbreak.“
(Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
John Muir has been considered “an inspiration to both Scots and Americans“.
Muir’s biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become “one of the patron saints of 20th-century American environmental activity“, both political and recreational.
As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals. He has often been quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams.
“Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world.”, writes Holmes.
Above: John Muir
“We are not just losing the wild world.
We are forgetting it.
We are no longer noticing it.
We have lost the habit of looking and seeing and listening and hearing.
We are beginning to think it is not really our business.
We are beginning to act as if it is not there any more.”
(Simon Barnes, Rewild Yourself)
Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and environmental advocate, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for many people, making his name “almost ubiquitous” in the modern environmental consciousness.
According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified “the archetype of our oneness with the Earth“, while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was “saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism“.
On 21 April 2013, the first John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.
Above: John Muir
“Not until I went out could I tell that it was softly and coldly raining.
Everything more than two or three fields away was hidden.
Cycling is inferior to walking in this weather, because in cycling chiefly ample views are to be seen and the mist conceals them.
You travel too quickly to notice many small things.
You see nothing save the troops of elms on the verge of invisibility.
But walking I saw every small thing one by one, not only the handsome gateway chestnut just fully dressed, the pale green larch plantation where other chiff-chaff was singing and the tall elm tipped by a linnet pausing and musing a few notes, but every primrose and celandine and dandelion on the banks, every silvered green leaf of honeysuckle up in the hedge, every patch of brightest moss, every luminous drop on a thorn tip.
The world seemed a small place as I went between a row of elms and a row of beeches occupied by rooks.
I had a feeling that the road, that the world itself, was private, all theirs.
The state of the road under their nests confirmed me.
I was going hither and thither today in the neighbourhood of my stopping place, instead of continuing my journey.“
(Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring)
John Muir’s Birthplace is a four-story stone house in Dunbar, Scotland.
His parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye.
He was the third of eight children:
Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna.
Above: Muir was born in the small house at left. His father bought the adjacent building in 1842, and made it the family home in Dunbar, Scotland
His earliest recollections were of taking short walks with his grandfather when he was three.
In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles from the Wars of Scottish Independence or just wrestling on the playground, and hunting for birds’ nests (ostensibly to one-up his fellows as they compared notes on who knew where the most were located).
Author Amy Marquis notes that he began his “love affair” with nature while young, and implies that it may have been in reaction to his strict religious upbringing.
“His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous and punishable.“
Above: The Gutenberg Bible, published in the mid-15th century by Johannes Gutenberg, is the first published Bible.
But the young Muir was a “restless spirit” and especially “prone to lashings“.
As a young boy, Muir became fascinated with the East Lothian landscape, and spent a lot of time wandering the local coastline and countryside.
It was during this time that he became interested in natural history and the works of Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson.
Above: Scottish American naturalist Alexander Wilson (1766 – 1813)
“Just as the walking essay seems to have been the dominant form for writing about walking in the 19th century, so the lengthy tale of the very long walk is for the 20th century.
Perhaps the 21st will bring us something altogether new.
In the 18th century, travel literature was commonplace, but the long distance walkers left little written record of their feats.
Wordsworth’s walking tour across the Alps, as described in ‘The Prelude’, was not published until 1850.
‘The Prelude’ is not exactly travel writing.
Above: English poet William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
Thoreau wrote accounts of walks in which his own experience is charted with the same scientific acuity as is the natural world around him, but these are more nature essays than walking literature.
Above: American philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
The first significant account of a long distance walk for the sake of walking is John Muir’s ‘Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf’, describing a journey from Indianapolis to the Florida Keys in 1867 (published after his death in 1914….
(Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
Although he spent the majority of his life in America, Muir never forgot his roots in Scotland.
He held a strong connection with his birthplace and Scottish identity throughout his life and was frequently heard talking about his childhood spent amid the East Lothian countryside.
Above: Flag of Scotland
He greatly admired the works of Thomas Carlyle and poetry of Robert Burns.
Above: Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)
Muir was known to carry a collection of poems by Burns during his travels through the American wilderness.
Above: Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)
He returned to Scotland on a trip in 1893, where he met one of his Dunbar schoolmates and visited the places of his youth that were etched in his memory.
He never lost his Scottish accent since he was already 11 years old when he and his family emigrated to America.
Above: High Street, Dunbar, Scotland
“Mammals you never knew existed will enter your world.
Birds hidden in the treetops will shed their cloak of anonymity.
With a single movement of your hand you can make reptiles appear before you.
Butterflies you never saw before will bring joy to every sunny day.
Creatures of the darkness will enter the light of your consciousness.
As you take on new techniques and a little new equipment, you will discover new creatures and, with them, areas of yourself that have been dormant.
Once put to use, they wake up and start working again.
You become wilder in your mind and in your heart.
That’s the real magic.
You wake up the part of you that slept.
It was there all along.
It needed only the smallest shake, the gentlest nudge to become part of your waking self.
There is wildness in us all, but in most of us it is latent, sleeping, unused.
Wild we are in our deeper selves.
We are hunter-gatherers in suits and dresses and jeans and T-shirts.
We have been civilized – tame – for less than 1% of our existence as a species.“
(Simon Barnes, Rewild Yourself)
In 1849, Muir’s family immigrated to the US, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm.
It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Above: Looking north at John Muir’s Fountain Lake Farm, 7 miles south of Montello, Wisconsin, USA on County Highway F.
Muir’s father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in faith and practice, leading to their immigration and joining a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement, called the Disciples of Christ.
By the age of 11, the young Muir had learned to recite “by heart and by sore flesh” all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament.
In maturity, while remaining a deeply spiritual man, Muir may have changed his orthodox beliefs.
He wrote:
“I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization.
They went away of their own accord without leaving any consciousness of loss.”
Elsewhere in his writings, he described the conventional image of a Creator “as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater.”
Above: Logo of the Church of Scotland
“I walk regularly for my soul and my body tags along.”
(Sarah Ban Breathnach)
Above: US writer Sarah Ban Breathnach
When he was 22 years old, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own way for several years.
There, under a towering black locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany lesson.
A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant.
Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography.
“This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm.”
As a freshman, Muir studied chemistry with Professor Ezra Carr and his wife Jeanne.
They became lifelong friends and Muir developed a lasting interest in chemistry and the sciences.
Above: American Professor Ezra Slocum Carr (1819 – 1894)
Muir took an eclectic approach to his studies, attending classes for two years but never being listed higher than a first-year student due to his unusual selection of courses.
Records showed his class status as “irregular gent” and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later wanderings.
Above: John Muir
“Even in the 21st century you can be where the wild things are.
These days, non-human life always seems to be just over the horizon, just beyond the threshold of our understanding, just a little bıt short of our awareness – but with the smallest alteration all this can change.
The lost world can be found.
The hidden creatures that share our planet can be brought before us glowing in gold and scarlet.“
(Simon Barnes, Rewild Yourself)
In 1863, his brother Daniel left Wisconsin and moved to Southern Ontario (then known as Canada West in the United Canadas), to avoid the draft during the US Civil War.
Muir left school and travelled to the same region in 1864, and spent the spring, summer, and fall exploring the woods and swamps, and collecting plants around the southern reaches of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay.
Above: Main body of Georgian Bay highlighted on the map of the Great Lakes
Muir hiked along the Niagara Escarpment, including much of today’s Bruce Trail.
Above: Niagara Escarpment (in red)
(The Bruce Trail is a hiking trail in southern Ontario, Canada, from the Niagara River to the tip of Tobermory, Ontario.
The main trail is more than 890 km (550 mi) long and there are over 400 km (250 mi) of associated side trails.
The Trail mostly follows the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, one of the 19 UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves in Canada.
Above: Dundas Peak, Bruce Trail, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
The land the trail traverses is owned by the Government of Ontario, local municipalities, local conservation authorities, private landowners, and the Bruce Trail Conservancy (BTC).
The Bruce Trail is the oldest and longest marked hiking trail in Canada.
Its name is linked to the Bruce Peninsula and Bruce County, through which the Trail runs.
The Trail is named after the county, which was named after James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin who was Governor General of the Province of Canada from 1847 to 1854.
Above: James Bruce (Lord Elgin) (1811 – 1863)
There are many waterfalls along the Bruce Trail, where streams or rivers flow over the Niagara Escarpment.
Above: Waterfalls along the Bruce Trail
Niagara Falls, by far the most famous water feature in the area, can be reached by a side trail of the Bruce Trail proper.
Above: A view of the American, Bridal Veil and Horseshoe Falls from the Presidential Suite of the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
There is also a wide range of plant and wildlife along the trail, including slow-growing centuries-old coniferous trees right on the limestone lip of the Escarpment itself.
The Cheltenham Badlands is a natural feature exposed by human activity, namely farming.
Above: Cheltenham Badlands, Caledon, Ontario
The Bruce Trail and the Escarpment run through some of the most populated areas of Ontario, with an estimated 7 million people living within 100 km (62 mi).
Golf courses, housing, and quarries are all examples of the threatening impact that this many people have on the natural environment.
The popularity of the Trail itself, especially near urban areas, and the careless attitude of some of its users also paradoxically threaten the quality and viability of the Trail.
The trail begins in the Niagara Peninsula of Southern Ontario in Queenston, Ontario, on the Niagara River, not far from Niagara Falls.
Above: The Niagara Peninsula (in pink)
The cairn marking its southern terminus is in a parking lot, about 160 metres (520 ft) from General Brock’s Monument on the easterly side of the monument’s park grounds.
Above: Queenston Heights Park
Above: British General Isaac Brock (1769 – 1812)
Above: Bruce Trail Southern Terminus Cairn
From there, it travels through St. Catharines where it passes through wine country near the Short Hills Bench.
It continues due north through the major towns or cities of Hamilton, Burlington, Milton, Halton Hills, Walters Falls, Owen Sound, Wiarton, and finally Tobermory.
Above: The approximate route of the Bruce Trail (in green)
It passes through parks operated by various levels of government, including Woodend Conservation Area in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Battlefield Park in Stoney Creek, Dundas Valley Conservation Area in Dundas, the Hamilton-Brantford Rail Trail, Mount Nemo Conservation Area, Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area, Crawford Lake Conservation Area, Mono Cliffs Provincial Park, and the Bruce Peninsula National Park, which is located between Georgian Bay and Lake Huron near the northern tip of Bruce Peninsula.
Its northern terminus is in Tobermory, the jumping off point for Fathom Five National Marine Park.
Above: Bruce Trail Northern Terminus Cairn
Approximately half of the Trail runs through public land.
In order to make a complete connection, the Trail runs partly on private property and partly on road allowances.
When going through private property, the BTC has made agreements with landowners to allow Trail users to pass through.
Using roads is not the best route for the Trail.
In these sections, the BTC is involved in acquiring land along what it calls the “optimum route“.
Currently headquartered at 55 Head Street in Dundas, the BTC marks and maintains the main trail as well as many side trails.
Trail maintenance includes building bridges over streams and gullies, building stairs and switchbacks to climb slopes, building stiles over fences, and rerouting portions of the Trail that have become worn through overuse.
Volunteers inspect, repair, and build footbridges, retaining walls, stiles, and handholds along their section of the route.
The BTC and subsidiary clubs offer badges for those hikers who complete the whole Trail or any of its sections under prescribed conditions.
The main Trail is marked with the BTC logo, a white lozenge with black text and drawings for the Bruce Trail and an upward pointing arrow, which does not act as a part of a navigational marker.
The actual blazes for the main trail are white markings, approximately 3 cm (1 in) wide by 8 cm (3 in) high, with turns indicated by stacking two blazes off centre to indicate the direction to take.
The blazes for the 300 km (190 mi) of associated side trails are similar, except they are blue.
In 2012, adventure seekers Fred Losani, Peter Turkstra, Mark Maclennan, and Teemu Lakkasuo went on a quest to raise funds and awareness for inner-city food and nutrition programs in Hamilton, as well as the Bruce Trail Conservancy as they celebrate 50 years.
The adventure began 24 September 2012, in Queenston, in the Niagara region, and ended approximately one month later in Tobermory.
Along the way the hikers had the opportunity to walk with students, interact via live webcam and satellite phone transmissions, and educate students about the importance of proper nutrition, healthy living, and maintaining the Bruce Trail.)
With his money running low and winter coming, Muir reunited with his brother Daniel near Meaford, Ontario, who persuaded him to work with him at the sawmill and rake factory of William Trout and Charles Jay.
Above: Meaford, Ontario
Muir lived with the Trout family in an area called Trout Hollow, south of Meaford, on the Bighead River.
While there, he continued “botanizing“, exploring the escarpment and bogs, collecting and cataloging plants.
One source appears to indicate he worked at the mill/factory until the summer of 1865, while another says he stayed on at Trout Hollow until after a fire burned it down in February 1866.
Above: Bighead River, Trout Hollow, Ontario
(The Georgian Bay community of Meaford, the centre of a prosperous resort and fruit-growing region was the birthplace of the classic children’s novel Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography (1894), which is cast in the form of a dog’s narration of his own life story.
The book’s author, Margaret Marshall Saunders, was inspired to write it during a visit to Meaford in 1892, apparently to meet the family of a Miss Moore, her brother’s future wife.
Miss Moore’s father, William Moore, was a local miller, who owned the real Beautiful Joe.
He told Saunders how he had saved the dog from a cruel owner who had cut off his ears and tail.
The dog was probably still alive at the time.
Saunders is said to have spent as long as six months here, gathering material for the story suggested to her by this incident.
The book was completed while Saunders, an avid and restless traveller, was staying in a small Massachusetts town near Boston that served as the model for the fictional Fairport, where she set Beautiful Joe.
Beautiful Joe Park, on Victoria Crescent near Big Head River, surrounds the burial place of Beautiful Joe.
A provincial historical plaque has been placed on a stone marker over his grave.)
“I did find Calypso — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps.
I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come.
I sat down beside them and wept for joy.“
(John Muir)
Above: John Muir
In March 1866, Muir returned to the US, settling in Indianapolis to work in a wagon wheel factory.
He proved valuable to his employers because of his inventiveness in improving the machines and processes.
He was promoted to supervisor, being paid $25 per week.
Above: Downtown Indianapolis, Indiana
“A first walk in any new country is one of the things which make Life on this planet worth being grateful for.“
(Charles William Beebe)
Above: American naturalist William Beebe (1877 – 1962)
In early March 1867, an accident changed the course of his life:
A tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye.
The file slipped and cut the cornea in his right eye and then his left eye sympathetically failed.
He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks to regain his sight, worried about whether he would end up blind.
When he regained his sight, “he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light“.
Muir later wrote:
“This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields.
God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons“.
From that point on, he determined to “be true to himself” and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants.
Above: John Muir
“I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot.
As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing.
I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche.
I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.“
(John Muir)
Above: John Muir
In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Kentucky to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.
He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the “wildest, leafiest and least trodden way I could find“.
When Muir arrived at Cedar Key, he began working for Richard Hodgson at Hodgson’s sawmill.
However, three days after accepting the job at Hodgson’s, Muir almost died of a malarial sickness.
After spending three months in an oft delirious state, Muir’s condition improved to such that he was able to move about the Hodgson’s house and look outside.
Due to their unending kindness in caring for his life, Muir stated that he “doubtless owe my life” to the Hodgsons.
“The South Muir walked through was an open wound still festering from the Civil War.
Civil War historians must be frustrated by Muir’s neglect of social observations for the sake of botanizing, though it is still the most populated of his many books.
Above: Images of the American Civil War (1861 – 1865)
The wilderness writings made him a kind of John the Baptist come back from a suddenly appealing wilderness to preach its wonders to the rest of us – wilderness because its Indigenous inhabitants had been forcibly removed and decimated before Muir arrived.
Muir is the American Evangelist of nature, adapting the language of religion to describe the plants, mountains, light and processes that he so loved.
Above: John the Baptist in the wilderness, Titian (1540)
As close an observer as Thoreau, Muir is far more apt to read religion into what he sees.
He was also one of the great mountaineers of the 19th century, achieving in his woolens and hobnailed boots feats that most with modern gear would be hard-pressed to follow.
Lacking Wordsworth’s poetic gifts and Thoreau’s radical critique, Muir nevertheless walked as they only imagined walking, for weeks alone in the wilderness, coming to know a whole mountain range as a friend and turning his passion into political engagement.
But that came decades after his walk in the South.
Above: John Muir
A Thousand Mile Walk is episodic as are most such walking books. In such travel literature there is no overarching plot, except for the obvious one of getting from Point A to Point B (and for the more introspective, the self-transformation along the way).
In a sense these books on walks for their own sakes are the literature of Paradise, the story of what can happen when nothing profound is wrong, and so the protagonist – healthy, solvent, uncommitted – can seek out minor adventure.
In Paradise the only things of interest are our thoughts, the character of our companions, and the incidents and the appearance of the surroundings.
Alas, many of these long distance writers are not fascinating thinkers.
It is a dubious premise that someone who would be dull to walk round the corner with must be fascinating for a six-month trek.
To hear about walking from people whose only claim on our attention is to have walked far is like getting one’s advice on food from people whose only credentials come from winning pie-eating contests.
Quantity is not everything.
But Muir has more to offer than quantity.
An acute and often ecstatic observer of the natural world around him, he says nothing at all about why he is walking A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, though it seems clear enough that it is because he is hardy, poor and possessed of botanical passions best fulfilled on foot.
But though he is one of history’s great walkers, walking itself is seldom his subject.
There is no well-defined border between the literature of walking and nature writing, but nature writers tend to make the walking implicit at best, a means for the encounters with nature which they describe, but seldom a subject.
Body and soul seem to disappear into the surrounding environment, but Muir’s body reappears when his Paradisiacal luck runs out and he starves waiting for money and later becomes mortally ill.”
(Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe“
Muir’s home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal, which started 1 July 1867 reflect the mood in which the late author and explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago.
No less does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, which might have startled any finder of the book, reveal the temper and the comprehensiveness of Muir’s mind.
He never was and never could be a parochial student of nature.
Even at the early age of 29 his eager interest in every aspect of the natural world had made him a citizen of the universe.
While this was by far the longest botanical excursion which Muir made in his earlier years, it was by no means the only one.
He had botanized around the Great Lakes, in Ontario, and through parts of Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois.
On these expeditions he had disciplined himself to endure hardship, for his notebooks disclose the fact that he often went hungry and slept in the woods, or on the open prairies, with no cover except the clothes he wore.
“Oftentimes”, he writes in some unpublished biographical notes,
“I had to sleep out without blankets, and also without supper or breakfast.
But usually I had no great difficulty in finding a loaf of bread in the widely scattered clearings of the farmers.
With one of these big backwoods loaves I was able to wander many a long, wild mile, free as the winds in the glorious forests and bogs, gathering plants and feeding on God’s abounding, inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread.
Only once in my long Canada wanderings was the deep peace of the wilderness savagely broken.
It happened in the maple woods about midnight, when I was cold and my fire was low.
I was awakened by the awfully dismal howling of the wolves, and got up in haste to replenish the fire.”’
It was not, therefore, a new species of adventure upon which Muir embarked when he started on his Southern foot-tour.
It was only a new response to the lure of those favorite studies which he had already pursued over uncounted miles of virgin Western forests and prairies.
One evening in early January 1868, Muir climbed onto the Hodgson house roof to watch the sunset.
He saw a ship, the Island Belle, and learned it would soon be sailing for Cuba.
Muir boarded the ship.
Above: Flag of Cuba
While in Havana, he spent his hours studying shells and flowers and visiting the botanical garden in the city.
Above: Havana (La Habana), Cuba
Afterwards, he sailed to New York City and booked passage to California.
“Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.“
(John Muir)
Above: New York City
In 1878, Muir served as a guide and artist for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey on the survey of the 39th parallel across the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah.
“One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste.
And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out.
It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty.
We soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspeakable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
Finally settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about.
Above: San Francisco, California
“The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity.
The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
Seeing it for the first time, Muir notes that he was “overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower“.
He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season.
Above: The Dead Giant, Yosemite National Park, California, 1873
“So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert.
And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount Dana, and hiked an old trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.
Above: Cathedral Peak, Yosemite National Park, California
Above: Mount Dana, Yosemite National Park, California
The John Muir Trail (JMT) (Paiute: Nüümü Poyo, N-ue-mue Poh-yo) is a long-distance trail in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, passing through Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.
It is named after John Muir.
Above: John Muir
From the northern terminus at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley and the southern terminus located on the summit of Mount Whitney, the trail’s length is 213.7 miles (343.9 km), with a total elevation gain of approximately 47,000 feet (14,000 m).
Above: Happy Isles, Yosemite National Park, California
For almost all of its length, the trail is in the High Sierra backcountry and wilderness areas.
Above: Hikers approach the southern end of the John Muir Trail. The Mount Whitney summit plateau can be seen in the distance.
For about 160 miles (260 km), the trail is coincident with the longer Pacific Crest Trail.
The vast majority of the Trail is within designated wilderness.
The Trail passes through large swaths of alpine and high mountain scenery, and lies almost entirely at or above 8,000 feet (2,400 m) in elevation.
The Trail sees about 1,500 thru-hiking attempts each year (including Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers), many fewer than the number of attempts on comparable walks such as the southern portion of Appalachian Trail or the Way of St. James.
Above: Map of the travels of St. James in Western Europe
The John Muir Trail has been described as “America’s most famous trail“.
Above: Images of the John Muir Trail
“Everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water.
Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches.
The air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance.
Water streams carrying rocks.
While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature’s warm heart.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
Muir built a small cabin along Yosemite Creek, designing it so that a section of the stream flowed through a corner of the room so he could enjoy the sound of running water.
“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest!
Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.
Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day.
Whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
He lived in the cabin for two years and wrote about this period in his book My First Summer in the Sierra (1911).
“Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where.
Life seems neither long nor short.
We take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars.
This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
Muir’s biographer, Frederick Turner, notes Muir’s journal entry upon first visiting the valley and writes that his description “blazes from the page with the authentic force of a conversion experience“.
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.“
(John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra)
“Yosemite is a major historical site, not least for the history of walking, mountaineering and the environmental movement.
Dorothy and William Wordsworth walking together through the Pennines just before the 19th century began seem lonely figures, choosing an unpopular activity in an unpopulated countryside.
Above: William and Dorothy Wordsworth
(Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way is a 2012 non-fiction book by the Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage.
It chronicles his attempt to walk the long-distance trail the opposite way to that usually taken, from north to south.
Along the way, he takes no money, stays with strangers, and gives poetry readings to pay his expenses.
The book is illustrated with Armitage’s photographs taken along the route.
Two of his poems are included in the chapters about the places the poems describe.
The book was warmly received by critics in British newspapers.
They note that it fits into the tradition of slightly eccentric mid-life journeys, as well as of the productive effect of walking on poetry.
They enjoyed the humorous accounts of British interiors and of hazards including weird fogs, bulls, blisters, clogging mud, and a university friend who pops up and cadges free board and lodging.
The book chronicles the poet’s walk along the Pennine Way from its usual end-point, Kirk Yetholm, at its northern end in Scotland, southwards to his home village of Marsden and onwards into the Peak District.
He starts out in troubadour style with no money, intending to live by his poetry alone, but having publicised his intentions and solicited offers of accommodation.
These were efficiently organised by his friend and fellow poet Caroline Hawkridge with “enthusiasm, optimism and managerial panache“.
Along the way, he stays with strangers each night, who provide food and accommodation, and at each stopping-point he gives a poetry reading, which is free to enter but with a closing collection to pay his expenses.)
John Muir tramping across Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada in the decades after his arrival in California in 1868 seems part of that tradition of solitary wandering, pursuing the aesthetic while those allaround pursued the utilitarian.
To pretend that the world is a garden is an essentially apolitical act, a turning away from the woes that keep it from being one.
But to try and make the world a garden is often a political endeavour and it is this taste that the more activist walking clubs have taken up.
Walking in the landscape had long been considered a vagueşy virtuous act, but Muir and his Sierra Club had at last defined that virtue as defence of the land.
Walking became the ideal way of being in the world out of doors, relying on one’s own feet, neither producing nor destroying.
Muir believed that those who spent time in the mountains would come to love them and that that love would be an active love, a love willing to go into political battle to save them.
Muir took a stand against anthropocentrism, against the idea that trees, animals, minerals, soil, water, are there for humans to use, let alone to destroy.”
(Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
During these years in Yosemite, Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, with no prospects for a career, and had “periods of anguish“, writes naturalist author John Tallmadge.
He did marry in 1880 to Louisa Strentzel.
He went into business for 10 years with his father-in-law managing the orchards on the family 2,600-acre farm in Martinez, California.
John and Louisa had two daughters, Wanda Muir Hanna and Helen Muir Funk.
Above: John Muir with wife (Louisa Wanda Strentzel) and children Wanda and Helen, 1888
“Every day at dawn my father used to take us for the most romantic walks, telling us stories about the places as we went:
Up the steep hill to Cudham Church or to look for orchards at Orchis Bank or along a legendary smuggler’s track or to the Big Woods where Uncle William had been lost as a child.
The sudden valleys, the red red earth full of strangely shaped flints, the great lonely woods, the sense of remoteness, made it different from any other place we knew.
We were only 16 miles from London Bridge and yet it was so quiet that pf a cart came down our lane we all rushed to look over the orchard wall to see it go by.“
(Gwen Raverat, Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood)
He was sustained by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living.
On excursions into the back country of Yosemite, he travelled alone, carrying “only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson“.
He usually spent his evenings sitting by a campfire in his overcoat, reading Emerson under the stars.
Above: American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
“The mountains are calling and I must go.“
(John Muir)
As the years passed, he became a “fixture in the valley“, respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling.
Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting with Muir.
“Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
(John Muir)
Above: Yosemite Creek
Muir maintained a close friendship for 38 years with William Keith, a California landscape painter.
They were both born the same year in Scotland and shared a love for the mountains of California.
Above: Scottish American painter William Keith (1838 – 1911)
In 1871, after Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, with several friends and family, arrived in Yosemite during a tour of the Western United States.
The two men met, and according to Tallmadge:
“Emerson was delighted to find at the end of his career the prophet-naturalist he had called for so long ago.
And for Muir, Emerson’s visit came like a laying-on of hands.”
Emerson spent one day with Muir.
He offered him a teaching position at Harvard, which Muir declined.
Muir later wrote:
“I never for a moment thought of giving up God’s big show for a mere profship!“
Above: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Muir also spent time with photographer Carleton Watkins and studied his photographs of Yosemite.
Above: American photographer Carleton Watkins (1829 – 1916)
“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.“
(John Muir)
Pursuit of his love of science, especially geology, often occupied his free time.
Muir soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the Yosemite Valley and surrounding area.
This notion was in strong contradiction to the accepted contemporary theory, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (head of the California Geological Survey), which attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake.
Above: American geologist Josiah Whitney (1819 – 1896)
As Muir’s ideas spread, Whitney tried to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur.
Above: Mount Whitney, California
But Louis Agassiz, the premier geologist of the day, saw merit in Muir’s ideas and lauded him as “the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action“.
Above: Swiss American Louis Agassiz (1807 – 1873)
In 1871, Muir discovered an active alpine glacier below Merced Peak, which helped his theories gain acceptance.
Above: Merced Peak, California
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.“
(John Muir)
A large earthquake centered near Lone Pine in Owens Valley strongly shook occupants of Yosemite Valley in March 1872.
The quake woke Muir in the early morning.
He ran out of his cabin “both glad and frightened“, exclaiming:
“A noble earthquake!”
Other Valley settlers, who believed Whitney’s ideas, feared that the quake was a prelude to a cataclysmic deepening of the Valley.
Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides.
This event led more people to believe in Muir’s ideas about the formation of the Valley.
Above: Lone Pine fault scarp
The 1872 Owens Valley earthquake – also known as the Lone Pine earthquake – struck on 26 March at 02:30 local time in the Owens Valley (California, along the east side of the Sierra Nevada), with the epicenter near the town of Lone Pine.
Its magnitude has been estimated at Mw 7.4 to 7.9, with a maximum Mercalli Intensity of X (Extreme).
It was one of the largest earthquakes to hit California in recorded history and was similar in size to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Twenty-seven people were killed and 56 were injured.
Above: The original marker of the 1872 Lone Pine Earthquake victim’s common grave. The plaque reads as follows: “Disaster in 1872: On 26 March 1872, an Earthquake of major proportions shook Owens Valley and nearly destroyed the town of Lone Pine. Twenty seven persons were killed. In addition to single burials, 16 of the victims were interred in a common grave enclosed by this fence.”
“How terribly downright must seem the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society!“
(John Muir, “Flood-Storm in the Sierra“, Overland Monthly, Volume 14, #6, June 1875)
“In Yosemite Valley, one morning about two o’clock I was aroused by an earthquake; and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange, wild thrilling motion and rumbling could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, near the Sentinel Rock, both glad and frightened, shouting, “A noble earthquake!” feeling sure I was going to learn something.
The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, one had to balance in walking as if on the deck of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impossible the high cliffs should escape being shattered.
In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, which rises to a height of 3,000 feet, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a big pine, hoping I might be protected from outbounding boulders, should any come so far.
I was now convinced that an earthquake had been the maker of the taluses and positive proof soon came.
It was a calm moonlight night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or two save a low muffled underground rumbling and a slight rustling of the agitated trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains,
Nature were holding her breath.
Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar.
The Eagle Rock, a short distance up the valley, had given way, and I saw it falling in thousands of the great boulders I had been studying so long, pouring to the valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime and beautiful spectacle – an arc of fire 1,500 feet span, as true in form and as steady as a rainbow, in the midst of the stupendous roaring rock-storm.
The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and earnest, as if the whole earth, like a living creature, had at last found a voice and were calling to her sister planets.
It seemed to me that if all the thunder I ever heard were condensed into one roar it would not equal this rock roar at the birth of a mountain talus.
Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven when all the thousands of ancient canon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range were simultaneously given birth.
The main storm was soon over, and, eager to see the newborn talus, I ran up the valley in the moonlight and climbed it before the huge blocks, after their wild fiery flight, had come to complete rest.
They were slowly settling into their places, chafing, grating against one another, groaning, and whispering; but no motion was visible except in a stream of small fragments pattering down the face of the cliff at the head of the talus.
A cloud of dust particles, the smallest of the boulders, floated out across the whole breadth of the valley and formed a ceiling that lasted until after sunrise.
The air was loaded with the odor of crushed Douglas Spruces, from a grove that had been mowed down and mashed like weeds.
Sauntering about to see what other changes had been made, I found the Indians in the middle of the valley, terribly frightened, of course, fearing the angry spirits of the rocks were trying to kill them.
The few whites wintering in the valley were assembled in front of the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to steadier ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians.
It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause.
Earthquakes make everybody earnest.
Shortly after sunrise, a low blunt muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect.
Then the groups of talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime.
One in particular of these winter neighbors, a rather thoughtful speculative man, with whom I had often conversed, was a firm believer in the cataclysmic origin of the valley.
I now jokingly remarked that his wild tumble-down-and-engulfment hypothesis might soon be proved, since these underground rumblings and shakings might be the forerunners of another Yosemite-making cataclysm, which would perhaps double the depth of the valley by swallowing the floor, leaving the ends of the wagon roads and trails three or four thousand feet in the air.
Just then came the second series of shocks, and it was fine to see how awfully silent and solemn he became.
His belief in the existence of a mysterious abyss, into which the suspended floor of the valley and all the domes and battlements of the walls might at any moment go roaring down, mightily troubled him.
To cheer and tease him into another view of the case, I said:
“Come, cheer up.
Smile a little and clap your hands, now that kind Mother Earth is trotting us on her knee to amuse us and make us good.”
But the well-meant joke seemed irreverent and utterly failed, as if only prayerful terror could rightly belong to the wild beauty-making business.
Even after all the heavier shocks were over, I could do nothing to reassure him.
On the contrary, he handed me the keys of his little store and, with a companion of like mind, fled to the lowlands.
In about a month he returned, but a sharp shock occurred that very day, which sent him flying again.
The rocks trembled more or less every day for over two months, and I kept a bucket of water on my table to learn what I could of the movements.
The blunt thunder-tones in the depths of the mountains were usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements.
Judging by its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it is sometimes called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to the grand talus system of the range and did so much for the canon scenery.
Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created, as we have seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains a shake – changing not only the high peaks and cliffs, but the streams.
As soon as these rock avalanches fell every stream began to sing new songs, for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their channels, roughening and half damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where before they were gliding smoothly.
Some of the streams were completely dammed, drift-wood, leaves, etc., filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches.
These, again, after being gradually filled in, to smooth meadows, through which the streams now silently meander.
While at the same time some of the taluses took the places of old meadows and groves.
Thus rough places were made smooth and smooth places rough.
But on the whole, by what at first sight seemed pure confusion and ruin, the landscapes were enriched, for gradually every talus, however big the boulders composing it, was covered with groves and gardens, and made a finely proportioned and ornamental base for the sheer cliffs.
In this beauty work, every boulder is prepared and measured and put in its place more thoughtfully than are the stones of temples.
If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, tie your mountain shoes firmly over the instep, and with braced nerves run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed.
You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of rock-piles-a fine lesson.
All Nature’s wildness tells the same story.
Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, “convulsions of nature“, etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s love.”
(John Muir, Our National Parks)
In addition to his geologic studies, Muir also investigated the plant life of the Yosemite area.
In 1873 and 1874, he made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia.
In 1876, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) published Muir’s paper on the subject.
Above: The Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California
Muir made four trips to Alaska, as far as Unalaska and Barrow.
Above: Unalaska, Alaska
Above: Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska – the northernmost American city
Muir, Mr. Young (Fort Wrangell missionary) and a group of Native American guides first travelled to Alaska in 1879 and were the first Euro-Americans to explore Glacier Bay.
Above: Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
Muir Glacier was later named after him.
Above: Muir Glacier, Glacier Bay National Parl, Alaska
He travelled into British Columbia a third of the way up the Stikine River, likening its Grand Canyon to “a Yosemite that was a hundred miles long“.
Above: The Grand Canyon of the Stikine River, Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, Canada
Muir recorded over 300 glaciers along the River’s course.
He returned for further explorations in southeast Alaska in 1880.
In 1881 was with the party that landed on Wrangel Island on the USS Corwin and claimed that island for the US.
Above: Wrangel Island, Russia
He documented this experience in journal entries and newspaper articles — later compiled and edited into his book The Cruise of the Corwin.
In 1888, after seven years of managing the Strentzel fruit ranch in Alhambra Valley, California, his health began to suffer.
Above: Strentzel fruit ranch, Alhambra Valley, California
He returned to the hills to recover, climbing Mount Rainier in Washington and writing Ascent of Mount Rainier.
“I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden, but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in “creation’s dawn.”
The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.“
(John Muir)
Above: John Muir
Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor.
He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands.
Above: Yosemite Valley and the Merced River, California
“Man as he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed Nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.“
(John Muir)
He thought the greatest threat to the Yosemite area and the Sierra was domesticated livestock — especially domestic sheep, which he referred to as “hoofed locusts“.
In June 1889, the influential associate editor of The Century magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, camped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the damage a large flock of sheep had done to the grassland.
Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country.
He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite area into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park.
Above: American writer / diplomat Robert Underwood Johnson (1853 – 1937)
Oh, there’s a river that winds on forever
I’m gonna see where it leads
Oh, there’s a mountain that no man has mounted
I’m gonna stand on the peak
Out there’s a land that time don’t command
Wanna be the first to arrive
No time for ponderin’ why I’m a-wanderin’
Not while we’re both still alive
To the ends of the Earth would you follow me?
There’s a world that was meant for our eyes to see
To the ends of the Earth would you follow me?
If you won’t I must say my goodbyes to thee
Oh, there’s an island where all things are silent
I’m gonna whistle a tune
Oh, there’s a desert that size can’t be measured
I’m gonna count all the dunes
Out there’s a world that calls for me, girl
Headin’ out into the unknown
Wayfarin’ strangers and all kinds of danger
Please don’t say I’m going alone
To the ends of the Earth would you follow me?
There’s a world that was meant for our eyes to see
To the ends of the earth would you follow me?
If you won’t I must say my goodbyes to thee
I was a-ready to die for you, baby
Doesn’t mean I’m ready to stay
What good is livin’ a life you’ve been given
If all you do is stand in one place
I’m on a river that winds on forever
Follow ’til I get where I’m goin’
Maybe I’m headin’ to die but I’m still gonna try
I guess I’m goin’ alone
(Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth)
On 30 September 1890, the US Congress passed a bill that essentially followed recommendations that Muir had suggested in two Century articles, “The Treasures of the Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed National Park“, both published in 1890.
But to Muir’s dismay, the bill left Yosemite Valley under state control, as it had been since the 1860s.
Above: Sentinel Rock, Yosemite Valley, California
“I chanced to rise very early one particular morning this summer and took a walk into the country to divert myself among the fields and meadows, while the grass was new and the flowers in their bloom.
As at this season of the year every lane is a beautiful walk and every hedge full of nosegays, I lost myself, with a great deal of pleasure, among several thickets and bushes that were filled with a great variety of birds and an agreeable confusion of notes, which turned the pleasantest scene in the world to one who had passed a whole winter in noise and smoke.
The freshness of the dew that lay upon everything about me, with the cool breath of the morning, which inspired the birds with so many delightful instincts, created in me the same kind of animal pşeasure and made my heart overflow with such secret emotions of joy and satisfaction as are not to be described or accounted for.“
(Joseph Addison)
Above: English writer / politician Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)
In early 1892, Professor Henry Senger, a philologist at the University of California, Berkeley, contacted Muir with the idea of forming a local ‘alpine club‘ for mountain lovers.
Senger and San Francisco attorney Warren Olney sent out invitations “for the purpose of forming a ‘Sierra Club’.
Mr. John Muir will preside“.
On 28 May 1892, the first meeting of the Sierra Club was held to write articles of incorporation.
One week later Muir was elected President, Warren Olney was elected Vice-President, and a board of directors was chosen that included David Starr Jordan, president of the new Stanford University.
Muir remained President until his death 22 years later.
“Travel does not merely broaden the mind, it makes the mind.
Our early explorations are the raw materials of our intelligence.
Children need paths to explore, to take bearings on the Earth in which they live, as a navigator takes the bearings on familiar landmarks.
If we excavate the memories of childhood, we remember the paths first, things and people second – paths down the garden, the way to school, the way round the house, corridors through the bracken or long grass.
Tracking the paths of animals was the first and most important element in the education of early man.“
(Susannah Clapp, With Chatwin: Portrait of a Writer)
(
Charles Bruce Chatwin (1940 – 1989) was an English travel writer, novelist and journalist.
His first book, In Patagonia (1977), established Chatwin as a travel writer, although he considered himself instead a storyteller, interested in bringing to light unusual tales.
He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982), while his novel Utz (1988) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In 2008, The Times ranked Chatwin as number 46 on their list of “50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945“.
He wrote five other books, including The Songlines (1987), about Australia, which was a bestseller.
His work is credited with reviving the genre of travel writing, and his works influenced other writers.)
The Sierra Club immediately opposed efforts to reduce Yosemite National Park by half, and began holding educational and scientific meetings.
At one meeting in the fall of 1895 that included Muir, Joseph LeConte, and William R. Dudley, the Sierra Club discussed the idea of establishing ‘national forest reservations‘, which were later called National Forests.
The Sierra Club was active in the successful campaign to transfer Yosemite National Park from state to federal control in 1906.
“Why, one day in the country is worth a month in the town.“
(Christina Rossetti)
Above: English poet Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)
The fight to preserve Hetch Hetchy Valley was also taken up by the Sierra Club, with some prominent San Francisco members opposing the fight.
Eventually a vote was held that overwhelmingly put the Sierra Club behind the opposition to Hetch Hetchy Dam.
Above: Hetch Hetchy Valley
“The wood I walk in on this mild May day with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white starflowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet – what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene?
Those familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows – such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them.“
(George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss)
With population growth continuing in San Francisco, political pressure increased to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir.
Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy as stunning as Yosemite Valley.
Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the Valley.
Muir wrote to President Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project.
Above: Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)
Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department’s approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way.
Above: William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930)
After years of national debate, Taft’s successor Woodrow Wilson signed the bill authorizing the dam into law on 19 December 1913.
Above: Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924)
Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle.
He wrote to his friend Vernon Kellogg:
“As to the loss of the Sierra Park Valley [Hetch Hetchy] it’s hard to bear.
The destruction of the charming groves and gardens, the finest in all California, goes to my heart.“
Above: Stanford University Professor Vernon Kellogg (1867 – 1937)
“Walking connects you to the land.
It sews a seam between you and it that is very hard to unstitch.“
(Kelly Winters)
Above: Hetch Hetchy Panorama, Yosemite National Park
In July 1896, Muir became associated with Gifford Pinchot, a national leader in the conservation movement.
Pinchot was the first head of the US Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the people.
His views eventually clashed with Muir’s and highlighted two diverging views of the use of the country’s natural resources.
Pinchot saw conservation as a means of managing the nation’s natural resources for long-term sustainable commercial use.
As a professional forester, his view was that “forestry is tree farming“, without destroying the long-term viability of the forests.
Above: American forester / politician Gifford Pinchot (1865 – 1946)
Muir valued nature for its spiritual and transcendental qualities.
“No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness, as that which declares that the world as made especially for the uses of men.
Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms.
Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.“
(John Muir)
In one essay about the National Parks, he referred to them as “places for rest, inspiration, and prayers“.
He often encouraged city dwellers to experience nature for its spiritual nourishment.
“Rocks and waters are words of God and so are men.
We all flow from one fountain Soul.
All are expressions of one Love.
God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.“
(John Muir)
Both men opposed reckless exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests.
Even Muir acknowledged the need for timber and the forests to provide it, but Pinchot’s view of wilderness management was more resource-oriented.
Their friendship ended late in the summer of 1897 when Pinchot released a statement to a Seattle newspaper supporting sheep grazing in forest reserves.
Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation.
When Pinchot reiterated his position, Muir told him:
“I don’t want anything more to do with you.”
This philosophical divide soon expanded and split the conservation movement into two camps:
The “preservationists“, led by Muir; and Pinchot’s camp, who used the term “conservation“.
The two men debated their positions in popular magazines, such as Outlook, Harper’s Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, World’s Work, and Century.
Their contrasting views were highlighted again when the US was deciding whether to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Pinchot favored damming the valley as “the highest possible use which could be made of it“.
In contrast, Muir proclaimed:
“Damn Hetch Hetchy!
As well, damn for water tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the hearts of man.”
Above: Tueeulala Falls, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California
“One must always have one’s boots on and be ready to go.“
(Michel de Montaigne)
Above: French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592)
In 1899, Muir accompanied railroad executive E. H. Harriman and esteemed scientists on the famous exploratory voyage along the Alaska coast aboard the luxuriously refitted 250-foot (76 m) steamer, the George W. Elder.
Above: American businessman Edward Henry Harriman (1848 – 1909)
The Harriman Alaska expedition explored the coast of Alaska for two months from Seattle to Alaska and Siberia and back again in 1899.
Edward Harriman was one of the most powerful men in America and controlled several railroads.
At the time of his death Harriman controlled the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Saint Joseph and Grand Island, the Illinois Central, the Central of Georgia, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the Wells Fargo Express Company.
Estimates of his estate ranged from $150 million to $200 million.
That fortune was left entirely to his wife.
By early 1899, Harriman was exhausted.
His doctor told him that he needed a long vacation.
Harriman went to Alaska to hunt Kodiak bears.
Rather than go alone, he took a scientific community to explore and document the coast of Alaska.
He contacted Clinton Hart Merriam, the head of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy at the US Department of Agriculture, and one of the founders of the National Geographic Society.
Harriman told Merriam that he would cover the expenses of scientists, artists, and other experts who would join the voyage.
He asked Merriam to choose the scientific party.
Above: American naturalist Clinton Hart Merriam (1855 – 1942)
Historians question why Harriman wanted to go to Alaska.
Some think he was considering developing Alaskan resources.
Some think he was considering building a railroad to the Alaskan territory.
Some people at the time openly wondered if he was going to buy Alaska, or build a railroad bridge from Alaska to Siberia — a railroad around the world.
Nothing seemed impossible for Edward H. Harriman.
Above: Flag of Alaska
Merriam held a flurry of meetings and sent many telegrams.
He organized a broad range of experts:
Arctic experts, botanists, biologists and zoologists, geologists and geographers, artists, photographers, ornithologists and writers.
Harriman had the steamship SS George W. Elder refitted for the expedition.
The remodeled ship featured lecture rooms, a library with over 500 volumes on Alaska, a stable for animals, taxidermy studios, and luxury rooms for the team.
Some on the expedition referred to her as the George W. Roller, for its tendency to roll at sea, causing seasickness among the passengers.
Above: George W. Elder (steamship) at Sitka, Alaska
By the end of May, the ship’s guests and passengers had all arrived in Seattle.
Newspapers around the world ran front-page stories about the trip.
The Elder left Seattle on 31 May 1899.
Cheering crowds saw them off.
Above: Seattle, Washington
Their first stop was the Victoria Museum on Vancouver Island.
They then travelled farther north to Lowe Inlet, where they stopped to explore and document the wildlife.
On 4 June, they stopped in Metlakatla, the European-style settlement that was created by Scottish missionary William Duncan for the Alaskan indigenous people.
Above: English missionary William Duncan (1832 – 1918)
The scientists visited with Duncan in his home.
In the next two weeks the Elder stopped at several spots on Alaskan soil, including Skagway and Sitka.
Above: Aerial view of Skagway, Alaska
Above: Sitka, Alaska
They saw the results, both positive and negative, of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Above: Klondikers carrying supplies ascending the Chilkoot Pass, 1898
They continued to catalog plants, animals, and marine creatures, as well as geological and glacial formations.
Harriman had brought a graphophonic recording machine and used it to record a native Tlingit song.
Above: Chief Anotklosh of the Taku nation. He wears a woven Chilkan blanket of cedar bark and mountain goat wool and a European-style cap, and holds a carved wooden bird rattle. Photograph by W.H. Case, 1913, Juneau, Alaska
By 25 June, they had reached Prince William Sound.
They discovered an undocumented fjord in the northwest corner of the Sound.
They named it “Harriman Fjord.”
While the scientists had some control over where they stopped to explore, Harriman retained the final judgment.
He was anxious to hunt a bear, and he decided to head toward Kodiak Island when he heard that there were bears there.
On 7 July, they reached Popof Island in the Shumagin Islands.
Four of the scientists, Ritter, Saunders, Palache, and Kincaid (accompanied by guide Luther Kelly), decided to camp on Popof Island while the rest of the scientists continued on to Siberia.
This allowed them to make much more detailed notes about the area, rather than quick notes on frequent stops along the way.
Edward Harriman’s wife wanted to put her feet on Siberian soil, so the Elder continued northward.
Above: Union Fish Company codfish station at Pirate Cove on Popof Island
By 11 July, the ship had put into Plover Bay in Siberia.
Harriman, by this time, was impatient and ready to get back to work.
Above: East coast of Providence Bay above Plover Spit, Siberia, Russia, 1899
The Elder steamed southward, picking up the party on Popof Island.
On 26 July, the Elder made one last stop, at an abandoned Tlingit village at Cape Fox.
Above: Expedition members posed on the beach at Cape Fox Village, Alaska, 1899
On 30 July, the ship pulled into Seattle.
Above: Seattle, Washington
The expedition claimed to have discovered some 600 species that were new to science, including 38 new fossil species.
They charted the geographic distribution of many species.
They discovered an unmapped fjord and named several glaciers.
Gilbert’s work on glaciers represented new thinking in the field.
Above: American geologist Grove Karl Gilbert, “the father of geomorphology” (1843 – 1918)
Another legacy of the trip was the career of Edward Curtis.
On the trip, he developed a close friendship with George Grinnell, who was an expert on Native American culture.
Above: American anthropologist George Bird Grinnell
After the Expedition, Grinnell invited Curtis with him on a trip to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.
Curtis, moved by what was commonly believed to be a dying way of life, spent much of his career documenting Native American culture.
Above: American ethnologist / photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868 – 1952)
At first, John Muir found Harriman distasteful and his hunting barbaric.
But, over the course of the trip and afterward, the two became friends.
Years later, Muir recruited Harriman to help with governmental lobbying on National Park legislation.
Muir gave the eulogy at Harriman’s funeral in 1909.
In many ways, the Expedition was an intersection of 19th century science and 20th century science.
It often represented the best of the new century’s science, but it also showed how scientists thought in the previous century.
They foreshadowed practices of 20th century science by being an interdisciplinary team.
The wealth of disciplines represented on the voyage enabled them to work together to solve many pieces of the puzzle.
They also discussed the potential loss of the wilderness and the indigenous peoples.
They saw the remnants of the Yukon gold rush, and how self-serving treasure hunters were plundering the countryside and the dignity and viability of the indigenous cultures.
In many ways, they were firmly rooted in 19th century science.
In the 19th century, the common way to write scientific articles was to create endlessly long descriptions of the physical characteristics of plants or animals.
Most of the publications from the expedition followed this protocol.
This approach to biology withered in the early 20th century.
Above: US naturalist John Burroughs (1837 – 1921) and John Muir, on St. Matthew Island, Alaska, July 1899
Another example of 19th century thinking was their perspective on Indigenous cultures.
Their ethnocentric view regarded the Indigenous people as savages.
While the scientists remarked in horror that the Indigenous cultures were disappearing, they simultaneously felt that adopting modern European-style technology, dress, and customs would be a helpful step for them.
The intersection of 19th and 20th century science was evident among different opinions of those on the expedition.
Upon seeing the Indigenous peoples involved in salmon fishing operations and canning factories, those on the Elder felt different things.
Some saw the cannery operations as forced labor, akin to slavery.
Other expedition members saw the cannery operations as efficient and effective.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt accompanied Muir on a visit to Yosemite.
Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, California, for the train trip to Raymond.
The presidential entourage then travelled by stagecoach into the park.
While travelling to the Park, Muir told the President about state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley’s resources.
Even before they entered the Park, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management.
After entering the Park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the President asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite.
Muir and Roosevelt set off largely by themselves and camped in the back country.
The duo talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point, and were dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning.
It was a night Roosevelt never forgot.
He later told a crowd:
“Lying out at night under those giant Sequoias was like lying in a temple built by no hand of man, a temple grander than any human architect could by any possibility build.”
Muir, too, cherished the camping trip.
“Camping with the President was a remarkable experience“, he wrote.
“I fairly fell in love with him.”
Above: President Theodore Roosevelt (left) and nature preservationist John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. In the background, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, 1903.
“Part of the pleasure of any kind of walking for me is the very idea of goıng somewhere – on foot.“
(Ruth Rudner)
Above: Yosemite Valley, California
Muir then increased efforts by the Sierra Club to consolidate park management.
In 1906, Congress transferred Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the Park.
Above: Yosemite Falls and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California
Oh, it’s a mystery to me
We have a greed, with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
When you want more than you have
You think you need
And when you think more than you want
Your thoughts begin to bleed
I think I need to find a bigger place
‘Cause when you have more than you think
You need more space
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
Society, crazy indeed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
There’s those thinking, more or less, less is more
But if less is more, how you keeping score?
Means for every point you make, your level drops
Kinda like you’re starting from the top
You can’t do that
Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
Society, crazy indeed
I hope you’re not lonely without me
Society, have mercy on me
I hope you’re not angry if I disagree
Society, crazy indeed
I hope you’re not lonely
Without me
(Eddie Vedder, Society)
In his life, Muir published six volumes of writings, all describing explorations of natural settings.
Four additional books were published posthumously.
Several books were subsequently published that collected essays and articles from various sources.
Miller writes that what was most important about his writings was not their quantity, but their “quality“.
He notes that they have had a “lasting effect on American culture in helping to create the desire and will to protect and preserve wild and natural environments.”
His first appearance in print was by accident, writes Miller.
A person he did not know submitted, without his permission or awareness, a personal letter to his friend Jeanne Carr, describing Calypso borealis, a rare flower he had encountered.
The piece was published anonymously, identified as having been written by an “inspired pilgrim“.
Throughout his many years as a nature writer, Muir frequently rewrote and expanded on earlier writings from his journals, as well as articles published in magazines.
He often compiled and organized such earlier writings as collections of essays or included them as part of narrative books.
Muir’s friendship with Jeanne Carr had a lifelong influence on his career as a naturalist and writer.
They first met in the fall of 1860, when, at age 22, he entered a number of his homemade inventions in the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society Fair.
Carr, a fair assistant, was asked by fair officials to review Muir’s exhibits to see if they had merit.
She thought they did and “saw in his entries evidence of genius worthy of special recognition“, notes Miller.
As a result, Muir received a diploma and a monetary award for his handmade clocks and thermometer.
Above: Jeanne Carr
During the next three years while a student at the University of Wisconsin, he was befriended by Carr and her husband, Ezra, a professor at the same university.
According to Muir biographer Bonnie Johanna Gisel, the Carrs recognized his “pure mind, unsophisticated nature, inherent curiosity, scholarly acumen and independent thought“.
Jeanne Carr, 35 years of age, especially appreciated his youthful individuality, along with his acceptance of “religious truths” that were much like her own.
Muir was often invited to the Carrs’ home.
He shared Jeanne’s love of plants.
Above: Jeanne Carr
In 1864, he left Wisconsin to begin exploring the Canadian wilderness and, while there, began corresponding with her about his activities.
Carr wrote Muir in return and encouraged him in his explorations and writings, eventually having an important influence over his personal goals.
At one point she asked Muir to read a book she felt would influence his thinking, Lamartine’s The Stonemason of Saint Point.
It was the story of a man whose life she hoped would “metabolize in Muir“, writes Gisel, and “was a projection of the life she envisioned for him“.
According to Gisel, the story was about a “poor man with a pure heart“, who found in nature “divine lessons and saw all of God’s creatures interconnected“.
Above: French writer / statesman Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 – 1869)
After Muir returned to the US, he spent the next four years exploring Yosemite, while at the same time writing articles for publication.
During those years, Muir and Carr continued corresponding.
She sent many of her friends to Yosemite to meet Muir and “to hear him preach the gospel of the mountains“, writes Gisel.
The most notable was naturalist and author Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The importance of Carr, who continually gave Muir reassurance and inspiration, “cannot be overestimated“, adds Gisel.
It was “through his letters to her that he developed a voice and purpose“.
She also tried to promote Muir’s writings by submitting his letters to a monthly magazine for publication.
Muir came to trust Carr as his “spiritual mother“.
They remained friends for 30 years.
In one letter she wrote to Muir while he was living in Yosemite, she tried to keep him from despairing as to his purpose in life.
The value of their friendship was first disclosed by a friend of Carr’s, clergyman and writer G. Wharton James.
After obtaining copies of their private letters from Carr, and despite pleadings from Muir to return them, he instead published articles about their friendship, using those letters as a primary source.
In one such article, his focus was Muir’s debt to Carr, stating that she was his “guiding star” who “led him into the noble paths of life, and then kept him there“.
Abovee: Lake Tenaka, Yosemite Valley, California
Muir’s friend, zoologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, writes that Muir’s style of writing did not come to him easily, but only with intense effort.
“Daily he rose at 4:30 o’clock, and after a simple cup of coffee labored incessantly.
He groans over his labors.
He writes and rewrites and interpolates“.
Osborn notes that he preferred using the simplest English language, and therefore admired above all the writings of Carlyle, Emerson and Thoreau.
“He is a very firm believer in Thoreau and starts by reading deeply of this author.”
Above: US paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857 – 1935)
Osborn’s secretary, Marion Randall Parsons, also noted that:
“Composition was always slow and laborious for him.
Each sentence, each phrase, each word, underwent his critical scrutiny, not once but twenty times before he was satisfied to let it stand“.
Muir often told her:
“This business of writing books is a long, tiresome, endless job.”
Miller speculates that Muir recycled his earlier writings partly due to his “dislike of the writing process“.
He adds that Muir “did not enjoy the work, finding it difficult and tedious“.
He was generally unsatisfied with the finished result, finding prose “a weak instrument for the reality he wished to convey“.
However, he was prodded by friends and his wife to keep writing and as a result of their influence he kept at it, although never satisfied.
During his lifetime John Muir published over 300 articles and 12 books.
Muir wrote in 1872:
“No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to ‘know’ these mountains.
One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
In one of his essays, he gave an example of the deficiencies of writing versus experiencing nature.
Muir believed that to discover truth, he must turn to what he believed were the most accurate sources.
In his book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), he writes that during his childhood, his father made him read the Bible every day.
Muir eventually memorized three-quarters of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament.
Muir’s father read Josephus’ (AD 37 – 100) The War of the Jews to understand the culture of 1st-century Judea, as it was written by an eyewitness, and illuminated the culture during the period of the New Testament.
But as Muir became attached to the American natural landscapes he explored, Williams notes that he began to see another “primary source for understanding God:
The Book of Nature“.
According to Williams, in nature, especially in the wilderness, Muir was able to study the plants and animals in an environment that he believed “came straight from the hand of God, uncorrupted by civilization and domestication“.
As Tallmadge notes, Muir’s belief in this “Book of Nature” compelled him to tell the story of “this creation in words any reader could understand“.
As a result, his writings were to become “prophecy, for they sought to change our angle of vision“.
Williams notes that Muir’s philosophy and world view rotated around his perceived dichotomy between civilization and nature.
From this developed his core belief that “wild is superior“.
His nature writings became a “synthesis of natural theology” with scripture that helped him understand the origins of the natural world.
According to Williams, philosophers and theologians suggested that the “best place to discover the true attributes of deity was in Nature“.
He came to believe that God was always active in the creation of life and thereby kept the natural order of the world.
As a result, Muir “styled himself as a John the Baptist“, adds Williams, “whose duty was to immerse in ‘mountain baptism’ everyone he could“.
Williams concludes that Muir saw nature as a great teacher, “revealing the mind of God“, and this belief became the central theme of his later journeys and the “subtext” of his nature writing.
During his career as writer and while living in the mountains, Muir continued to experience the “presence of the divine in nature“, writes Holmes.
His personal letters also conveyed these feelings of ecstasy.
Historian Catherine Albanese stated that in one of his letters:
“Muir’s eucharist made Thoreau’s feast on woodchuck and huckleberry seem almost anemic.”
Muir was extremely fond of Thoreau and was probably influenced more by him than even Emerson.
Muir often referred to himself as a “disciple” of Thoreau.
During his first summer in the Sierra as a shepherd, Muir wrote field notes that emphasized the role that the senses play in human perceptions of the environment.
According to Williams, he speculated that the world was an unchanging entity that was interpreted by the brain through the senses, and, writes Muir:
“If the creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us we would never doubt that we were in another world.”
While doing his studies of nature, he would try to remember everything he observed as if his senses were recording the impressions, until he could write them in his journal.
As a result of his intense desire to remember facts, he filled his field journals with notes on precipitation, temperature, and even cloud formations.
However, Muir took his journal entries further than recording factual observations.
Williams notes that the observations he recorded amounted to a description of “the sublimity of Nature“, and what amounted to “an aesthetic and spiritual notebook“.
Muir felt that his task was more than just recording “phenomena“, but also to “illuminate the spiritual implications of those phenomena“, writes Williams.
Above: Yosemite Valley, California
For Muir, mountain skies, for example, seemed painted with light, and came to “symbolize divinity“.
He often described his observations in terms of light.
Muir biographer Steven Holmes notes that Muir used words like “glory” and “glorious” to suggest that light was taking on a religious dimension:
“It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the notion of glory in Muir’s published writings, where no other single image carries more emotional or religious weight“, adding that his words “exactly parallels its Hebraic origins“, in which Biblical writings often indicate a divine presence with light, as in the burning bush or pillar of fire, and described as “the glory of God“.
Above: Burning Bush (1650), Sébastien Bourdon, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Above: Joshua passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant (1800), Benjamin West.
Muir often used the term “home” as a metaphor for both nature and his general attitude toward the “natural world itself“, notes Holmes.
He often used domestic language to describe his scientific observations, as when he saw nature as providing a home for even the smallest plant life:
“The little purple plant, tended by its Maker, closed its petals, crouched low in its crevice of a home, and enjoyed the storm in safety“.
Muir also saw nature as his own home, as when he wrote friends and described the Sierra as “God’s mountain mansion“.
He considered not only the mountains as home, however, as he also felt a closeness even to the smallest objects:
“The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly.
No wonder when we consider that we all have the same Father and Mother“.
In his later years, he used the metaphor of nature as home in his writings to promote wilderness preservation.
Not surprisingly, Muir’s deep-seated feeling about nature as being his true home led to tension with his family at his home in Martinez, California.
He once told a visitor to his ranch there:
“This is a good place to be housed in during stormy weather, to write in, and to raise children in, but it is not my home.
Up there“, pointing towards the Sierra Nevada, “is my home“.
Above: Dana Fork, Sierra Nevada, California
In 1878, when he was nearing the age of 40, Muir’s friends “pressured him to return to society“.
Soon after he returned to the Oakland area, he was introduced by Jeanne Carr to Louisa Strentzel, daughter of a prominent physician and horticulturist with a 2,600-acre (11 km2) fruit orchard in Martinez, California, northeast of Oakland.
In 1880, after he returned from a trip to Alaska, Muir and Strentzel married.
John Muir went into partnership with his father-in-law John Strentzel, and for ten years directed most of his energy into managing this large fruit farm.
Although Muir was a loyal, dedicated husband, and father of two daughters, “his heart remained wild“, writes Marquis.
His wife understood his needs, and after seeing his restlessness at the ranch would sometimes “shoo him back up” to the mountains.
He sometimes took his daughters with him.
The house and part of the ranch are now the John Muir National Historic Site.
Above: John Muir House, Martinez, California
In addition, the W.H.C. Folsom House, where Muir worked as a printer, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Muir became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1903.
Above: William Henry Carmen Folsom House, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
Muir died, aged 76, at California Hospital in Los Angeles on 24 December 1914, of pneumonia.
Above: California Hospital, Los Angeles, California
Muir has been called the “patron saint of the American wilderness” and its “archetypal free spirit“.
“As a dreamer and activist, his eloquent words changed the way Americans saw their mountains, forests, seashores, and deserts“, said nature writer Gretel Ehrlich.
He not only led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks, but his writings presented “human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life“.
Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine, which published many of Muir’s articles, states that he influenced people’s appreciation of nature and national parks, which became a lasting legacy:
The world will look back to the time we live in and remember the voice of one crying in the wilderness and bless the name of John Muir.
He sung the glory of nature like another Psalmist, and, as a true artist, was unashamed of his emotions.
His countrymen owe him gratitude as the pioneer of our system of national parks.
Muir’s writings and enthusiasm were the chief forces that inspired the movement.
All the other torches were lighted from his.
Muir exalted wild nature over human culture and civilization, believing that all life was sacred.
Turner describes him as “a man who in his singular way rediscovered America, an American pioneer, an American hero“.
The primary aim of Muir’s nature philosophy, writes Wilkins, was to challenge mankind’s “enormous conceit“, and in so doing, he moved beyond the Transcendentalism of Emerson to a “biocentric perspective on the world“.
He did so by describing the natural world as “a conductor of divinity“, and his writings often made nature synonymous with God.
His friend, Henry Fairfield Osborn, observed that as a result of his religious upbringing, Muir retained “this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature are directly the work of God“.
In the opinion of Enos Mills, a contemporary who established Rocky Mountain National Park, Muir’s writings were “likely to be the most influential force in this century“.
Above: John Muir
Since 1970, the University of the Pacific has housed many of Muir’s books and personal papers, including journals, notes, correspondence, among others.
In 2019, the University of the Pacific was given full ownership of the Muir collection, which had been expanding over the years.
The university has a John Muir Center for Environmental Studies, the Muir Experience, as well as other programs related to Muir and his work.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.“
(Douglas Adams)
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikiquote
- Google Photos
- Rewild Yourself, Simon Barnes
- With Chatwin, Susannah Clapp
- The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
- Kindred and Related Spirits, edited by Bonnie Johanna Gisel
- “Ends of the Earth“, Lord Huron
- A Thousand Mile Walk to the Sierra, John Muir
- My First Summer in the Sierra, John Muir
- Our National Parks, John Muir
- The Cruise of the Corwin, John Muir
- The Mountains of California, John Muir
- The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, John Muir
- The Yosemite, John Muir
- Travels in Alaska, John Muir
- Picturesque California, John Muir
- Steep Trails, John Muir
- Wilderness Essays, John Muir
- Period Piece, Gwen Raverat
- Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit
- In Pursuit of Spring, Edward Thomas
- “Society“, Eddie Vedder
- John of the Mountains, edited by Linnie March Wolfe
- sierraclub.org
