I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news. - John Muir
This month, we are celebrating a few of the authors, journalists, and poets associated with places that we now know as part of the National Park System. The NPS helps to preserve the legacy and perspective of writers through park cultural landscapes, allowing us to envision the places in which their words were imagined.
Some of these written expressions are our first introduction to a place, leading us to it or reflecting the historic character of a park cultural landscape. Others reveal the author’s unique relationship to those surroundings. Sometimes, the landscape acts as the entryway to discover the writing, giving dimension to the words.
Whether you are planning summer reading or a summer road trip, we hope you find new places to explore in our landscapes of literature mini-series.
Follow along, catch up, or add you own favorites with #literarylandscapes.
24th December 1914 saw the death of John Muir, noted naturalist, explorer, writer, and geologist.
John Muir was born in Dunbar, East Lothian on April 21, 1838. He was the third of Daniel and Anne Gilrye Muir’s eight children. Muir recalled in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913) that his father was religious and extremely strict, keeping his children in line with frequent whippings. In 1849 the Muirs moved to the United States and bought farmland near Portage, Wisconsin. Muir’s father worked him hard on the farm and would not allow him to waste daylight hours on reading. Muir asked for and received permission to rise early in order to study. He invented an “early-rising machine” that dumped him out of bed at one o'clock each morning so that he could read. In 1860 he displayed this and other inventions at the Wisconsin State Fair.
In 1861 Muir entered the University of Wisconsin to study science. He also tried studying medicine but soon gave it up for various jobs that challenged his skill at inventing things. His interest in nature, particularly plants, was growing; he made frequent trips throughout Wisconsin and nearby states to observe plant life. In 1867 he gave up his own inventions “to study the inventions of God.” He set out on the walk described in A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916). Actually, he went as far as Cuba. In 1868 he travelled to San Francisco, California, and worked on a sheep ranch. Exploring Yosemite Valley occupied much of his next six years. On all of his explorations he kept a journal of scientific and personal observations and also pencil drawings.
In 1880, after returning from exploring in Alaska, Muir married Louie Wanda Strentzel, the daughter of a Polish plant grower. They would have two children. In 1881, after another trip to Alaska, Muir settled on a fruit ranch near Martinez, California. He worked for ten years to make enough money to enable him to stop. Having provided permanently for his wife, two daughters, and himself, he turned his full attention to the study of nature. Glaciers and freezing particularly interested him, and his work contributed to an explanation of the process by which glaciers are formed. He also went on expeditions to Europe, Asia, and Australia.
In 1889 Muir argued in Century magazine that Yosemite Valley should become a national park. The passage of a law in 1890 making that happen owed much to Muir’s influence. The Mountains of California, Our National Parks, and his many articles in popular magazines greatly advanced the conservation movement, as did his creation in 1892 of the Sierra Club, an organization dedicated to preserving wild lands such as Yosemite. Muir served as the president of the club until his death.
Muir’s wife died in 1905. From then until his death Muir published four books, including Stickeen, which was a popular dog story, and My First Summer in the Sierra.
He died in Los Angeles, California, on December 24th, 1914.
John of the Mountain, drawn from Muir’s journal of his 1899 Alaskan expedition, was published in 1938.
“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.” – JOHN MUIR
( credit: Daniel Fleischhacker | @daniel_fleischhacker | daniel-photography.eu)
