John Muir also known as "John of the Mountains", was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism has helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile John Muir Trail, a hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor. Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, Camp Muir, Muir Grove, and Muir Glacier. In Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130-mile-long route, was named in honor of him.
In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed 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. Today Muir is referred to as the "Father of the National Parks" and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life.
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 twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he is often 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. Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, 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 April 21, 2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist.
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
"Mormon Lilies", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 4 of the 4 part series "Notes from Utah") dated July 1877, published 19 July 1877; reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 9
1870s
July 1890, page 313
(From Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series (1844) "Essay VI: Nature": "the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.")
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!
“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
These are paraphrases of Muir's quote from My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) - the actual quote is listed above: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." See Sierra Club explanation http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/misquotes.aspx.
Misattributed
Variant: Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
Variant: When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.
“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
Once again, this is far from Muir's style of writing. The quote does not come up in any search of John Muir's Journals or his published texts on the John Muir Exhibit website. It is most commonly put on t-shirts - never in any scholarly source.
Misattributed
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
1 September 1875, page 226
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris — we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
attributed to Muir by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 331
1910s
“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”
Reprinted in The Wild Muir ISBN 0-939666-75-8 page 38, and Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 234
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
“Going to the mountains is going home.”
"In the Sierra Forests", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 3 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated July 1875, published 3 August 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 79
1870s
Variant: Going to the woods is going home.
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
letter to sister Sarah Muir Galloway (3 September 1873); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 10: Yosemite and Beyond
1870s
Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 5: The Passes <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 328 -->
Context: Accidents in the mountains are less common than in the lowlands, and these mountain mansions are decent, delightful, even divine, places to die in, compared with the doleful chambers of civilization. Few places in this world are more dangerous than home. Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain-passes. They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free, and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action. Even the sick should try these so-called dangerous passes, because for every unfortunate they kill, they cure a thousand.
" The Yellowstone National Park http://books.google.com/books?id=smQCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA509", The Atlantic Monthly, volume LXXXI, number 486 (April 1898) pages 509-522 (at pages 515-516); modified slightly and reprinted in Our National Parks http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/ (1901), chapter 2: The Yellowstone National Park
1900s, Our National Parks (1901)
The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley
1910s
Variant: Everybody needs beauty... places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike.
July 1890, page 315
John of the Mountains, 1938
“I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.”
letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, from Yosemite Valley (7 October 1874); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 11: On Widening Currents
1870s
Source: Wilderness Essays
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
The Cruise of the Corwin http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/cruise_of_the_corwin/default.aspx (1917), chapter 3: Siberian Adventures <!-- Terry Gifford, LLO, page 738 -->
(Echoing William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, iii, 3: "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.")
1910s
Variant: One touch of nature makes all the world kin.
Source: Our National Parks
The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 716 -->
1910s
Context: These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
“Living artificially in towns, we are sickly, and never come to know ourselves.”
" Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon http://books.google.com/books?id=ZikGAQAAIAAJ&pg=P139", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 146); modified and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 77
1870s
July 1890, page 320
John of the Mountains, 1938
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
Variant: God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fool
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 604-605 -->
Context: Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
July 1890, page 313
John of the Mountains, 1938
“Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
Muir's marginal note in volume I of Prose Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson (This volume is located at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. See Albert Saijo, "Me, Muir, and Sierra Nevada", in Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California, edited by Peter Berg, San Francisco, California: Planet Drum Foundation, 1978, pages 52-59, at page 55, and Frederick W. Turner, Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (1985), page 193.)
1870s
Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 6: Cedar Keys, page 160
Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf
page 439
Last line of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.
John of the Mountains, 1938
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 195
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
“John Muir, Earth — planet, Universe niel and I”
Muir's home address, as inscribed on the inside front cover of his first field journal http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirjournals/id/115/show/3, which started 1 July 1867
1860s
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
I searched for keywords of that text in his books online and on an electronic copy of Muir of the Mountains, and was unable to find it. On rare occasions we find something in Muir's unpublished journals that is new and which can be verified. So I also did a search of the John Muir Papers at the University of the Pacific, and once again came up empty:
Misattributed
“Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”
Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 253
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”
Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 4: A Near View of the High Sierra
Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 7: A Sojourn in Cubapage 168, omits the "all". This is a typo: see 1916 edition page 164
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 1: Puget Sound and British Columbia
1910s
“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.”
Source: " A Wind Storm in the Forests of the Yuba http://books.google.com/books?id=zj2gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55", Scribner's Monthly, volume XVII, number 1 (November 1878) pages 55-59 (at page 59); modified slightly and reprinted in The Mountains of California http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_mountains_of_california/ (1894), chapter 10: A Wind-Storm in the Forests <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 401 -->
Context: We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings — many of them not so much.
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 248
First line of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
26 June 1875, page 208
John of the Mountains, 1938
"Alaska Glaciers: Graphic Description of the Yosemite of the Far Northwest", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 5 of 11 part series "Notes of a Naturalist") dated 7 September 1879, published 27 September 1879; reprinted as "Baird Glacier" in Letters from Alaska, edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pages 28-32 (at page 31); modified slightly and reprinted in Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 5, A Cruise in the Cassiar
First lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
1910s
Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 243-244
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 465-466 -->
Context: Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden year … give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.
" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86)
1890s
letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (1866); published as "The Calypso Borealis, Botanical Enthusiasm" in Boston Recorder, 21 December 1866; republished in Bonnie Johanna Gisel, Kindred & Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (2001), page 41
Muir's first published writing, concerning the orchid Calypso http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CABU.
1860s
statement by Muir as remembered by Samuel Hall Young in Alaska Days with John Muir (1915), chapter 7
1910s
pages 271-284 (at pages 282-283)
1890s, The National Parks and Forest Reservations, 1895
Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 9: The Discovery of Glacier Bay
1910s
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests
"Mount Shasta" in Picturesque California (1888-1890) page 165; reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 5
1880s
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
August or September 1875, page 222
John of the Mountains, 1938
