What do you think?
Rate this book
A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir
In Donald Worster's magisterial biography, John Muir's "special self" is fully explored as is his extraordinary ability, then and now, to get others to see the sacred beauty of the natural world. A Passion for Nature is the most complete account of the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club ever written. It is the first to be based on Muir's full private correspondence and to meet modern scholarly standards. Yet it is also full of rich detail and personal anecdote, uncovering the complex inner life behind the legend of the solitary mountain man. It traces Muir from his boyhood in Scotland and frontier Wisconsin to his adult life in California right after the Civil War up to his death on the eve of World War I. It explores his marriage and family life, his relationship with his abusive father, his many friendships with the humble and famous (including Theodore Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson), and his role in founding the modern American conservation movement. Inspired by Muir's passion for the wilderness, Americans created a long and stunning list of national parks and wilderness areas, Yosemite most prominent among them. Yet the book also describes a Muir who was a successful fruit-grower, a talented scientist and world-traveler, a doting father and husband, a self-made man of wealth and political influence. A man for whom mountaineering was "a pathway to revelation and worship."
For anyone wishing to more fully understand America's first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster's biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed.
For anyone wishing to more fully understand America's first great environmentalist, and the enormous influence he still exerts today, Donald Worster's biography offers a wealth of insight into the passionate nature of a man whose passion for nature remains unsurpassed.
535 pages
First published January 1, 2008
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
February 2, 2020
John Muir (1838 – 1914) need not be introduced.
I will in this review speak only of the book, not the man. It is comprehensive. All aspects of what Muir did in his life, including the people he rubbed shoulders with and his family, are all here. At the same time, it does not get off track. It presents his entire life in chronological order in a clear and easy to follow fashion. It is very interesting, because the man is interesting. It gives you a full understanding of not only what he did but also who he was.
I find it fascinating to observe how Muir’s love of nature, religiosity and belief in science meld together.
Jim Frangione narrates the audiobook very well. Words are spoken clearly. The pace is measured. There is a melodic swing to the reading of the lines. The narration I have given four stars.
I recommend the book highly. Choose either the written or audio version.
***************************
Books by John Muir
*The Story of My Boyhood and Youth 4 stars
*Stickeen 4 stars
*Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada 3 stars
*My First Summer in the Sierra 2 stars
*Travels in Alaska (published posthumously)
Related books:
They give an indication of what he did and those he dealt with during his life.
*In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides 5 stars
*A Tramp Across the Continent by Charles F. Lummis 4 stars
*The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf 3 stars
*The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant 3 stars
*Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America's Public Lands by John Clayton
*The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism by Robert W. Righter
*The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
*John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire: How a Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America by Kim Heacox
I will in this review speak only of the book, not the man. It is comprehensive. All aspects of what Muir did in his life, including the people he rubbed shoulders with and his family, are all here. At the same time, it does not get off track. It presents his entire life in chronological order in a clear and easy to follow fashion. It is very interesting, because the man is interesting. It gives you a full understanding of not only what he did but also who he was.
I find it fascinating to observe how Muir’s love of nature, religiosity and belief in science meld together.
Jim Frangione narrates the audiobook very well. Words are spoken clearly. The pace is measured. There is a melodic swing to the reading of the lines. The narration I have given four stars.
I recommend the book highly. Choose either the written or audio version.
***************************
Books by John Muir
*The Story of My Boyhood and Youth 4 stars
*Stickeen 4 stars
*Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada 3 stars
*My First Summer in the Sierra 2 stars
*Travels in Alaska (published posthumously)
Related books:
They give an indication of what he did and those he dealt with during his life.
*In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides 5 stars
*A Tramp Across the Continent by Charles F. Lummis 4 stars
*The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf 3 stars
*The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant 3 stars
*Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America's Public Lands by John Clayton
*The Battle Over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism by Robert W. Righter
*The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
*John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire: How a Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America by Kim Heacox
September 10, 2019
This was one of the best biographies I have ever read. Exquisitely detailed, it recounts the naturalist's life from his early days in Scotland and the family's move to America (not for a better financial future but toward religious freedom), it was interesting to read about his father's fundamentalist (and often cruel) Presbyterianism. His early life was not easy. I had forgotten that Muir studied at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (One of my Alma Maters!), where he was practically adopted by one of the professors and the professor's wife--who plied him with books on nature, philosophy, and the romantic poets. The wife in particular became a kind of muse for Muir--encouraging him to write and share his ideas with others. I was very interested in learning about the way Muir's personal religious beliefs evolved. familiar with all the famous quotes attributed to Muir, I suppose I imagined him to be a Presbyterian (not like his father, of course) but in fact, Worster does a great job in illuminating (without over explaining or defining) what was more akin to a kind of paganism or maybe even a sort of variation on Spinoza's concept of God in nature.
This classic image of him in Yosemite (I think!) turning round and round saying: "look at the glory, Look at the glory" as his companions standing by quietly watching...
From very free and non-conformist beginnings, Muir would go on to marry later in life and take over the runnings of his wife's family's estate. This is something I knew almost nothing about and was surprised to read about the way he became the person the entire family came to rely on later in life--not just his wife and his in-laws in the running of their large and very successful state but to his parents and siblings as well.
The biography is also a history of the early American environmentalist movement --and in this, Worster gives much food for thought. I agreed with the review in the NYRBs by Robert Harrison that more analysis of his literary output would have been helpful. The book was weak on that, I thought. But it more than makes up for that in its analysis of conservationism and the Sierra Club. What a shame if the greatest idea America ever had (our parks) comes under attack. I agree with Muir, that if God is nature, the danger is greedy capitalism that sees absolutely everything as a resource for human use. Materialism and greed were always the great evil to Muir-- sacrilege. This from Harriosn's review:
"He did not live in a false Eden of consumerism that induces pathologies and species loneliness but the manifest paradise of the visible world to be inhabited rapturously, full of wonder and reverence, alongside our other earth-born companions and fellow mortals."
Wonderful book--not to be missed!
This classic image of him in Yosemite (I think!) turning round and round saying: "look at the glory, Look at the glory" as his companions standing by quietly watching...
From very free and non-conformist beginnings, Muir would go on to marry later in life and take over the runnings of his wife's family's estate. This is something I knew almost nothing about and was surprised to read about the way he became the person the entire family came to rely on later in life--not just his wife and his in-laws in the running of their large and very successful state but to his parents and siblings as well.
The biography is also a history of the early American environmentalist movement --and in this, Worster gives much food for thought. I agreed with the review in the NYRBs by Robert Harrison that more analysis of his literary output would have been helpful. The book was weak on that, I thought. But it more than makes up for that in its analysis of conservationism and the Sierra Club. What a shame if the greatest idea America ever had (our parks) comes under attack. I agree with Muir, that if God is nature, the danger is greedy capitalism that sees absolutely everything as a resource for human use. Materialism and greed were always the great evil to Muir-- sacrilege. This from Harriosn's review:
"He did not live in a false Eden of consumerism that induces pathologies and species loneliness but the manifest paradise of the visible world to be inhabited rapturously, full of wonder and reverence, alongside our other earth-born companions and fellow mortals."
Wonderful book--not to be missed!
July 21, 2021
I read “A Passion for Nature, the Life of John Muir” in preparation for next month’s trip to five Utah National Parks. John Muir is a name that has been familiar to me for a while; maybe I learned about him from the PBS Ken Burns series on national parks? I remember that the bit I heard about him there intrigued me and I thought it would be interesting to learn more.
I definitely learned more with this 467-page book. John Muir was born in Scotland in 1838 and spent his early years there. His father was the dominant figure in the family and was a strong Christian. I remember hearing in the PBS series that he encouraged John to memorize much of the Bible, but sadly none of this was mentioned in this book. The maternal grandparents were close to the eight Muir children, and were devastated when the family moved to America when John was 10, and both grandparents died within four years.
The Muirs settled in Wisconsin, seeking land to farm and freedom of religion. John was always intrigued with nature and had a sensitive nature, even feeling sad to see the “glorious Wisconsin wilderness” land plowed. He went to college but was unsure of which field to pursue. He attended for three years and did not graduate, but his great distaste for war led him to want to avoid being drafted into the Civil War. John had always been a talented inventor, and worked briefly as a teacher.
Muir then began traveling, which would be one of his true loves. He visited Kentucky: “Eden, the paradise of oaks,” Alaska, and his favorite place, Yosemite in California. He lived in a cabin there for a while, but unlike Thoreau, Muir was social and liked to be around other people, even though “people in general often depressed him by their frequent inability to harmonize with the rest of nature.” “He was caught in an excruciating tension between a desire to connect with nature and a desire to connect with people.”
Despite his lack of a degree, Muir became self-educated in geology and botany by intense self-study out in nature. He wrote several books (although writing was always a struggle for him) on his insights into nature, which sold well. His enthusiasm for nature always set him apart: one evening while on a nature jaunt with friends, he kept shouting, “Look at the glory! Look at the glory!” while dancing around. It also led to other actions most of us would probably consider strange — once he climbed high into a tree during a storm and stayed for hours, enjoying the feeling of being one with the branch while being buffeted by the wind.
Muir finally married around age 40, but while he was devoted to his wife “Louie,” he wasn’t home much. He left a few months after their marriage for Alaska, where he stayed for months. At other times he went on world tours for over a year at a time. Louie did not enjoy traveling and stayed home running the household with their two daughters. John adored his two daughters when they were little and never really reconciled himself to them growing up and marrying men he didn’t approve of.
He outlived Louie by about ten years, dying of pneumonia at age 76, just as World War I was beginning. In his later years, as many of his friends were dying, he said to his daughter “I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling.”
Some things I found interesting:
* The more I read, the more connections I make between world events, people, etc. It’s amazing how educated a person can become by reading. In this book, for instance, it was interesting to me when Frederick Law Olmstead showed up as an associate and friend of Muir’s. I had first “met” Olmstead in “The Devil in the White City” with his work planning the grounds for the 1893 World’s Fair/Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and he also planned the grounds of Biltmore. The man got around, especially considering this was the 1800s! You may remember I recently read a book about Daniel Boone. Did you know that Boone wrote to Muir about an issue? Another connection, small world 🙂
* We hear so much these days about global warming, climate change, etc. I remember when we were in Alaska, we heard about how much this or that glacier had retreated. This was always shared in a fearful, doomsday-approaching sort of way. It was interesting to read that Muir saw the glacier that would come to be known as the “Muir glacier” on his first trip to Alaska, and that the glacier had shrank by five miles when he returned less than a decade later. Hmmmm … if this degree of global warming was occurring in the 1800s, it makes me question how much human actions are contributing to it. Maybe we can keep eating meat after all …
I did enjoy this book overall and I learned a LOT. It was written in 2008 by Donald Worster, a professor, and it shows. I have learned that books written by professors are typically not the most readable tomes out there. They tend to be wordy and to go off onto tangents which often don’t particularly interest me.
In this case, I felt that the author (whether purposely or not I don’t know) inserted his own beliefs a lot. It’s clear he dislikes religion and particularly Christianity, which could be a reason he didn’t include a lot of info about Muir’s childhood Bible memorization. He emphasized that Muir followed “the religion of nature,” but I had to wonder if Worster just wanted to underplay his Christianity. I watched a video on Muir and it included this quote of his: “God has to nearly kill us sometimes to teach us lessons.”
Worster included many observations such as “it was luck more than divine intervention that repeatedly saved Muir from a fatal mishap and his wife from widowhood.” Hmmm, so Worster is okay with luck but not with God? Okay then. He later refers to the Bible as a “mythic account” and makes reference to Muir’s “constricted past” growing up in a Christian home.
It probably won’t surprise you that Worster is also liberal, and this colors the book as well. Canada is “warm, tolerant, generous.” He tells us that “Muir was a liberal, a democrat, and a conservationist,” although we also learn that the one presidential vote Muir ever cast was for Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican. “He was a liberal also in his religious views.” I would counter that a liberal in religious views in the mid 1800s would be far different from a liberal in 2020 — if indeed John Muir ever was liberal religiously, which I am skeptical about. I finished the book with many questions about nuances of the real John Muir rather than the one imagined by Worster. This book lost a star from me due not to Muir, but to the author's dry writing and his insertion of his views into the narrative.
A nice quote by Muir to finish with: “Some scientists think that because they know how a thing is made, that therefore the Lord had nothing to do with it. They have proved the chain of development, but the Lord made the chain and is making it.”
I definitely learned more with this 467-page book. John Muir was born in Scotland in 1838 and spent his early years there. His father was the dominant figure in the family and was a strong Christian. I remember hearing in the PBS series that he encouraged John to memorize much of the Bible, but sadly none of this was mentioned in this book. The maternal grandparents were close to the eight Muir children, and were devastated when the family moved to America when John was 10, and both grandparents died within four years.
The Muirs settled in Wisconsin, seeking land to farm and freedom of religion. John was always intrigued with nature and had a sensitive nature, even feeling sad to see the “glorious Wisconsin wilderness” land plowed. He went to college but was unsure of which field to pursue. He attended for three years and did not graduate, but his great distaste for war led him to want to avoid being drafted into the Civil War. John had always been a talented inventor, and worked briefly as a teacher.
Muir then began traveling, which would be one of his true loves. He visited Kentucky: “Eden, the paradise of oaks,” Alaska, and his favorite place, Yosemite in California. He lived in a cabin there for a while, but unlike Thoreau, Muir was social and liked to be around other people, even though “people in general often depressed him by their frequent inability to harmonize with the rest of nature.” “He was caught in an excruciating tension between a desire to connect with nature and a desire to connect with people.”
Despite his lack of a degree, Muir became self-educated in geology and botany by intense self-study out in nature. He wrote several books (although writing was always a struggle for him) on his insights into nature, which sold well. His enthusiasm for nature always set him apart: one evening while on a nature jaunt with friends, he kept shouting, “Look at the glory! Look at the glory!” while dancing around. It also led to other actions most of us would probably consider strange — once he climbed high into a tree during a storm and stayed for hours, enjoying the feeling of being one with the branch while being buffeted by the wind.
Muir finally married around age 40, but while he was devoted to his wife “Louie,” he wasn’t home much. He left a few months after their marriage for Alaska, where he stayed for months. At other times he went on world tours for over a year at a time. Louie did not enjoy traveling and stayed home running the household with their two daughters. John adored his two daughters when they were little and never really reconciled himself to them growing up and marrying men he didn’t approve of.
He outlived Louie by about ten years, dying of pneumonia at age 76, just as World War I was beginning. In his later years, as many of his friends were dying, he said to his daughter “I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling.”
Some things I found interesting:
* The more I read, the more connections I make between world events, people, etc. It’s amazing how educated a person can become by reading. In this book, for instance, it was interesting to me when Frederick Law Olmstead showed up as an associate and friend of Muir’s. I had first “met” Olmstead in “The Devil in the White City” with his work planning the grounds for the 1893 World’s Fair/Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and he also planned the grounds of Biltmore. The man got around, especially considering this was the 1800s! You may remember I recently read a book about Daniel Boone. Did you know that Boone wrote to Muir about an issue? Another connection, small world 🙂
* We hear so much these days about global warming, climate change, etc. I remember when we were in Alaska, we heard about how much this or that glacier had retreated. This was always shared in a fearful, doomsday-approaching sort of way. It was interesting to read that Muir saw the glacier that would come to be known as the “Muir glacier” on his first trip to Alaska, and that the glacier had shrank by five miles when he returned less than a decade later. Hmmmm … if this degree of global warming was occurring in the 1800s, it makes me question how much human actions are contributing to it. Maybe we can keep eating meat after all …
I did enjoy this book overall and I learned a LOT. It was written in 2008 by Donald Worster, a professor, and it shows. I have learned that books written by professors are typically not the most readable tomes out there. They tend to be wordy and to go off onto tangents which often don’t particularly interest me.
In this case, I felt that the author (whether purposely or not I don’t know) inserted his own beliefs a lot. It’s clear he dislikes religion and particularly Christianity, which could be a reason he didn’t include a lot of info about Muir’s childhood Bible memorization. He emphasized that Muir followed “the religion of nature,” but I had to wonder if Worster just wanted to underplay his Christianity. I watched a video on Muir and it included this quote of his: “God has to nearly kill us sometimes to teach us lessons.”
Worster included many observations such as “it was luck more than divine intervention that repeatedly saved Muir from a fatal mishap and his wife from widowhood.” Hmmm, so Worster is okay with luck but not with God? Okay then. He later refers to the Bible as a “mythic account” and makes reference to Muir’s “constricted past” growing up in a Christian home.
It probably won’t surprise you that Worster is also liberal, and this colors the book as well. Canada is “warm, tolerant, generous.” He tells us that “Muir was a liberal, a democrat, and a conservationist,” although we also learn that the one presidential vote Muir ever cast was for Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican. “He was a liberal also in his religious views.” I would counter that a liberal in religious views in the mid 1800s would be far different from a liberal in 2020 — if indeed John Muir ever was liberal religiously, which I am skeptical about. I finished the book with many questions about nuances of the real John Muir rather than the one imagined by Worster. This book lost a star from me due not to Muir, but to the author's dry writing and his insertion of his views into the narrative.
A nice quote by Muir to finish with: “Some scientists think that because they know how a thing is made, that therefore the Lord had nothing to do with it. They have proved the chain of development, but the Lord made the chain and is making it.”
March 21, 2021
I didn't even know who John Muir was, never having heard the name before. But I saw people mentioning this as a great biography, and the nature theme appealed to me. For those who were in my shoes, John Muir was a very influential naturalist at the end of the 19th century.
It starts with his father which was Irish, before moving with his family to the United States when Muir was still a child. It did provide some context to his family life, which did influence his views and he talked about it in his writings, although I find the information excessive.
The bulk of the story starts with Muir in his early 20s, when he first joined the university and started to become interested in botany. He did not finish his degree, but that started his life as a lover of nature, despite the seeds that led to his passion being much older.
He liked to hike, and the descriptions of nature that he wrote inspired the American people and made him famous. As he got older, he became an icon of the conservation movement and naturalism more broadly.
A lot of his thought on nature are explored in the book of course, and they were very enjoyable. The story flows nicely and it's truly experienced as a coherent narration, and one can easily think of himself in Muir's shoes. It's far from a collection of facts or events, but it successfully describes his whole approach to nature, and it's very hard not to get infected.
I also really enjoyed his personality. He was passionate about his cause, and I could easily identify with his worldview and the decisions he had to make. While he certainly had flaws, just like everyone else and also a product of his time in matters of social justice, nevertheless it is hard to dislike him. He truly cared about nature, and I was particularly fascinated by how his awe of nature was both scientific and spiritual at the same time. For him, they were deeply intertwined.
Despite nature being his sole endeavour most of the time, and he spent a large amount of time in his youth travelling alone he nevertheless had a rich social and family life, especially as he got older. And even though he disliked politics, he even had a political life when trying to aid the conservation movement. In fact, many credit the success of modern conservation to Muir, and the first natural parks, such as Yosemite, were built with a large influence from his writings.
What I didn't expect and in part what I liked the most about the biography, was the deep immersion into the time he lived. Many of the struggles of his life are hard to comprehend in its fullness with a modern context because so much of what he fought for we now take as given. I loved that while reading I was getting a history lesson at the end of the 19th century in America, and it was fascinating to see the problems society was battling. While with a different context, the main struggle relevant to Muir is still deeply relevant today. How we view nature, balancing the pros and cons of capitalism, and how nature relates to spirituality. It also showcases well the psychology of the reformation and how it impacted the culture of the time, and how it influenced how capitalism and nature were viewed.
It was an engaging read and I'm glad to have read it. It's rather long which should be taken into account, but I do think it pays off. While outside the US or naturalist enthusiasts the name John Muir may not be very known, his legacy certainly lives on in our culture. And the book will present that legacy beautifully, with the added bonus of a richer understanding of the time he lived in and the relationship between human beings and nature.
It starts with his father which was Irish, before moving with his family to the United States when Muir was still a child. It did provide some context to his family life, which did influence his views and he talked about it in his writings, although I find the information excessive.
The bulk of the story starts with Muir in his early 20s, when he first joined the university and started to become interested in botany. He did not finish his degree, but that started his life as a lover of nature, despite the seeds that led to his passion being much older.
He liked to hike, and the descriptions of nature that he wrote inspired the American people and made him famous. As he got older, he became an icon of the conservation movement and naturalism more broadly.
A lot of his thought on nature are explored in the book of course, and they were very enjoyable. The story flows nicely and it's truly experienced as a coherent narration, and one can easily think of himself in Muir's shoes. It's far from a collection of facts or events, but it successfully describes his whole approach to nature, and it's very hard not to get infected.
I also really enjoyed his personality. He was passionate about his cause, and I could easily identify with his worldview and the decisions he had to make. While he certainly had flaws, just like everyone else and also a product of his time in matters of social justice, nevertheless it is hard to dislike him. He truly cared about nature, and I was particularly fascinated by how his awe of nature was both scientific and spiritual at the same time. For him, they were deeply intertwined.
Despite nature being his sole endeavour most of the time, and he spent a large amount of time in his youth travelling alone he nevertheless had a rich social and family life, especially as he got older. And even though he disliked politics, he even had a political life when trying to aid the conservation movement. In fact, many credit the success of modern conservation to Muir, and the first natural parks, such as Yosemite, were built with a large influence from his writings.
What I didn't expect and in part what I liked the most about the biography, was the deep immersion into the time he lived. Many of the struggles of his life are hard to comprehend in its fullness with a modern context because so much of what he fought for we now take as given. I loved that while reading I was getting a history lesson at the end of the 19th century in America, and it was fascinating to see the problems society was battling. While with a different context, the main struggle relevant to Muir is still deeply relevant today. How we view nature, balancing the pros and cons of capitalism, and how nature relates to spirituality. It also showcases well the psychology of the reformation and how it impacted the culture of the time, and how it influenced how capitalism and nature were viewed.
It was an engaging read and I'm glad to have read it. It's rather long which should be taken into account, but I do think it pays off. While outside the US or naturalist enthusiasts the name John Muir may not be very known, his legacy certainly lives on in our culture. And the book will present that legacy beautifully, with the added bonus of a richer understanding of the time he lived in and the relationship between human beings and nature.
February 1, 2016
Thorough biography. Not one of those biographies that reads as smoothly and quickly as a novel, but a good, solid exploration of Muir's life. The author seemed rather anti-religion. Muir's exploration of religion seemed to play a significant role in his life; at times I wondered how much the author's interpretation was accurate and how much was his own projection onto Muir.
April 1, 2009
In the popular imagination, John Muir spent his life as an unfettered rambler, tramping through the Sierra Nevadas and writing about nature. It’s a great image, but in truth Muir didn’t arrive in California until he was nearly thirty years old, and then he spent only six years freely exploring the Sierras before settling near San Francisco, marrying, and eventually becoming a prosperous ranch manager. Later in life he did continue to travel and explore, but increasingly Alaska and its glacial topography overtook his fascination with California.
Muir was a tortured writer, an unwilling politician, and for the newly formed Sierra Club, more of a figurehead than a dedicated leader. His writing contributed to the preservation of the Yosemite Valley, but he wasn’t closely involved in its incorporation as a state (and later national) park, and he lost his greatest battle in Yosemite, the fight to prevent San Francisco from flooding Yosemite’s twin Hetch Hetchy Valley and transforming it into a municipal water supply.
Clearly, for his contributions to the early American environmentalism movement, John Muir was a great man, and A Passion for Nature is duly reverent. Rather than blindly exalting Muir, though, Worster’s biography explores the full contours of Muir’s character, returning to two themes in particular to ground the image of Muir “The Great Conservationist”. Worster shows that, to his Scottish core, John Muir was a capitalist. Through hard work on the ranch and with a shrewd eye for the economics of modern agriculture, Muir amassed a considerable fortune. He happily cavorted with the rich and powerful, once even tagging along on a bear hunting expedition to Alaska with the railroad kingpin Edward Harriman and then later forming a close bond with the man.
A Passion for Nature also shows that Muir was conservative in his approach to environmentalism. He was an eager compromiser, always willing to balance conservation with economic and social desires. In the photographs of Muir's ranch there is a huge train trestle bisecting his land, the result of Muir's bargain with the railroad. In one damning episode, Worster alleges that Muir may have even authored the behind-the-scenes compromise that eventually doomed Hetch Hetchy. Did John Muir kill Hetch Hetchy? Certainly not. Worster's argument here I think, though, is valid. For all of his successes, Muir's gentle approach to environmentalism was not broadly effective.
Muck-racking aside, Worster’s book is an interesting, thorough, and well-written account of Muir’s life, an excellent addition to your “History of the West” library.
Muir was a tortured writer, an unwilling politician, and for the newly formed Sierra Club, more of a figurehead than a dedicated leader. His writing contributed to the preservation of the Yosemite Valley, but he wasn’t closely involved in its incorporation as a state (and later national) park, and he lost his greatest battle in Yosemite, the fight to prevent San Francisco from flooding Yosemite’s twin Hetch Hetchy Valley and transforming it into a municipal water supply.
Clearly, for his contributions to the early American environmentalism movement, John Muir was a great man, and A Passion for Nature is duly reverent. Rather than blindly exalting Muir, though, Worster’s biography explores the full contours of Muir’s character, returning to two themes in particular to ground the image of Muir “The Great Conservationist”. Worster shows that, to his Scottish core, John Muir was a capitalist. Through hard work on the ranch and with a shrewd eye for the economics of modern agriculture, Muir amassed a considerable fortune. He happily cavorted with the rich and powerful, once even tagging along on a bear hunting expedition to Alaska with the railroad kingpin Edward Harriman and then later forming a close bond with the man.
A Passion for Nature also shows that Muir was conservative in his approach to environmentalism. He was an eager compromiser, always willing to balance conservation with economic and social desires. In the photographs of Muir's ranch there is a huge train trestle bisecting his land, the result of Muir's bargain with the railroad. In one damning episode, Worster alleges that Muir may have even authored the behind-the-scenes compromise that eventually doomed Hetch Hetchy. Did John Muir kill Hetch Hetchy? Certainly not. Worster's argument here I think, though, is valid. For all of his successes, Muir's gentle approach to environmentalism was not broadly effective.
Muck-racking aside, Worster’s book is an interesting, thorough, and well-written account of Muir’s life, an excellent addition to your “History of the West” library.
July 15, 2012
Appreciated better understanding how Muir's beliefs evolved over time and how they were shaped by the politics and social movements of his time... he struggled to find a "purpose" in life- wanderings and different jobs throughout his 20s and 30s. He could work hard and was gifted as an inventor and owner of a fruit growing operation- lots of contradictions! How hard he fought to get away from his psycho evangelical punitive father, but then in some ways turned out to be just as evangelical-- about nature. Amazing really.
February 2, 2022
I wanted to read this to learn about John Muir but right away, in the introduction, the author started out by displaying his biases. It was off-putting and I felt the author couldn't be trusted to tell me the truth, so I DNF'ed it.
March 14, 2017
an engaging, at times overly academic, but well written narrative of muir's life.
October 6, 2019
Audiobook. I enjoyed the Bay Area history, but it was so dry. Just read his Wikipedia page.
June 30, 2017
I can't imagine a more detailed biography than this was. Though at many points I wished Worster would skip some of the details, now that I'm done I have a much clearer picture of Muir as a person and of the rise of the modern conservationist movement in the late 1800s.
- Born in Scotland, raised in Wisconsin, he was somewhat of a black sheep – the wanderer who resisted his family's desires for him to continue the family farm. Despite this dubious start he ended up being the rock of the family, often bailing his siblings out of financial ruin.
- He was a natural inventor and created devices like an alarm clock bed that sets you upright as well as more efficient versions of common tools and machines.
- His original passion was botany, but his travels to the Sierra Nevada mountains inspired him to study geology.
- He was one of the original proponents of glaciation shaping landscapes, as well as evolution by natural selection.
- Muir was more at home in the solitude of nature than in cities full of people, though he was extremely friendly and made lifelong friends wherever he went.
- He was shockingly reckless. Apparently he often ventured out into the wilderness with little food or supplies, paying little heed to weather or time of day. His diaries tell of many near-death experiences on glaciers and in remote landscapes. (Even while he was a husband and father.)
- He was a favorite pet among many wealthy people who loved to house him in exchange for his exciting stories. He was famous in his day due to the magazine articles he wrote extolling the wild places he traveled, and was especially appealing to ladies. (Though he didn't marry until late and still seemed more drawn to the wilderness than to the home.)
- He believed that God and nature were one in the same and had a religious fervor about his appreciation for wilderness.
- He came to California during a time when unfettered capitalism was starting to take a toll on the landscape. Mining practices, logging and agriculture were destroying much of the natural world. He supported fruit agriculture over grain (trees and vines last for years and encourage farmers to care for the soil more than nutrient-depleting grain farming), himself becoming a farmer for a decade while his children were young. He was president of the Sierra Club, which promoted conservation, not preservation – keep our natural resources healthy so that we can continue to use them.
- He was uncomfortable dealing in politics, but gave tours of Yosemite to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft and did what he could to convince the public that Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy Valleys were worth preserving.
- He believed that extraordinary landscapes ought to be preserved so that people could experience them in all their natural glory, but also supported ordinary landscapes and their resources being used for the benefit of people – a pragmatist.
- Born in Scotland, raised in Wisconsin, he was somewhat of a black sheep – the wanderer who resisted his family's desires for him to continue the family farm. Despite this dubious start he ended up being the rock of the family, often bailing his siblings out of financial ruin.
- He was a natural inventor and created devices like an alarm clock bed that sets you upright as well as more efficient versions of common tools and machines.
- His original passion was botany, but his travels to the Sierra Nevada mountains inspired him to study geology.
- He was one of the original proponents of glaciation shaping landscapes, as well as evolution by natural selection.
- Muir was more at home in the solitude of nature than in cities full of people, though he was extremely friendly and made lifelong friends wherever he went.
- He was shockingly reckless. Apparently he often ventured out into the wilderness with little food or supplies, paying little heed to weather or time of day. His diaries tell of many near-death experiences on glaciers and in remote landscapes. (Even while he was a husband and father.)
- He was a favorite pet among many wealthy people who loved to house him in exchange for his exciting stories. He was famous in his day due to the magazine articles he wrote extolling the wild places he traveled, and was especially appealing to ladies. (Though he didn't marry until late and still seemed more drawn to the wilderness than to the home.)
- He believed that God and nature were one in the same and had a religious fervor about his appreciation for wilderness.
- He came to California during a time when unfettered capitalism was starting to take a toll on the landscape. Mining practices, logging and agriculture were destroying much of the natural world. He supported fruit agriculture over grain (trees and vines last for years and encourage farmers to care for the soil more than nutrient-depleting grain farming), himself becoming a farmer for a decade while his children were young. He was president of the Sierra Club, which promoted conservation, not preservation – keep our natural resources healthy so that we can continue to use them.
- He was uncomfortable dealing in politics, but gave tours of Yosemite to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft and did what he could to convince the public that Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy Valleys were worth preserving.
- He believed that extraordinary landscapes ought to be preserved so that people could experience them in all their natural glory, but also supported ordinary landscapes and their resources being used for the benefit of people – a pragmatist.
October 22, 2018
I've always been interested in John Muir and his role in America's great national parks and preseving the wild.
I decided to listen to the audio book version of this. I did find myself zoning in and out every so often, but the content was overall engaging.
focusing on John Muir's move from Scotland to the US, his struggles with his father, religion and his place in life. Documenting some of his early travels to South America, Alaska and further.
John Miur was an inventor, business man, politician but most of all, someone who found his most comfortable place in the wild outdoors amongst nature.
His admiration for Nature and humans place amongst it resinates strong in this day in age. It's not owned by humanity but instead we should appreciate it and share it with every other living thing.
His drive as a botanist and geoligist has spurred me to research these fields more so I can have a better appreciation of the world around me next time I'm out hiking.
I decided to listen to the audio book version of this. I did find myself zoning in and out every so often, but the content was overall engaging.
focusing on John Muir's move from Scotland to the US, his struggles with his father, religion and his place in life. Documenting some of his early travels to South America, Alaska and further.
John Miur was an inventor, business man, politician but most of all, someone who found his most comfortable place in the wild outdoors amongst nature.
His admiration for Nature and humans place amongst it resinates strong in this day in age. It's not owned by humanity but instead we should appreciate it and share it with every other living thing.
His drive as a botanist and geoligist has spurred me to research these fields more so I can have a better appreciation of the world around me next time I'm out hiking.
August 19, 2020
Absolutely fascinating history! I grew up near Muir Woods and knowing his name, but I never knew much about the man behind the legend. Like all of our heroes, they are not perfect and have faults. Just a fascinating life. Also very interesting reading this book after I read Into the Wild. Many parallels.
Read
February 27, 2023I consider myself a lover of nature, so I often find myself reading things that quote John Muir. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know anything about him, so I read this book.
John Muir was born in Scotland. I did know that. His family moved to America when he was 11, and he spoke with a Scottish burr all his life. Usually children that young lose their accents (says me, not the book), but Muir’s boyhood in America was somewhat remote. The family settled in Wisconsin, where their father, who had been a shopkeeper in the old country, decided to become a farmer, without knowing how to farm. Young John spent most of his hours on the farm, or among his large family. Many of their neighbors were Scots as well.
Muir’s father was a very strict brand of Christian. He had a narrow opinion of what activities were acceptable and not sinful. As he aged, he spent more time preaching, and less time farming, but he still expected much physical labor from his oldest son, and still meted out physical punishments. He didn’t approve of much travel, or study (except for the Bible), but young John was itching to do both.
John went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He started out studying what we might call engineering. He liked to tinker with things and make inventions. One of his inventions was an alarm clock that would tip someone out of bed, which sounds like a Rube Goldberg contraption. He ended up gravitating to the natural sciences, especially botany. One of his professors, Ezra Carr, and his wife Jeanne, would become influential friends throughout his life.
John left college without getting a degree. Affording tuition was always a problem. Plus the college wasn’t really invested in offering a pure sciences degree at that time. Plus the Civil War started, and the tender-hearted Muir didn’t want to kill anybody, so he went to Canada. He worked in factories and sawmills to support himself, and every chance he got, he went walking in the woods, studying the plants to educate himself.
He did a lot of wandering. He walked 1,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, where he almost died of malaria. And eventually he made it to California, and saw Yosemite valley, and was enraptured by the physical beauty of the place. He would make several trips to Alaska later, and elsewhere, but California would be his home.
Muir never completely lost the faith of his childhood. He remained a spiritual man all his life, but instead of finding God in Bible or church, he grew to find God in nature. His introduction to Yosemite was a religious experience. He felt awe, wonder, glory. He was not only deeply moved himself, but he wanted everyone to have the opportunity to experience what he had.
So began the work of his life, helping to save Yosemite, and other spectacular sites, from development. He mostly did this by writing (at a painfully slow pace) articles about wild places, articles that would later be compiled into books. He did make a difference. The National Parks system was born, with Yosemite as one of its first jewels. Muir didn’t do that singlehandedly, but he helped to turn the tide of public opinion toward preserving nature.
Muir also settled down and had a more conventional life as a fruit farmer. He married and had two daughters. His wife was supportive of his continued need to ramble, in that she let him go, but she didn’t go with him. She went once with him to see Yosemite, but the rest of her life she stayed close to home.
Muir wasn’t successful in everything. Toward the end of his life he tried to prevent the Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed as a water supply for San Francisco, but it ended up being dammed anyway.
One of the interesting things about this particular book is that some readers have complained that the author injected too much of his liberal politics into it. Before I started reading, I thought that concern was undoubtedly exaggerated, but I was startled that in the prologue, the author used the word “liberal” 16 times (I counted). And he does say, “Muir was a liberal.” But I don’t think the author’s portrait of Muir the man is unfairly skewed. He paints him as a man of complexity, and sometimes contradiction.
First of all, he tells us that Muir was essentially apolitical. As far as we can tell, he participated in politics reluctantly, and only for the purpose of preserving wild places. The one vote we know he cast for president was for Teddy Roosevelt, and that was because Roosevelt promised to be a champion of conservation, and Muir later felt at least partially betrayed that Roosevelt didn’t support the preservation of the Hetch Hetchy valley.
The author tells us what he means by “liberal.” In addition to believing that the national government had a role in preserving wild places, it was to be free of bigotry, and open to new ideas. And for the most part, this was true of Muir.
For his day, he was accepting of women’s rights, and of people of different ethnicities. He began his life with prejudices. He left in his writings some problematic statements about the Chinese (he doubted whether they could be assimilated into American society because he thought they were just so different), about African Americans (their dark skin made them look like devils), and about poor, dirty, illiterate whites in the hills of Tennessee, but in practice he joyfully broke bread with everyone he met.
He believed that a love of nature was present in every human heart, and that every human should have access to beautiful nature, whether rich, poor, or whatever their background. In the end, people were people, and he loved people.
It isn’t possible to equate the politics of today with the politics of over a hundred years ago, but the Republican party even then was the party of business interests. Muir had some very harsh things to say about capitalism and greed. Greed caused people to exploit nature for the cash returns that could be gotten out of it. It was the businessmen who were trying to fell the trees and dig up the wild plants. The poorer workers were too busy trying to scrape up enough money to live on to care about preserving parks.
So in that way Muir was anti-business, but he was also a business man himself, and he was a good business man. He managed his workers, he increased efficiency, and he died with a substantial amount of money in the bank. Muir, unlike some “green men” was always practical. He knew we humans had to live. We had to have farms. We had to have water supplies. We had to cut timber for our houses. He didn’t think we could save every inch of nature, but he absolutely thought we should save the best of it.
So the author may tell us that Muir was a liberal, but he depicts him with nuance and fairness, and the portrait meshes with things I have read from other, less overtly biased sources. And the portrait that emerges is, above all, of a man who followed his own heart, and that led him into nature.
John Muir was born in Scotland. I did know that. His family moved to America when he was 11, and he spoke with a Scottish burr all his life. Usually children that young lose their accents (says me, not the book), but Muir’s boyhood in America was somewhat remote. The family settled in Wisconsin, where their father, who had been a shopkeeper in the old country, decided to become a farmer, without knowing how to farm. Young John spent most of his hours on the farm, or among his large family. Many of their neighbors were Scots as well.
Muir’s father was a very strict brand of Christian. He had a narrow opinion of what activities were acceptable and not sinful. As he aged, he spent more time preaching, and less time farming, but he still expected much physical labor from his oldest son, and still meted out physical punishments. He didn’t approve of much travel, or study (except for the Bible), but young John was itching to do both.
John went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He started out studying what we might call engineering. He liked to tinker with things and make inventions. One of his inventions was an alarm clock that would tip someone out of bed, which sounds like a Rube Goldberg contraption. He ended up gravitating to the natural sciences, especially botany. One of his professors, Ezra Carr, and his wife Jeanne, would become influential friends throughout his life.
John left college without getting a degree. Affording tuition was always a problem. Plus the college wasn’t really invested in offering a pure sciences degree at that time. Plus the Civil War started, and the tender-hearted Muir didn’t want to kill anybody, so he went to Canada. He worked in factories and sawmills to support himself, and every chance he got, he went walking in the woods, studying the plants to educate himself.
He did a lot of wandering. He walked 1,000 miles to the Gulf of Mexico, where he almost died of malaria. And eventually he made it to California, and saw Yosemite valley, and was enraptured by the physical beauty of the place. He would make several trips to Alaska later, and elsewhere, but California would be his home.
Muir never completely lost the faith of his childhood. He remained a spiritual man all his life, but instead of finding God in Bible or church, he grew to find God in nature. His introduction to Yosemite was a religious experience. He felt awe, wonder, glory. He was not only deeply moved himself, but he wanted everyone to have the opportunity to experience what he had.
So began the work of his life, helping to save Yosemite, and other spectacular sites, from development. He mostly did this by writing (at a painfully slow pace) articles about wild places, articles that would later be compiled into books. He did make a difference. The National Parks system was born, with Yosemite as one of its first jewels. Muir didn’t do that singlehandedly, but he helped to turn the tide of public opinion toward preserving nature.
Muir also settled down and had a more conventional life as a fruit farmer. He married and had two daughters. His wife was supportive of his continued need to ramble, in that she let him go, but she didn’t go with him. She went once with him to see Yosemite, but the rest of her life she stayed close to home.
Muir wasn’t successful in everything. Toward the end of his life he tried to prevent the Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed as a water supply for San Francisco, but it ended up being dammed anyway.
One of the interesting things about this particular book is that some readers have complained that the author injected too much of his liberal politics into it. Before I started reading, I thought that concern was undoubtedly exaggerated, but I was startled that in the prologue, the author used the word “liberal” 16 times (I counted). And he does say, “Muir was a liberal.” But I don’t think the author’s portrait of Muir the man is unfairly skewed. He paints him as a man of complexity, and sometimes contradiction.
First of all, he tells us that Muir was essentially apolitical. As far as we can tell, he participated in politics reluctantly, and only for the purpose of preserving wild places. The one vote we know he cast for president was for Teddy Roosevelt, and that was because Roosevelt promised to be a champion of conservation, and Muir later felt at least partially betrayed that Roosevelt didn’t support the preservation of the Hetch Hetchy valley.
The author tells us what he means by “liberal.” In addition to believing that the national government had a role in preserving wild places, it was to be free of bigotry, and open to new ideas. And for the most part, this was true of Muir.
For his day, he was accepting of women’s rights, and of people of different ethnicities. He began his life with prejudices. He left in his writings some problematic statements about the Chinese (he doubted whether they could be assimilated into American society because he thought they were just so different), about African Americans (their dark skin made them look like devils), and about poor, dirty, illiterate whites in the hills of Tennessee, but in practice he joyfully broke bread with everyone he met.
He believed that a love of nature was present in every human heart, and that every human should have access to beautiful nature, whether rich, poor, or whatever their background. In the end, people were people, and he loved people.
It isn’t possible to equate the politics of today with the politics of over a hundred years ago, but the Republican party even then was the party of business interests. Muir had some very harsh things to say about capitalism and greed. Greed caused people to exploit nature for the cash returns that could be gotten out of it. It was the businessmen who were trying to fell the trees and dig up the wild plants. The poorer workers were too busy trying to scrape up enough money to live on to care about preserving parks.
So in that way Muir was anti-business, but he was also a business man himself, and he was a good business man. He managed his workers, he increased efficiency, and he died with a substantial amount of money in the bank. Muir, unlike some “green men” was always practical. He knew we humans had to live. We had to have farms. We had to have water supplies. We had to cut timber for our houses. He didn’t think we could save every inch of nature, but he absolutely thought we should save the best of it.
So the author may tell us that Muir was a liberal, but he depicts him with nuance and fairness, and the portrait meshes with things I have read from other, less overtly biased sources. And the portrait that emerges is, above all, of a man who followed his own heart, and that led him into nature.
August 6, 2020
This will probably be my longest book review because I was always taught to believe that John Muir was a hero in American history, but with recent headlines and reading this book, it put a lot about him into perspective. I rated this book four stars because the writing was pretty good overall - painting a mostly unbiased picture of Muir, and the research was detailed and well-done. It wasn't always interesting to me, but the book itself is a very good piece of work.
The only other notes I have on the actual writing are twofold: first, I felt the timeline was a little confusing. He mostly stayed with a linear timeline that worked well, but every once in a while, he backtracked and it was confusing. The second was that Worster had a tendency to use damaging phrases like, "Muir was the first person to see X flower or write down this thing..." While he may have been the first to write things down, saying he was the first person to see a certain flower or type of plant erases the Native Americans who lived in those areas before him and lived within those ecosystems. It reminded me of history textbooks that used definitive phrases and put European explorers as the "experts," which is an antiquated way of approaching history.
That's it for my review of the book itself. Below are just notes for my own personal recollections from the text (stop reading now if you don't want spoilers).
In Muir's early years, he socialized with people of all social classes, ethnicities, races, etc., but tended to be more severe in judging others and used racial slurs when describing people, especially in his journals of walking from Indiana to Florida. He loosened his judgments in later years, but he also socialized with white rich/affluent people in his later years. So, the things he overlooked were: hunting wild game for sport, not putting money toward conservation, etc. I feel he suffered from being prejudiced more than racist, from how this book describes him. He often said, especially when traveling, that all people should be treated with kindness, generosity, and love, and sought out the good in the groups of people he met. When he was in Alaska, he especially noted the damage Native Americans were experiencing at the hands of white men. But, on the other hand, when discussing his time in Asia, would say that "birds of a feather should flock together" (discussing humanity), but that maybe a distance should be kept from the Chinese because they were so culturally different. Not that they were terrible people, but that they weren't the same as whites of European descent (problematic). It's also been pointed out that some of the people in his social circle were white supremacists. He also said in a letter that "Scotsmen were the salt of the earth," far superior to others. In this biography, he didn't seem to hang out with BIPOC, and there were no opinions included in this biography of anyone who is BIPOC. Did he have any acquaintances that were not rich and white? Are there non-white voices who spoke about him? And if so, what did they have to say? To this end, I can see the critiques about him regarding race in the headlines today.
I grew up hearing that John Muir was the "Father of Yosemite" or the "Father of our National Parks," when, in reality, I feel like he had little to do with their establishment. Yellowstone, the first National Park, had already been established before his work in California had started, and the other prominent NPs in California were mostly founded because of the work of other men lobbying and fighting around the country and in Washington (including Robert Underwood Johnson). Johnson, understanding Muir's influence, heavily pressured him into writing essays about Yosemite to get the public behind its conservation, but outside of that, and meeting with Roosevelt to camp for a few days, he didn't do much else. Because he was a great writer and generally well-liked, though, his articles were said to be a big contributor in Yosemite becoming a national park. He also didn't found the Sierra Club - he gave his approval for it to be started by academics and writers, and then served as its president mostly as a passive role. He wasn't very active in it, which was disappointing to learn (I understand he had a lot of other responsibilities at that time in his life, but until this point, I had always been led to believe he was more active in its founding and establishing). He eventually gave credit to Johnson in a guidebook he wrote about Yosemite, and did start actively lobbying against the Hetch Hetchy dam in his later years. In that role, he welcomed women to take leading and advisory roles. This was a huge development from his earlier years, where he openly stated he was a pacifist, and then never spoke out against much of anything including women's rights, or slavery and the mistreatment of blacks, which he saw firsthand when he traveled through the south. He ran away to Canada to avoid serving in the Civil War, and only voted once in his life. He spoke out against the rich when he was younger, but then built a social circle of them in his older age. He also tended to be passionate about conserving these grander places that disadvantaged populations - especially in his lifetime - would not have been able to visit. Yosemite or Alaska weren't trips inner city, poor San Franciscans could fathom. I feel like it established this issue we have today of BIPOC not feeling welcome in outdoor spaces. They were created, at the time, for the enjoyment of middle and upper class white people. And I understand those were the places he was passionate about - he's just an enigma to me. There seem to be as many positives as negatives.
But I did find there were a lot of good qualities to him. Although he proved to be a reckless adventurer, he did appreciate both nature and technology, and was an accomplished inventor in his younger years. He was also a (mostly) devoted family man. When he inherited the fruit farm/ranch from his father-in-law, he did his best to run it amid wanting to travel. Although he did leave his wife to travel twice, both times while she was pregnant, he was always back before his daughters were born, and enjoyed being a #girldad. He was well-traveled, visiting (I think) every continent, and probably all 50 states. He taught himself to be a travel writer, and studied glaciers and their movements until he became a somewhat master on the subject. I also loved that he referred to his writing room as his "scribble den." He wasn't the man I thought he was, but it just goes to prove that people are more complex than their legacies. Especially historical figures. And we get to decide how we feel about them. John Muir, I'm still trying to sort him out.
The only other notes I have on the actual writing are twofold: first, I felt the timeline was a little confusing. He mostly stayed with a linear timeline that worked well, but every once in a while, he backtracked and it was confusing. The second was that Worster had a tendency to use damaging phrases like, "Muir was the first person to see X flower or write down this thing..." While he may have been the first to write things down, saying he was the first person to see a certain flower or type of plant erases the Native Americans who lived in those areas before him and lived within those ecosystems. It reminded me of history textbooks that used definitive phrases and put European explorers as the "experts," which is an antiquated way of approaching history.
That's it for my review of the book itself. Below are just notes for my own personal recollections from the text (stop reading now if you don't want spoilers).
In Muir's early years, he socialized with people of all social classes, ethnicities, races, etc., but tended to be more severe in judging others and used racial slurs when describing people, especially in his journals of walking from Indiana to Florida. He loosened his judgments in later years, but he also socialized with white rich/affluent people in his later years. So, the things he overlooked were: hunting wild game for sport, not putting money toward conservation, etc. I feel he suffered from being prejudiced more than racist, from how this book describes him. He often said, especially when traveling, that all people should be treated with kindness, generosity, and love, and sought out the good in the groups of people he met. When he was in Alaska, he especially noted the damage Native Americans were experiencing at the hands of white men. But, on the other hand, when discussing his time in Asia, would say that "birds of a feather should flock together" (discussing humanity), but that maybe a distance should be kept from the Chinese because they were so culturally different. Not that they were terrible people, but that they weren't the same as whites of European descent (problematic). It's also been pointed out that some of the people in his social circle were white supremacists. He also said in a letter that "Scotsmen were the salt of the earth," far superior to others. In this biography, he didn't seem to hang out with BIPOC, and there were no opinions included in this biography of anyone who is BIPOC. Did he have any acquaintances that were not rich and white? Are there non-white voices who spoke about him? And if so, what did they have to say? To this end, I can see the critiques about him regarding race in the headlines today.
I grew up hearing that John Muir was the "Father of Yosemite" or the "Father of our National Parks," when, in reality, I feel like he had little to do with their establishment. Yellowstone, the first National Park, had already been established before his work in California had started, and the other prominent NPs in California were mostly founded because of the work of other men lobbying and fighting around the country and in Washington (including Robert Underwood Johnson). Johnson, understanding Muir's influence, heavily pressured him into writing essays about Yosemite to get the public behind its conservation, but outside of that, and meeting with Roosevelt to camp for a few days, he didn't do much else. Because he was a great writer and generally well-liked, though, his articles were said to be a big contributor in Yosemite becoming a national park. He also didn't found the Sierra Club - he gave his approval for it to be started by academics and writers, and then served as its president mostly as a passive role. He wasn't very active in it, which was disappointing to learn (I understand he had a lot of other responsibilities at that time in his life, but until this point, I had always been led to believe he was more active in its founding and establishing). He eventually gave credit to Johnson in a guidebook he wrote about Yosemite, and did start actively lobbying against the Hetch Hetchy dam in his later years. In that role, he welcomed women to take leading and advisory roles. This was a huge development from his earlier years, where he openly stated he was a pacifist, and then never spoke out against much of anything including women's rights, or slavery and the mistreatment of blacks, which he saw firsthand when he traveled through the south. He ran away to Canada to avoid serving in the Civil War, and only voted once in his life. He spoke out against the rich when he was younger, but then built a social circle of them in his older age. He also tended to be passionate about conserving these grander places that disadvantaged populations - especially in his lifetime - would not have been able to visit. Yosemite or Alaska weren't trips inner city, poor San Franciscans could fathom. I feel like it established this issue we have today of BIPOC not feeling welcome in outdoor spaces. They were created, at the time, for the enjoyment of middle and upper class white people. And I understand those were the places he was passionate about - he's just an enigma to me. There seem to be as many positives as negatives.
But I did find there were a lot of good qualities to him. Although he proved to be a reckless adventurer, he did appreciate both nature and technology, and was an accomplished inventor in his younger years. He was also a (mostly) devoted family man. When he inherited the fruit farm/ranch from his father-in-law, he did his best to run it amid wanting to travel. Although he did leave his wife to travel twice, both times while she was pregnant, he was always back before his daughters were born, and enjoyed being a #girldad. He was well-traveled, visiting (I think) every continent, and probably all 50 states. He taught himself to be a travel writer, and studied glaciers and their movements until he became a somewhat master on the subject. I also loved that he referred to his writing room as his "scribble den." He wasn't the man I thought he was, but it just goes to prove that people are more complex than their legacies. Especially historical figures. And we get to decide how we feel about them. John Muir, I'm still trying to sort him out.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2016
So John Muir turns out to be much more complex and nuanced than I thought. The author did an excellent job of showing Muir as a complete person, and the biography shines when Muir is allowed to speak himself through is letters to friends. The last third of the book, describing the latter portion of Muir's life when he became more involved with politics (though somewhat unwillingly) is particularly engrossing.
The book has several significant weaknesses though, particularly in the early sections of the book. The author describes Muir's father, but not in Muir's own words or using specific examples. Instead, the author gives us conclusions without showing us the facts on which he bases those conclusion (there are some other instances where this happens as well). I found this frustrating--I would have liked the opportunity to draw my own conclusions, but I was never given the chance. The author also is heavy-handed in his treatment of religion, and in many cases his own bias stands out starkly. Some of the discussions are well done, and it was essential to the biography to show Muir's personal beliefs over time, including discussions of Transcendentalism, but the author is clearly judgmental and biased against organized religion.
The book has several significant weaknesses though, particularly in the early sections of the book. The author describes Muir's father, but not in Muir's own words or using specific examples. Instead, the author gives us conclusions without showing us the facts on which he bases those conclusion (there are some other instances where this happens as well). I found this frustrating--I would have liked the opportunity to draw my own conclusions, but I was never given the chance. The author also is heavy-handed in his treatment of religion, and in many cases his own bias stands out starkly. Some of the discussions are well done, and it was essential to the biography to show Muir's personal beliefs over time, including discussions of Transcendentalism, but the author is clearly judgmental and biased against organized religion.
February 17, 2009
I found this book to be extremely engrossing. I didn't know that John Muir was considered one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's men. The author, Donald Worster, has a good grasp on the delicate balance between appealing to the people to break out of the rat race to appreciate natural wonders and appealing to the powerful such as Theodore Roosevelt and the railroad magnate, Harriman. John Muir's life was an amazing force that helped establish national parks and monuments all over the western US. He was unafraid to wax poetic to inspire his countrymen to do the right thing. He was in the right place at the right time. It was lovely to read how the views of Darwin transformed his Calvanist views. It was heart breaking to see how the forces of "progress" stacked up against him in the failed attempt to keep Yosemites twin, the Hetch Hetchy valley, from falling under the developer's hammer. (Couldn't they have built that dam closer to SF?)
The book makes me want to do two things: read John Muir's first book "The Mountains of California" written in 1894. I also need to get to Yosemite to take in it's primordial beauty for myself.
The book makes me want to do two things: read John Muir's first book "The Mountains of California" written in 1894. I also need to get to Yosemite to take in it's primordial beauty for myself.
August 8, 2020
Too much
Right from the start you learn what worldview the author comes from. He colors the entire biography as if Muir was a messiah for a modern environmentalist, animal rights, liberal social Democrat, who blames all the world's environmental evils on Christianity and evil capitalists. It was so prevalent in this book that even I, a modern liberal, felt like I need to read another biography or two to really get a feel for a man I greatly admire.
Like other reviewers, I wish there were less politics and more about the man and what he actually said, as opposed to what the author thought he meant, even telling us who Muir should have dedicated his first book to. Needless to say, this book was a disappointment.
Right from the start you learn what worldview the author comes from. He colors the entire biography as if Muir was a messiah for a modern environmentalist, animal rights, liberal social Democrat, who blames all the world's environmental evils on Christianity and evil capitalists. It was so prevalent in this book that even I, a modern liberal, felt like I need to read another biography or two to really get a feel for a man I greatly admire.
Like other reviewers, I wish there were less politics and more about the man and what he actually said, as opposed to what the author thought he meant, even telling us who Muir should have dedicated his first book to. Needless to say, this book was a disappointment.
February 6, 2017
This book helped me realize there was so much I didn't know about John Muir. Though occasionally plodding, the book is nonetheless generally well written, enjoyable, and informative.
June 5, 2021
Library Biography #67
June 24, 2016
This was an interesting book. John Muir was born in Scotland and moved to the U.S. with his family in 1849. They settled in Wisconsin. His family was religious. He was eager to see the world and excelled at inventing things. He went to college, found mentors there that encouraged him in his passion for he outdoors. He walked and explored much of the country and the world - through the southeastern U.S., South America, Utah, the West, California, Alaska...and beyond. He is most well-known for his love of the Yosemite Valley and the Sierras, but he really had a great understanding of many different places and people. He was a hard worker and had a variety of talents.
I thought it was interesting to consider the meeting point of nature, religion, and politics. Obviously Muir was passionate about nature and the outdoors and had a real reverence for the natural wonders of the world. Although I would probably find a little bit different balance myself, I appreciated his passion for preservation and time to contemplate and get away from the rest of the world and how often he pointed people to God when enjoying nature.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
"Those who knew him well thought he was the most engaging talker they ever knew...he talked with everyone...and talked passionately, about nature (p. 5)."
"Nature for Muir, and for other men and women throughout the modern period, was the name given to that part of the world that we humans did not create, that we do not manage, and that can and will survive our extinction....Nature, Muir believed, included humans just as any community includes all of its inhabitants. But he made this critical distinction: while we cannot live without the forces and creatures of the nonhuman world, they can live without us. There is more to the world than humankind and its artifacts (p. 8)."
"As Tocqueville perceived, democracy was in love with nature, and nature was the natural and logical religion of democracy. Pursuing that religion of nature is the main and persistent theme in Muir's life story (p. 10)."
"He met and befriended humble people of every sort but also some of the most powerful men of his day, forcing him to reconcile dreams of economic success with saving the beauty and integrity of the natural world. He explored some of the most remarkable wild places on the planet, always trying to see those places with the eyes of a naturalist but always worrying about falling into the trap of a coldly scientific analysis. He worked hard at becoming a writer who could effectively explain and defend nature to the public, when he would rather be climbing some remote peak. Against the grain of his own desire and temperament, he tried to become a reformer of society. Through all those ordeals, he lived a life constantly driven by intense feelings (p. 11)."
"Dunbar taught its children to seek opportunities and accumulate fortunes through skill and bold ambition. Be open to change, they were encouraged, make yourself competent, keep your wits about you. Out of this place came John Muir, determined to prove himself and improve the world (p. 19)."
"'My earliest recollections of the country...were gained on short walks with my grandfather when I was perhaps not over three years old (p. 29).'"
"Around age fifteen a hunger for knowledge began to stir in the boy (p. 61)."
"One widely approved way of serving God and humankind in the Scottish and Scottish American mind was to invent labor-saving machines...Muir discovered he had a talent for inventing that could win applause from the community (p. 63)."
"Among the most difficult challenges facing him as he set out on his own was to decide what kind of citizen he wanted to be, or what polity, if any, he wanted to join...the concept of national identity had never crossed his mind (p. 68)."
"'Nature...is the name for an effect whose cause is God (p. 77).'"
“Despite the long hours spent indoors working on machines, he still saw himself as a lover of nature, one of the privileged few who appreciated the natural beauty around them (p. 98).”
“Nothing that anyone said, however, could brighten his mood of suicidal despair and discouragement, for he felt robbed of his most vital organ for intense living and for religious experience. What good was ‘the eye within the eye’ if he was physically blind? How could one see into the ideas of God without being able to see nature? Seeing was everything: seeing was the basis of vision. His and Jeanne’s religion depended on seeing for oneself and seeing (not hearing from any written text) the truth and beauty inherent in the world (p. 112).”
“When his sight was virtually restored, Muir determined to see as much of wild nature as he could before it passed him by forever. He had earned money to take a long sabbatical, leaving behind the cities, factories, churches, even well-meaning personal ties that had pulled him this way and that. His destination would be South America and the world beyond, with no final end in sight. First, however, he wanted to return to Wisconsin, make his farewells, and assign a few personal assets to his heirs for what he contemplated doing next was risky to the point of death (p. 114).”
“A world without trace of human power, however, was precisely what Muir now wanted to immerse himself in (p. 119).”
“Having extricated himself from one entangling society, he was eager to become entangled in another whose problems were enormous and beyond easy understanding or resolution. Yet, as it turned out, his very life would depend on those people, white or black, he met along the way (p. 122).”
“The traveling satchel included, as a final significant item, a blank notebook bound in dark covers, with some two hundred rules pages four by six inches in size. Its owner inscribed his name and address on the inside cover: ‘John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.’ It was an announcement that he had cut all ties to a local and national identity, claiming as his home place the whole planet. Nothing merely human could define who he was or could draw a line around his loyalties. He was the ultimate cosmopolitan, not merely a citizen of the known world, as the ancient Greeks understood citizenship, but a part of the greater community of nature that had no boundaries. Filling the pages of that journal because Muir’s nearly daily task on his travels through the South. The journal was his first extended piece of writing and eventually became the core of his posthumously published book, ‘A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (p. 122).’”
“Fifty years would change him, but both the first and last version reveal a young man who is trying to find answers for life’s ultimate questions regarding the meaning of death, fear of the unknown, a sense of belonging, a meaningful occupation, and humanity’s place in the natural world (p. 123).”
“Wordsworth called it ‘natural piety,’ a faith without doctrines or theology that unmediated nature alone could evoke or satisfy. In 1802 he wrote these lines that anticipated completely Muir’s own experience: ‘My heart leaps when I behold / A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; / So is it now I am a man…I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety.’ For Muir a similar wish came true that summer as he drifted ‘about these love-monument mountains, glad to be a servant of servants in so holy a wilderness (p. 160).’”
“Yosemite appealed as a natural house to live in that was also the house of God. Since leaving the Midwest, Muir had not been at church a single time, ‘yet this glorious valley might well be called a church.’ Compared to the plains below and the highlands where he had spent the summer, Yosemite Valley offered a more enclosed, domestic-like nature—a sense of peaceful refuge (p. 165).”
“Three years’ residence had left him with some big questions about the deep past of California: ‘How did the Lord make it? What tools did he use? How did he apply them & when (p. 180)?’”
“Knowing mountains became an all-consuming preoccupation after Muir left the Hutchings saw mill, a career to be financed by his savings and whatever he could earn by his pen. To come to know the mountains, he must read as well as walk and climb (p. 182).”
“Muir’s rejection of Christian fundamentalism did not imply atheism or even doubt about the moral ideals he had been raised on. Before he undertook his glacial studies, while camping at the base of Mt. Ritter, he jotted in his journal his view of the relation of science to faith and morality: ‘I never found the devil in the Survey…or evil, but God in clearness & the religion of Jesus Christ.’ Every mountain seemed to testify to the ethical principles taught in the Sermon on the Mount (p. 202).”
“Muir grew out of the soil of Protestant Christianity, but also out of Robert Burns’s revolutionary democracy. Wordsworth’s piety that pervaded North British culture, and natural science’s approach to truth. Emerson came out of rather different soil. He was the child of Unitarian Boston, which emphasized human significance, and of Harvard and its classical education: moreover, he had no scientific training. Thoreau comes close to the mindset of Muir; they rejected bourgeois society, needed solitude, felt a visceral love of material nature, and inherited a mechanical and scientific aptitude. But Thoreau was a prickly sort of man who found friendship difficult, whereas Muir was an intensely social being who made friends easily and kept them for life (p. 209).”
“‘As for the Mormons one meets…however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land.’…it was hard to pay attention to the social scene when the mountains were so grand (p. 228).”
“For Muir the best thing about Mormons was not their attitudes toward nature or women but their attitudes toward children….he marveled how much his hosts doted on their offspring. Anyone who treated children well won his respect, and in this regard the Mormons rated high (p. 230).”
“In one of the most poignant passages in all of Muir’s writings, he confesses (probably after climbing Mt. Nebo) that ‘coming down from the mountains to men I always feel…out of place…I am always glad to touch the living rock again & dip my head in high mountain sky (p. 232).’”
"The once-solitary man of the mountains was now not only husband and son-in-law but also the world's most enthusiastic father. Little girls were always his favorites, and he would be blessed with two of his own. He would choose their clothes, supervise their education, introduce them to the outdoors, hover over them too protectively, and spoil them shamelessly (p. 262)."
“In deciding to marry, Muir had decided to become a good husband and a good husbandman. The good husband is one who ‘husbands’ the family resources, prudently managing the money and expenses of a household. The good husbandman, in the language of ancient rural tradition, is one skilled in the arts of husbandry, or farming. He applies knowledge and intelligence to the cultivating of plants and the raising of livestock. He manages the earth for long-term productivity and makes careful use of natural resources. Practical, intelligent management and a sense of responsibility were virtues deeply engrained in Muir’s temperament, the legacy of his parents and grandparents and his self-image as a native Scot—virtues that he now put into practice (p. 277).”
“For several years into their marriage John and Louie were always together, neither venturing far from home. Louie would always be the more rooted of the pair; she would spend her entire adult life on the Strentzel estate, resisting almost all travel. A trip to San Francisco was a long one for her; consequently, much of her home state she never saw. The baby Wanda grew up to resemble her mother in being rooted to the home place; eventually, she too settled as a married woman right there on the Strentzel estate. The Alhambra Valley was their sanctuary from the world (p. 296).”
“The state and nation alike were afire with passion to preserve the outdoors. It was hard to keep one’s mind on family matters. In an intense period of mere weeks Congress would establish not one but three national parks in California, setting in motion a broad, comprehensive policy of wild land conservation unprecedented in American or world history. Building on that precedent the country would create a whole new system of national parks—making Yellowstone no longer the national park but the first of many parks—and also a system of national forests (p. 319).”
“Muir would henceforth be identified as the greatest founder of the conservation movement, even though others preceded him, others showed up at critical moments, and others contributed important ideas. He was always a reluctant leader, diffident and inclined to head for the hills when the heard the call to arms. What he gave the movement was, nonetheless, indispensable: the compelling image and words of a prophet standing before unsullied nature in a posture of unabashed love. The love of nature was both rhapsodical and worldly, a love that knew no bounds but knew how to compromise. He inspired Americans to believe that nature deserved higher consideration. Plenty of others shared that belief, but no one articulated it better (p. 331).”
“Back in the Alhambra Valley in time for fall harvest, he confronted one of the most difficult challenges of his life—not getting in the grapes but writing his first book. All of his youthful book-making ambitions has come to naught. He had lacked discipline and resolve. Could he succeed at last in putting together a full volume rather than scattered articles for magazines and newspapers (p. 338)?”
“If the cold hardness of ice could produce so much goodness, so much beauty and life, then why should humans be afraid of anything in the nonhuman world? Why worry about passing windstorms, floods, earthquakes, or other forms of natural violence? Muir reiterated his view that it was only fear that made people avoid the wilderness and blindness that drove them to try to control and dominate it. Learn to bend with the trees in the wind. Plunge into whitewater rapids like the cheerful little ouzel. Observe the chattering confidence of squirrels that they will survive (p. 340).”
“No previous American president had been so well informed and so avid a wildlife lover as Roosevelt. He looked at Muir as a kindred spirit who could help him find the true value of Yosemite away from society. All the same the outing was arranged for political impact. The president wanted to capture some of Muir’s prophetic aura to bolster his own image and policies (p. 368).”
“We cannot find in nature any soothing escape from history, impermanence, strife, or death. But learning how nature manages that change and how it generates a unified complexity is good tonic for the troubled, careworn human mind. That mental stimulation is why preserving wilderness is necessary and useful (p. 372).”
“’Some scientists think that because they know how a thing is made, that therefore the Lord had nothing to do with it. They have proved the chain of development, but the Lord made the chain and is making it (p. 374).’”
“Our definition of a tourist is a person traveling for pleasure. That would cover every excursion Muir made throughout his life; in the broadest sense, he was always traveling for pleasure. But the level of pleasure he derived from his travels was very uneven: the best trips brought glimpses of the sublime, the next best improved his understanding of nature’s mechanisms, and the least pleasurable meant wearily shuffling past an array of ‘important,’ man-made monuments (p. 377).”
“Going around the world had not changed Muir’s thinking substantially. He had added to his herbarium, his stock of impression, his long list of friends and colleagues, but he came home with no large new insights into nature and society. Nothing in his journal suggests that travel had helped him see the world, himself, or his adopted country more profoundly. Had he walked the whole distance, it might have been different (p. 385).”
“He would work with anyone, those in power as well as those at the bottom of society, who appreciated nature (p. 414).”
“In Muir’s eyes, Americans in establishing the national park had done nothing less than create a sacred place….Its highest and best use would be religious (p. 425).”
“Can contact with nature inspire people to higher to a higher ethic, a greater decency? Or is the human species by and large incapable of reverence, restraint, generosity, or vision? Have we truly learned to respect a nature that we did not create, a world independent of us, or do we see only the hand of humankind wherever we look? Muir was a man who tried to find the essential goodness of the world, an optimist about people and nature, an eloquent prophet of a new world that looked to nature for its standard and inspiration (p. 466).”
I thought it was interesting to consider the meeting point of nature, religion, and politics. Obviously Muir was passionate about nature and the outdoors and had a real reverence for the natural wonders of the world. Although I would probably find a little bit different balance myself, I appreciated his passion for preservation and time to contemplate and get away from the rest of the world and how often he pointed people to God when enjoying nature.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:
"Those who knew him well thought he was the most engaging talker they ever knew...he talked with everyone...and talked passionately, about nature (p. 5)."
"Nature for Muir, and for other men and women throughout the modern period, was the name given to that part of the world that we humans did not create, that we do not manage, and that can and will survive our extinction....Nature, Muir believed, included humans just as any community includes all of its inhabitants. But he made this critical distinction: while we cannot live without the forces and creatures of the nonhuman world, they can live without us. There is more to the world than humankind and its artifacts (p. 8)."
"As Tocqueville perceived, democracy was in love with nature, and nature was the natural and logical religion of democracy. Pursuing that religion of nature is the main and persistent theme in Muir's life story (p. 10)."
"He met and befriended humble people of every sort but also some of the most powerful men of his day, forcing him to reconcile dreams of economic success with saving the beauty and integrity of the natural world. He explored some of the most remarkable wild places on the planet, always trying to see those places with the eyes of a naturalist but always worrying about falling into the trap of a coldly scientific analysis. He worked hard at becoming a writer who could effectively explain and defend nature to the public, when he would rather be climbing some remote peak. Against the grain of his own desire and temperament, he tried to become a reformer of society. Through all those ordeals, he lived a life constantly driven by intense feelings (p. 11)."
"Dunbar taught its children to seek opportunities and accumulate fortunes through skill and bold ambition. Be open to change, they were encouraged, make yourself competent, keep your wits about you. Out of this place came John Muir, determined to prove himself and improve the world (p. 19)."
"'My earliest recollections of the country...were gained on short walks with my grandfather when I was perhaps not over three years old (p. 29).'"
"Around age fifteen a hunger for knowledge began to stir in the boy (p. 61)."
"One widely approved way of serving God and humankind in the Scottish and Scottish American mind was to invent labor-saving machines...Muir discovered he had a talent for inventing that could win applause from the community (p. 63)."
"Among the most difficult challenges facing him as he set out on his own was to decide what kind of citizen he wanted to be, or what polity, if any, he wanted to join...the concept of national identity had never crossed his mind (p. 68)."
"'Nature...is the name for an effect whose cause is God (p. 77).'"
“Despite the long hours spent indoors working on machines, he still saw himself as a lover of nature, one of the privileged few who appreciated the natural beauty around them (p. 98).”
“Nothing that anyone said, however, could brighten his mood of suicidal despair and discouragement, for he felt robbed of his most vital organ for intense living and for religious experience. What good was ‘the eye within the eye’ if he was physically blind? How could one see into the ideas of God without being able to see nature? Seeing was everything: seeing was the basis of vision. His and Jeanne’s religion depended on seeing for oneself and seeing (not hearing from any written text) the truth and beauty inherent in the world (p. 112).”
“When his sight was virtually restored, Muir determined to see as much of wild nature as he could before it passed him by forever. He had earned money to take a long sabbatical, leaving behind the cities, factories, churches, even well-meaning personal ties that had pulled him this way and that. His destination would be South America and the world beyond, with no final end in sight. First, however, he wanted to return to Wisconsin, make his farewells, and assign a few personal assets to his heirs for what he contemplated doing next was risky to the point of death (p. 114).”
“A world without trace of human power, however, was precisely what Muir now wanted to immerse himself in (p. 119).”
“Having extricated himself from one entangling society, he was eager to become entangled in another whose problems were enormous and beyond easy understanding or resolution. Yet, as it turned out, his very life would depend on those people, white or black, he met along the way (p. 122).”
“The traveling satchel included, as a final significant item, a blank notebook bound in dark covers, with some two hundred rules pages four by six inches in size. Its owner inscribed his name and address on the inside cover: ‘John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.’ It was an announcement that he had cut all ties to a local and national identity, claiming as his home place the whole planet. Nothing merely human could define who he was or could draw a line around his loyalties. He was the ultimate cosmopolitan, not merely a citizen of the known world, as the ancient Greeks understood citizenship, but a part of the greater community of nature that had no boundaries. Filling the pages of that journal because Muir’s nearly daily task on his travels through the South. The journal was his first extended piece of writing and eventually became the core of his posthumously published book, ‘A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (p. 122).’”
“Fifty years would change him, but both the first and last version reveal a young man who is trying to find answers for life’s ultimate questions regarding the meaning of death, fear of the unknown, a sense of belonging, a meaningful occupation, and humanity’s place in the natural world (p. 123).”
“Wordsworth called it ‘natural piety,’ a faith without doctrines or theology that unmediated nature alone could evoke or satisfy. In 1802 he wrote these lines that anticipated completely Muir’s own experience: ‘My heart leaps when I behold / A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; / So is it now I am a man…I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety.’ For Muir a similar wish came true that summer as he drifted ‘about these love-monument mountains, glad to be a servant of servants in so holy a wilderness (p. 160).’”
“Yosemite appealed as a natural house to live in that was also the house of God. Since leaving the Midwest, Muir had not been at church a single time, ‘yet this glorious valley might well be called a church.’ Compared to the plains below and the highlands where he had spent the summer, Yosemite Valley offered a more enclosed, domestic-like nature—a sense of peaceful refuge (p. 165).”
“Three years’ residence had left him with some big questions about the deep past of California: ‘How did the Lord make it? What tools did he use? How did he apply them & when (p. 180)?’”
“Knowing mountains became an all-consuming preoccupation after Muir left the Hutchings saw mill, a career to be financed by his savings and whatever he could earn by his pen. To come to know the mountains, he must read as well as walk and climb (p. 182).”
“Muir’s rejection of Christian fundamentalism did not imply atheism or even doubt about the moral ideals he had been raised on. Before he undertook his glacial studies, while camping at the base of Mt. Ritter, he jotted in his journal his view of the relation of science to faith and morality: ‘I never found the devil in the Survey…or evil, but God in clearness & the religion of Jesus Christ.’ Every mountain seemed to testify to the ethical principles taught in the Sermon on the Mount (p. 202).”
“Muir grew out of the soil of Protestant Christianity, but also out of Robert Burns’s revolutionary democracy. Wordsworth’s piety that pervaded North British culture, and natural science’s approach to truth. Emerson came out of rather different soil. He was the child of Unitarian Boston, which emphasized human significance, and of Harvard and its classical education: moreover, he had no scientific training. Thoreau comes close to the mindset of Muir; they rejected bourgeois society, needed solitude, felt a visceral love of material nature, and inherited a mechanical and scientific aptitude. But Thoreau was a prickly sort of man who found friendship difficult, whereas Muir was an intensely social being who made friends easily and kept them for life (p. 209).”
“‘As for the Mormons one meets…however their doctrines be regarded, they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad land.’…it was hard to pay attention to the social scene when the mountains were so grand (p. 228).”
“For Muir the best thing about Mormons was not their attitudes toward nature or women but their attitudes toward children….he marveled how much his hosts doted on their offspring. Anyone who treated children well won his respect, and in this regard the Mormons rated high (p. 230).”
“In one of the most poignant passages in all of Muir’s writings, he confesses (probably after climbing Mt. Nebo) that ‘coming down from the mountains to men I always feel…out of place…I am always glad to touch the living rock again & dip my head in high mountain sky (p. 232).’”
"The once-solitary man of the mountains was now not only husband and son-in-law but also the world's most enthusiastic father. Little girls were always his favorites, and he would be blessed with two of his own. He would choose their clothes, supervise their education, introduce them to the outdoors, hover over them too protectively, and spoil them shamelessly (p. 262)."
“In deciding to marry, Muir had decided to become a good husband and a good husbandman. The good husband is one who ‘husbands’ the family resources, prudently managing the money and expenses of a household. The good husbandman, in the language of ancient rural tradition, is one skilled in the arts of husbandry, or farming. He applies knowledge and intelligence to the cultivating of plants and the raising of livestock. He manages the earth for long-term productivity and makes careful use of natural resources. Practical, intelligent management and a sense of responsibility were virtues deeply engrained in Muir’s temperament, the legacy of his parents and grandparents and his self-image as a native Scot—virtues that he now put into practice (p. 277).”
“For several years into their marriage John and Louie were always together, neither venturing far from home. Louie would always be the more rooted of the pair; she would spend her entire adult life on the Strentzel estate, resisting almost all travel. A trip to San Francisco was a long one for her; consequently, much of her home state she never saw. The baby Wanda grew up to resemble her mother in being rooted to the home place; eventually, she too settled as a married woman right there on the Strentzel estate. The Alhambra Valley was their sanctuary from the world (p. 296).”
“The state and nation alike were afire with passion to preserve the outdoors. It was hard to keep one’s mind on family matters. In an intense period of mere weeks Congress would establish not one but three national parks in California, setting in motion a broad, comprehensive policy of wild land conservation unprecedented in American or world history. Building on that precedent the country would create a whole new system of national parks—making Yellowstone no longer the national park but the first of many parks—and also a system of national forests (p. 319).”
“Muir would henceforth be identified as the greatest founder of the conservation movement, even though others preceded him, others showed up at critical moments, and others contributed important ideas. He was always a reluctant leader, diffident and inclined to head for the hills when the heard the call to arms. What he gave the movement was, nonetheless, indispensable: the compelling image and words of a prophet standing before unsullied nature in a posture of unabashed love. The love of nature was both rhapsodical and worldly, a love that knew no bounds but knew how to compromise. He inspired Americans to believe that nature deserved higher consideration. Plenty of others shared that belief, but no one articulated it better (p. 331).”
“Back in the Alhambra Valley in time for fall harvest, he confronted one of the most difficult challenges of his life—not getting in the grapes but writing his first book. All of his youthful book-making ambitions has come to naught. He had lacked discipline and resolve. Could he succeed at last in putting together a full volume rather than scattered articles for magazines and newspapers (p. 338)?”
“If the cold hardness of ice could produce so much goodness, so much beauty and life, then why should humans be afraid of anything in the nonhuman world? Why worry about passing windstorms, floods, earthquakes, or other forms of natural violence? Muir reiterated his view that it was only fear that made people avoid the wilderness and blindness that drove them to try to control and dominate it. Learn to bend with the trees in the wind. Plunge into whitewater rapids like the cheerful little ouzel. Observe the chattering confidence of squirrels that they will survive (p. 340).”
“No previous American president had been so well informed and so avid a wildlife lover as Roosevelt. He looked at Muir as a kindred spirit who could help him find the true value of Yosemite away from society. All the same the outing was arranged for political impact. The president wanted to capture some of Muir’s prophetic aura to bolster his own image and policies (p. 368).”
“We cannot find in nature any soothing escape from history, impermanence, strife, or death. But learning how nature manages that change and how it generates a unified complexity is good tonic for the troubled, careworn human mind. That mental stimulation is why preserving wilderness is necessary and useful (p. 372).”
“’Some scientists think that because they know how a thing is made, that therefore the Lord had nothing to do with it. They have proved the chain of development, but the Lord made the chain and is making it (p. 374).’”
“Our definition of a tourist is a person traveling for pleasure. That would cover every excursion Muir made throughout his life; in the broadest sense, he was always traveling for pleasure. But the level of pleasure he derived from his travels was very uneven: the best trips brought glimpses of the sublime, the next best improved his understanding of nature’s mechanisms, and the least pleasurable meant wearily shuffling past an array of ‘important,’ man-made monuments (p. 377).”
“Going around the world had not changed Muir’s thinking substantially. He had added to his herbarium, his stock of impression, his long list of friends and colleagues, but he came home with no large new insights into nature and society. Nothing in his journal suggests that travel had helped him see the world, himself, or his adopted country more profoundly. Had he walked the whole distance, it might have been different (p. 385).”
“He would work with anyone, those in power as well as those at the bottom of society, who appreciated nature (p. 414).”
“In Muir’s eyes, Americans in establishing the national park had done nothing less than create a sacred place….Its highest and best use would be religious (p. 425).”
“Can contact with nature inspire people to higher to a higher ethic, a greater decency? Or is the human species by and large incapable of reverence, restraint, generosity, or vision? Have we truly learned to respect a nature that we did not create, a world independent of us, or do we see only the hand of humankind wherever we look? Muir was a man who tried to find the essential goodness of the world, an optimist about people and nature, an eloquent prophet of a new world that looked to nature for its standard and inspiration (p. 466).”
July 22, 2012
[Note: the following does reveal some specific issues and events portrayed in this book. I would not characterize any of these revelations as "spoilers," since people rarely read biographies seeking suspense.:) ]
Biography has never been my favorite literary genre, largely because of the primary dilemma faced by the biographer: to what extent will he or she attempt to divine the hidden motives, discover the untold thoughts, and even probe the unconscious mind of the book's subject? Treat such matters too superficially, and the book reads like a rest stop tourist brochure. Go too deep, and the result will more likely reveal more about the author's beliefs and biases than about the one whose life is supposedly being chronicled.
In his biography of John Muir, Worster treads rather gently around issues regarding Muir's inner workings, especially with regard to the conservationist's interpersonal relationships. There are two main outcomes of this approach: the book could not possibly offend any descendant or admirer; and those chapters and sections that deal with Muir the man in daily life are decidedly the weakest, least convincing, and least interesting parts of the book. That being said, Worster's writing is not without very artful subversion. The reader is told more than once, for example, that Muir was a devoted husband and loving father, statements that will no doubt elate the most ardent Muir admirers. But a thoughtful reading of the descriptions of Muir's adult domestic life, as well as of the included passages of his ambiguously-intentioned correspondence with female friends/admirers, produces a far murkier picture than Worster's bland, "Hallmark" general statements would ever suggest.
In any case, it is in the latter part of the book, chronicling the intense struggles over conservation and the future direction of the United States as a nation that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that the book really gains momentum and Worster's writing becomes forceful, persuasive, and confident. Here, there is little need to speculate on what went on behind closed doors, because the battles were frontal and public, and Muir's role in them was, by his own design and that of others, visible to all. What emerges is a very thoughtful reflection on the history of conservation/environmentalism/"green" causes in America — the good, the bad, and the vast, vast gray area in between.
I was particularly interested in the examination of the statements and policies of Theodore Roosevelt, the first President to ever make setting aside land for special protection a national priority. A contrast is drawn between Muir's belief that protecting natural areas is a spiritual act—and at that, one that needs no further defense—and TR's view that that state of a nation's natural resources is above all a reflection of the nation's economic health. In truth, Worster overstates the difference. After all, among TR's many inspiring quotes on conservation was his very moving (if not quite perfectly historically accurate) statement, "I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates." Surely, that is more an appeal to Americans' morality and sense of spiritual right and wrong than their sense of economics. But Worster's essential point about TR is correct, at least with regard to how he argued the case for conservation to the public and to captains of industry (which may or may not tell us about Roosevelt's own values and morals). Further reading of TR's discussion of the harvesting of ancient trees, for example reveals a sober, detached, coldly logical argument: basically, if one is to fell an ancient tree, it can only be considered a prudent act if all things made from that tree have an average usable life of over 3000 years. Otherwise, you've diminished your assets. Such a scenario is, of course, supremely unlikely given the scarcity of human-made, wooden, still-usable, 3000-year-old objects on earth today.
Thus, whereas Muir preached a religion of nature, based on a view that preserving areas that showed "God's great plan for the world" (hence his tendency to fight hardest to protect the most awe-inspiring vistas, while overlooking the ecological importance of seemingly ordinary landscapes), TR claimed that wasteful use of economic resources destroys our national wealth, impoverishing the nation and causing lasting economic hardship. Essentially, he viewed reckless destruction of nature for profit as akin to a corporation selling off its long-term assets to pay short-term operating expenses, a practice universally viewed in the business world as an express lane to bankruptcy.
One need only look at West Virginia and Kentucky, where the last several decades have seen the rise of increasingly, even grotesquely violent coal mining practices, while the towns in that region have sunk further and further into economic desperation, to understand that TR's argument was not only sound, but sadly prophetic.
Now mind you, I myself am an environmental activist, an unapologetic nature lover, and a Muir devotee. I have spent many days in the northern Minnesota Boundary Waters wilderness and along the shores of Lake Superior, I have hiked many miles of the Appalachian trail, and I can expound at length on the differences between the hunting habits of ospreys and bald eagles. I have walked among the ancient giants of California, and declared that were I to die at the base of such a tree, and be left there to fertilize its roots, I would consider it a more noble death than any I might deserve.
Nevertheless, the BIG QUESTION I am left with after reading this book is, would the "green" cause be better served by a rhetorical approach more in line with TR, and less in line with the Muir tradition, too easily dismissed by the enemies of conservation as "hippie tree hugging"? After all, a spiritual argument is really only effective if those hearing/reading it share the speaker/writer's spiritual values. With the popularity of transcendentalism in the late 19th century, Muir found many sympathetic ears. But ever since then, every time the national psyche has shifted toward conservative religious orthodoxy and capitalistic conquest, substantial ground has been lost in the battle to move America toward a more sustainable, less toxic future. That has surely been the case, sadly, for most of my lifetime. Worster asks at the end of this book how much farther we have to go in the journey toward a truly balanced relationship with nature. I would harden the question: are we even going the right direction right now?
And are we not indeed a poorer, more impoverished nation for the recklessness of recent decades? Ask any "middle class" family, a status they now desperately cling to by having two breadwinners working 50+ hours per week. What if the citizenry realized that it is not restraints on industry that are causing our impoverishment, but the unfettered waste of resources that industry has been allowed to practice? What if it was commonly understood that despoiling of natural resources may make one generation wealthier, but will make those to come suffer not merely in some theism-derived spiritual way, but economically as well? How different would the landscape of the country be if such thinking became solidly established in the American mainstream?
Clearly, then, this is a very thought-provoking book, and I recommend it to all who have an interest in the long-term health and well-being of their country, be that country the U.S. or any other.
Biography has never been my favorite literary genre, largely because of the primary dilemma faced by the biographer: to what extent will he or she attempt to divine the hidden motives, discover the untold thoughts, and even probe the unconscious mind of the book's subject? Treat such matters too superficially, and the book reads like a rest stop tourist brochure. Go too deep, and the result will more likely reveal more about the author's beliefs and biases than about the one whose life is supposedly being chronicled.
In his biography of John Muir, Worster treads rather gently around issues regarding Muir's inner workings, especially with regard to the conservationist's interpersonal relationships. There are two main outcomes of this approach: the book could not possibly offend any descendant or admirer; and those chapters and sections that deal with Muir the man in daily life are decidedly the weakest, least convincing, and least interesting parts of the book. That being said, Worster's writing is not without very artful subversion. The reader is told more than once, for example, that Muir was a devoted husband and loving father, statements that will no doubt elate the most ardent Muir admirers. But a thoughtful reading of the descriptions of Muir's adult domestic life, as well as of the included passages of his ambiguously-intentioned correspondence with female friends/admirers, produces a far murkier picture than Worster's bland, "Hallmark" general statements would ever suggest.
In any case, it is in the latter part of the book, chronicling the intense struggles over conservation and the future direction of the United States as a nation that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that the book really gains momentum and Worster's writing becomes forceful, persuasive, and confident. Here, there is little need to speculate on what went on behind closed doors, because the battles were frontal and public, and Muir's role in them was, by his own design and that of others, visible to all. What emerges is a very thoughtful reflection on the history of conservation/environmentalism/"green" causes in America — the good, the bad, and the vast, vast gray area in between.
I was particularly interested in the examination of the statements and policies of Theodore Roosevelt, the first President to ever make setting aside land for special protection a national priority. A contrast is drawn between Muir's belief that protecting natural areas is a spiritual act—and at that, one that needs no further defense—and TR's view that that state of a nation's natural resources is above all a reflection of the nation's economic health. In truth, Worster overstates the difference. After all, among TR's many inspiring quotes on conservation was his very moving (if not quite perfectly historically accurate) statement, "I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates." Surely, that is more an appeal to Americans' morality and sense of spiritual right and wrong than their sense of economics. But Worster's essential point about TR is correct, at least with regard to how he argued the case for conservation to the public and to captains of industry (which may or may not tell us about Roosevelt's own values and morals). Further reading of TR's discussion of the harvesting of ancient trees, for example reveals a sober, detached, coldly logical argument: basically, if one is to fell an ancient tree, it can only be considered a prudent act if all things made from that tree have an average usable life of over 3000 years. Otherwise, you've diminished your assets. Such a scenario is, of course, supremely unlikely given the scarcity of human-made, wooden, still-usable, 3000-year-old objects on earth today.
Thus, whereas Muir preached a religion of nature, based on a view that preserving areas that showed "God's great plan for the world" (hence his tendency to fight hardest to protect the most awe-inspiring vistas, while overlooking the ecological importance of seemingly ordinary landscapes), TR claimed that wasteful use of economic resources destroys our national wealth, impoverishing the nation and causing lasting economic hardship. Essentially, he viewed reckless destruction of nature for profit as akin to a corporation selling off its long-term assets to pay short-term operating expenses, a practice universally viewed in the business world as an express lane to bankruptcy.
One need only look at West Virginia and Kentucky, where the last several decades have seen the rise of increasingly, even grotesquely violent coal mining practices, while the towns in that region have sunk further and further into economic desperation, to understand that TR's argument was not only sound, but sadly prophetic.
Now mind you, I myself am an environmental activist, an unapologetic nature lover, and a Muir devotee. I have spent many days in the northern Minnesota Boundary Waters wilderness and along the shores of Lake Superior, I have hiked many miles of the Appalachian trail, and I can expound at length on the differences between the hunting habits of ospreys and bald eagles. I have walked among the ancient giants of California, and declared that were I to die at the base of such a tree, and be left there to fertilize its roots, I would consider it a more noble death than any I might deserve.
Nevertheless, the BIG QUESTION I am left with after reading this book is, would the "green" cause be better served by a rhetorical approach more in line with TR, and less in line with the Muir tradition, too easily dismissed by the enemies of conservation as "hippie tree hugging"? After all, a spiritual argument is really only effective if those hearing/reading it share the speaker/writer's spiritual values. With the popularity of transcendentalism in the late 19th century, Muir found many sympathetic ears. But ever since then, every time the national psyche has shifted toward conservative religious orthodoxy and capitalistic conquest, substantial ground has been lost in the battle to move America toward a more sustainable, less toxic future. That has surely been the case, sadly, for most of my lifetime. Worster asks at the end of this book how much farther we have to go in the journey toward a truly balanced relationship with nature. I would harden the question: are we even going the right direction right now?
And are we not indeed a poorer, more impoverished nation for the recklessness of recent decades? Ask any "middle class" family, a status they now desperately cling to by having two breadwinners working 50+ hours per week. What if the citizenry realized that it is not restraints on industry that are causing our impoverishment, but the unfettered waste of resources that industry has been allowed to practice? What if it was commonly understood that despoiling of natural resources may make one generation wealthier, but will make those to come suffer not merely in some theism-derived spiritual way, but economically as well? How different would the landscape of the country be if such thinking became solidly established in the American mainstream?
Clearly, then, this is a very thought-provoking book, and I recommend it to all who have an interest in the long-term health and well-being of their country, be that country the U.S. or any other.
December 13, 2022
My family and I recently had the opportunity to visit Yosemite National Park and, in doing so, I found myself wanting to know more about one of the driving forces behind the Park's creation and preservation. In A Passion for Nature, Donald Worster gives a comprehensive look at the life of John Muir, starting with his birth in Scotland, through his youth and adolescence, his early career working in various industrial capacities, and then on to his later life and building influence as a conservationist. Admittedly, I was hoping for a "life of John Muir in Yosemite" but was pleasantly surprised to get to know the man and peek into his life. I thought Mr. Worster did an excellent and balanced job representing who John Muir was as well as the forces and influences which made him into the man he was.
There were a few things I found of particular interest. First, I thought it was interesting to see John Muir's approach to conservation and preservation. While he served as the inaugural president of The Sierra Club, he was pragmatic and practical in dealing with issues like rail development, agricultural development, and others. Having read nothing about him beforehand, I imagine some who want to detract from him would argue that he sold out or didn't always stand by his values. However, his actions came across to me as consistent and practical throughout his life. Second, I thought Mr. Worster composed the latter third of the book in a really clever way, using the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a focal point to illustrate how Muir's role evolved as he aged. It gave the book drive and added suspense (I literally had to stop myself from a quick web search multiple times, to keep from spoiling things) which I really enjoyed.
Lastly, and most enduringly, John Muir's life gave me a desire to get out into nature more. Muir believed being in nature allows us as humans to better connect with God, to see evidence of Him, and commune with Him. My time in Yosemite definitely had me feeling reverence toward my Maker, grateful that He created places of such beauty. Reading this book made me grateful to those, like John Muir, who have selflessly and tirelessly worked to preserve such places for me, my children, and my children's children.
There were a few things I found of particular interest. First, I thought it was interesting to see John Muir's approach to conservation and preservation. While he served as the inaugural president of The Sierra Club, he was pragmatic and practical in dealing with issues like rail development, agricultural development, and others. Having read nothing about him beforehand, I imagine some who want to detract from him would argue that he sold out or didn't always stand by his values. However, his actions came across to me as consistent and practical throughout his life. Second, I thought Mr. Worster composed the latter third of the book in a really clever way, using the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a focal point to illustrate how Muir's role evolved as he aged. It gave the book drive and added suspense (I literally had to stop myself from a quick web search multiple times, to keep from spoiling things) which I really enjoyed.
Lastly, and most enduringly, John Muir's life gave me a desire to get out into nature more. Muir believed being in nature allows us as humans to better connect with God, to see evidence of Him, and commune with Him. My time in Yosemite definitely had me feeling reverence toward my Maker, grateful that He created places of such beauty. Reading this book made me grateful to those, like John Muir, who have selflessly and tirelessly worked to preserve such places for me, my children, and my children's children.
April 23, 2022
I enjoyed learning about Muir’s life—his early life was not what I expected— but the author of this biography has only basic understanding of US history and a Confederate apologist leaning that was both incorrect and offensive. For example he refers to the hair of a black child as “woolly,” he repeats the old canard about general Sherman burning Atlanta and all of Georgia, he praises the beauty of Savannah, GA without acknowledging that it was entirely built by slaves, mentions the bustling wharf commerce there without mentioning the slave trading prisons, he throws in that union soldiers stole rice and corn from local fields, and has Muir afraid of being attacked by roving gangs of ex-slaves which was very much not a thing. Yes the author acknowledges the Ku Klux Klan and northern and southern racism but his own partiality and inaccuracy reinforces myths and stereotypes.
As for the rest of the book, Muir was a lucky white man. He never had a career but he married money, so he was able to keep traveling the world and doing whatever he wanted to do. He was not a careful outdoorsman, and nearly died several times through stupid mistakes (like heading out in the evening on a glacier without a coat, food, light source, etc) but always got lucky and survived. He had wealthy friends who gave him free room and board and secretarial help with writing his books. Several of his books were simply composites of articles he’d already written, so he got paid for minimal effort. He spent much of his married life traveling the world, yet the author had the audacity to declare that one of his daughters was neglectful of him in her adulthood. Who neglected whom first, hm?
While Muir could behave with equanimity to people of color he met in his travels, which is more than can be said of many white men of the 19th or 20th centuries, but he dodged the draft and went to Canada to avoid serving in the American Civil War, and he held views similar to the prevalent ones of his time: he was racist and antisemitic. He may have been less chauvinistic than most given his lifelong friendships with women, but it wasn’t clear from the book how much he believed in women’s rights or equality. He never once got involved in social movements, nor social justice, and his world travels had no effect on him (he was not moved to compassion for those less fortunate than himself, for example). He did not get involved in the question of whether it was ok for white people to dispossess —and worse— the American Indians who lived in places like Yosemite that became National Parks as well as everywhere else on US soil. He was not a philanthropist.
Mainly it seems to me he didn’t accomplish much in his lifetime, but was a useful public figure and front man for ecological conservation.
As for the rest of the book, Muir was a lucky white man. He never had a career but he married money, so he was able to keep traveling the world and doing whatever he wanted to do. He was not a careful outdoorsman, and nearly died several times through stupid mistakes (like heading out in the evening on a glacier without a coat, food, light source, etc) but always got lucky and survived. He had wealthy friends who gave him free room and board and secretarial help with writing his books. Several of his books were simply composites of articles he’d already written, so he got paid for minimal effort. He spent much of his married life traveling the world, yet the author had the audacity to declare that one of his daughters was neglectful of him in her adulthood. Who neglected whom first, hm?
While Muir could behave with equanimity to people of color he met in his travels, which is more than can be said of many white men of the 19th or 20th centuries, but he dodged the draft and went to Canada to avoid serving in the American Civil War, and he held views similar to the prevalent ones of his time: he was racist and antisemitic. He may have been less chauvinistic than most given his lifelong friendships with women, but it wasn’t clear from the book how much he believed in women’s rights or equality. He never once got involved in social movements, nor social justice, and his world travels had no effect on him (he was not moved to compassion for those less fortunate than himself, for example). He did not get involved in the question of whether it was ok for white people to dispossess —and worse— the American Indians who lived in places like Yosemite that became National Parks as well as everywhere else on US soil. He was not a philanthropist.
Mainly it seems to me he didn’t accomplish much in his lifetime, but was a useful public figure and front man for ecological conservation.
July 6, 2023
One of the best biographies I’ve ever read. The quality of a historian’s work with an engaging enough style to be accessible to wider audiences. Donald Worster and his editorial team from Oxford University Press deserve serious kudos (even 15 years later…). I’ve spent the majority of my life in the American West, surrounded by federally protected lands. I’ve spent time hiking and camping at many of these parks and, like Muir, feel small and insignificant amidst the vast horizon.
I appreciated how Worster was careful with his approach to the seasons of Muir’s life, providing relative equity. The pacing was excellent! From a small Scottish seaside town to a hardscrabble Wisconsin farm, to hiking the American southeast in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, to roughing it at Yosemite in the days preceding federal protection, to numerous voyages to Alaska, to family and ranch life near the San Francisco Bay, to final worldwide expeditions and writing projects…what a life!
Religion features prominently. Some reviewers have scoffed at perceived slights towards Christianity or conservative politics. As a Christian and someone who grew up in a moderately conservative home, this wasn’t at all my experience. Rather, Worster seemed nuanced in his discussions of religion and politics, letting Muir himself and those with whom he engaged do most of the talking. Worster’s additional background information was insightful and fair.
Some of my key takeaways about John Muir include: 1) fair or not, early in life he valued pacifism more than abolitionism; 2) his views formed a nice Venn Diagram with Transcendentalism; 3) Today’s federally protected lands required the work of conservationists, preservationists, and even the mud-slinging politicians with whom Muir was often so frustrated; 4) Like all of us, Muir evolved and had to reconcile his previous beliefs and writings with newfound ones – and he did so with grace.
Highly recommend. If audiobooks are your thing, the narration holds up.
I appreciated how Worster was careful with his approach to the seasons of Muir’s life, providing relative equity. The pacing was excellent! From a small Scottish seaside town to a hardscrabble Wisconsin farm, to hiking the American southeast in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, to roughing it at Yosemite in the days preceding federal protection, to numerous voyages to Alaska, to family and ranch life near the San Francisco Bay, to final worldwide expeditions and writing projects…what a life!
Religion features prominently. Some reviewers have scoffed at perceived slights towards Christianity or conservative politics. As a Christian and someone who grew up in a moderately conservative home, this wasn’t at all my experience. Rather, Worster seemed nuanced in his discussions of religion and politics, letting Muir himself and those with whom he engaged do most of the talking. Worster’s additional background information was insightful and fair.
Some of my key takeaways about John Muir include: 1) fair or not, early in life he valued pacifism more than abolitionism; 2) his views formed a nice Venn Diagram with Transcendentalism; 3) Today’s federally protected lands required the work of conservationists, preservationists, and even the mud-slinging politicians with whom Muir was often so frustrated; 4) Like all of us, Muir evolved and had to reconcile his previous beliefs and writings with newfound ones – and he did so with grace.
Highly recommend. If audiobooks are your thing, the narration holds up.
December 18, 2019
One of my bucket list dreams is to visit every United States National Park, so to read this biography of John Muir was not just an education, but a great experience.
If you are not a fan of in depth biographies I have to warn you this one is a doozy, it is over 500 pages long, so have some time to read! Even with the length this book was very informative and a fun page turner.
Some of the best tidbits I remember from the book about Muir is first that he was actually an inventor. He loved to tinker with alarms, machines, and things around the family farm in Wisconsin. He hated politics, but he ended up
giving tours of Yosemite to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft. Also another fun fact that Muir went to college! I usually don't ever think of him and sitting down in a proper educational setting, but in fact, he went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
One of the biggest things I took away from this book was that Muir wasn't really tied to beliefs or unwilling to change his mind about things. This biography traces how he went from a farm boy he didn't much care for his own family to the leader of not only his own family, but the financial provider for his in laws as well. This book makes one question what Muir would think of the Sierra Club, the National Park System, and other things happening in our world today.
If you are not a fan of in depth biographies I have to warn you this one is a doozy, it is over 500 pages long, so have some time to read! Even with the length this book was very informative and a fun page turner.
Some of the best tidbits I remember from the book about Muir is first that he was actually an inventor. He loved to tinker with alarms, machines, and things around the family farm in Wisconsin. He hated politics, but he ended up
giving tours of Yosemite to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft. Also another fun fact that Muir went to college! I usually don't ever think of him and sitting down in a proper educational setting, but in fact, he went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
One of the biggest things I took away from this book was that Muir wasn't really tied to beliefs or unwilling to change his mind about things. This biography traces how he went from a farm boy he didn't much care for his own family to the leader of not only his own family, but the financial provider for his in laws as well. This book makes one question what Muir would think of the Sierra Club, the National Park System, and other things happening in our world today.
September 3, 2017
"I'm in the woods, woods, woods, and they are in me-ee-ee" - John Muir
It's impossible not to compare this to the Thoreau biography I read earlier this year, and despite some interesting similarities this doesn't reach those heights--Muir's thought feels less vital and contemporary than HDT's (although it's more recent), and as written his tale is less compelling. But there's still plenty worth reading, the charming oddity of the young Muir and a valuable history of the early U.S. conservation movement.
As Worster tells it Muir's environmentalism is an extension of his liberal democratic values, values that appear to be shared by the biographer. Muir's egalitarian instincts come through, and definitely helped shape the movement for the better--but it's also clear where his lack of a more radical political analysis held back both his thought and his advocacy, and I found myself wishing for more. He loved people of all species, though, wrote with wit and exuberance, and we need more of his ilk today.
It's impossible not to compare this to the Thoreau biography I read earlier this year, and despite some interesting similarities this doesn't reach those heights--Muir's thought feels less vital and contemporary than HDT's (although it's more recent), and as written his tale is less compelling. But there's still plenty worth reading, the charming oddity of the young Muir and a valuable history of the early U.S. conservation movement.
As Worster tells it Muir's environmentalism is an extension of his liberal democratic values, values that appear to be shared by the biographer. Muir's egalitarian instincts come through, and definitely helped shape the movement for the better--but it's also clear where his lack of a more radical political analysis held back both his thought and his advocacy, and I found myself wishing for more. He loved people of all species, though, wrote with wit and exuberance, and we need more of his ilk today.
October 20, 2020
way more than just a biography of a one-of-a-kind human being, this one gets deep into the context of muir's life; the world into which he was born, the world he left behind, and the delta between the two. its a biography for sure, and all the great Muir stories are in there (like when he climbed to the top of a douglas fir in the middle of a thunderstorm so that he could see how a storm feels to a tree), but its also a self-aware history of modern thought; from the rise of global liberalism, the late 18th century romantics like wordsworth and coleridge and of course robert burns, to the budding sciences of geology, glaciology, and plate tectonics, to the conservationist movement in warshington that Muir undoubtedly helped birth. the last quarter of the book does drag a bit and theres not as much as you might expect on the whole hetch hetchy saga, but these are small nit-picks for sure. this book will make you want to get outdoors and sleep under the stars, and there's nothing better i can say about it than that.
July 10, 2023
It would have been five stars for an emotional and riveting account of a man with exceptional passions at a pivotal time in history... But ...
The author strangely had a very large axe to grind against organized religion which the quotes he attributes to Muir clearly show his subject did not share. The anger and irrational scapegoating he applies to the people of faith who John clearly never stopped identifying with contaminates this biography to an unfortunate degree. I suppose it is not surprising that a person of the modern secular era who if they have no connection to people of faith might jump to conclusions based on popular opinion and unwarranted generalizations might supply such a belief. However I expect a more learned and nuanced approach from a biography of this length.
Still, all in all, I believe Muir to have been a singular man, a man to be admired, a man who held unpopular views at the time and articulated them in such a way as to reshape the zeitgeist... If not in his time then definitely up to ours. Glad to have read it.
The author strangely had a very large axe to grind against organized religion which the quotes he attributes to Muir clearly show his subject did not share. The anger and irrational scapegoating he applies to the people of faith who John clearly never stopped identifying with contaminates this biography to an unfortunate degree. I suppose it is not surprising that a person of the modern secular era who if they have no connection to people of faith might jump to conclusions based on popular opinion and unwarranted generalizations might supply such a belief. However I expect a more learned and nuanced approach from a biography of this length.
Still, all in all, I believe Muir to have been a singular man, a man to be admired, a man who held unpopular views at the time and articulated them in such a way as to reshape the zeitgeist... If not in his time then definitely up to ours. Glad to have read it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews