John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of U.S. wilderness. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. One of the most well-known hiking trails in America, the 211-mile John Muir Trail was named in his honor.[1] Other places named in his honor are Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach and Muir Glacier. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park Bill that was passed in 1899, establishing both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. It was due to the spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature that he expressed in his writings that he was able to inspire his readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.[2] Muir's biographer, Steven Holmes, states that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he is often quoted in books by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams.[3] "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world," writes Holmes.[4] He was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth."[5] John Muir was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland to Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye. He was one of eight children: Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles of Scottish history or just scrapping on the playground, and hunting for birds' nests (ostensibly to one-up his fellows as they compared notes on who knew where the most were located).[6]:25,37 Author Amy Marquis notes that he began his "love affair" with nature while young, and implies that it may have been in reaction to his strict religious upbringing. "His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous and punishable." But the young Muir was a "restless spirit" and thereby especially "prone to lashings."[7] In 1849, Muir's family emigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin called Fountain Lake Farm, which is a National Historic Landmark.[8] Stephen Fox recounts that Muir's father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in faith and practice, leading to their emigration and joining a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement. Fox relates that, by age 11, young Muir had learned to recite "by heart and by sore flesh" all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament.[9] But in maturity, Muir was never confused by orthodox beliefs. In a letter to his fond friend Emily Pelton, dated 23 May 1865, he wrote, "I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization; they went away of their own accord... without leaving any consciousness of loss." Elsewhere in his writings, he described the conventional image of a Creator, "as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater."[10] He remained though a deeply religious man writing, "We all flow from one fountain—Soul. All are expressions of one love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all."[11] At age 22, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own way for several years. There, under a towering black locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany lesson. A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant. Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography. "This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm."[6]:225 Muir took an eclectic approach to his studies, attending classes for two years but never being listed higher than a first year student due to his unusual selection of courses. Records showed his class status as "irregular gent," and even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later wanderings.[12]:36 In 1864, Muir left school to go to Canada, spending the spring, summer, and fall wandering the woods and swamps around Lake Huron collecting plants. With his money running out and winter coming, he met his brother Daniel in Ontario, where the two worked at a sawmill on the shore of Lake Huron until the summer of 1865. Muir's trip to Canada was likely influenced by the Civil War draft. By 1864, President Lincoln was calling up another half million soldiers, and Muir's chances of getting drafted were becoming increasingly likely. Roderick Nash has described Muir's travels in Canada as journeys into wilderness to avoid military service,[13] while Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote that Muir decided that if his number wasn't picked in the draft—which it wasn't—he "would wander a while" in the Canadian wilderness.[10]:90 Muir worked at the mill until March 1866, returning to the United States to work as an industrial engineer in Indianapolis. He became extremely valuable to his employers with his inventiveness in improving the machines, processes, and lives of the laborers at a plant that manufactured carriage parts. In early March 1867, an accident changed the course of his life: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye, confining him to a darkened room for six weeks, worried if he’d ever regain his sight. When he did, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light," writes Marquis. Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons."[7] From that point on, he determined to "be true to myself" and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants.[10]:97 In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find." Upon reaching Florida, he hoped to board a ship to South America and continue his wandering there. He contracted malaria on Florida's Gulf Coast, which convinced him to abandon his plans for South America. Instead, he sailed to New York where he booked passage to California.[12]:40-41 Arriving in San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left for week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Marquis notes that "he was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower."[7] "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us," Muir later wrote. . . . "No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite... The grandest of all special temples of Nature."[14] He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season. The next year, 1869, Muir took a job in the Yosemite Valley building a sawmill for James Mason Hutchings. In his free time he wandered through Yosemite, carrying a "tattered blue journal" that he used to write his observations and draw sketches, and sometimes add "soulful" observations.[7] He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake. A natural born inventor, Muir designed a water-powered mill to cut wind-felled trees and he built himself a small cabin along Yosemite Creek[15]:207 and designed it so that a section of the stream would flow through a corner of the room so he could enjoy the sound of running water. He lived in the cabin for two years,[16]:143 and wrote about this period his book First Summer in the Sierra (1911). Muir biographer Frederick Turner notes Muir's journal entry upon first visiting the valley and writes that his description "blazes from the page with the authentic force of a conversion experience."[17]:172 We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. . . . In this newness of life we seem to have been so always.[18]:20-21 During these years in Yosemite Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, with no prospects for a career, and had "periods of anguish," writes naturalist author John Tallmadge. He was sustained by not only the natural environment, but also by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living. On Muir's excursions into the back country of Yosemite, he traveled alone, carrying "only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson."[19]:52-53 He usually spent his evenings sitting around a campfire in his overcoat, reading Emerson under the stars. As the years passed, he became a "fixture in the valley," respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling.[19]:53 Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting with Muir.