John Muir
Meditations on Nature
INTRODUCTION
1838-1914 John Muir is considered the father of wilderness consevation in the United States. His pioneering advocacy was instrumental in founding the US National Parks System and in protecting countless wilderness areas. Muir was an ecological thinker, political spokesman and religious prophet whose writings became a guide into nature for the nation, making his name ubiquitous in the modern environmental consciousness. He lived much of his life in the wilderness as a backcountry guide, sheepherder, prolific wanderer and long haul wilderness trekker. His interest in nature can be traced to a time when he walked from Indiana to Florida after having suffering an eye injury in a factory accident. He eventually headed west and begun a lifelong series of treks and adventures in the California Sierra Nevada. His tales of extreme backcountry experiences and close calls are legendary. In one famous episode he and a climbing partner became trapped on top of Mount Shasta in a severe winter storm. They survived a brutal overnight by huddling beside a hot spring near the summit. Muir was a student of geology, botony and natural history. He conducted field studies and observations throughout his career. His theory of glacial erosion, that glaciers and not earthquakes carved rock formations, ran counter to the prevailing notions of the day, and was eventually proven to be correct. The meditations reprinted here, originally compiled by Chris Highland, are excerpted from Muir's 12 books and some 300 published articles. They reveal Muir's vision of "the sublimity of Nature" and the spiritual dimension of the natural world. Muir felt that his task was more than just recording "phenomena," but also to "illuminate the spiritual implications of those phenomena," writes historian Dennis Williams. His nature writings became a "synthesis of natural theology" with scripture that helped him understand and be awed by the natural world. According to Williams, Mur came to believe that God was always active in the creation of life and thereby kept the natural order of the world. Williams suggests that Muir saw nature as a great teacher, "revealing the mind of God," and this belief became the central theme of his later journeys and the subtext of his nature writing. While living in the mountains, Muir continued to experience the "presence of the divine in nature," writes biographer Steven J. Holmes. Muir valued nature for its spiritual and transcendental qualities. He preached the gospel of nature, and encouraged city dwellers to experience nature for its spiritual nourishment. Biographer Donald Worster says Muir understood his mission to be, "Saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism." The spiritual quality and enthusiasm expressed in his writings inspired leading political and academic minds of his day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Teddy Roosevelt. In 1903, President Roosevelt accompanied Muir on a visit to the Yosemite Valley. Muir joined Roosevelt in Oakland, California, travelling with the presidential entourage by train and then stagecoach into what is today the Park. Muir told the President about state mismanagement of the valley and rampant exploitation of the valley's resources. Even before they entered the valley, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management. After seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the President asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. Muir and Roosevelt ditched the entourage and and camped by themselves in the back country for three nights. The two talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air of Glacier Point, and were dusted by a fresh snowfall in the morning. It was an experience Roosevelt would never forget. (composite from Wikipedia biography) |
We find in the fields of Nature no place that is blank or barren; every spot on land or sea is covered with harvests, and these harvests are always ripe and ready to be gathered, and no toiler is ever underpaid. Not in these fields, God's wilds, will you ever hear the sad moan of disappointment, 'All is vanity.' No, we are overpaid a thousand times for all our toil, and a single day in so divine an atmosphere of beauty and love would be well worth living for, and at its close, should death come, without any hope of another life, we could still say, 'Thank you, God, for the glorious gift!' and pass on. Indeed, some of the days I have spent alone in the depths of the wilderness have shown me that immortal life beyond the grave is not essential to perfect happiness, for these diverse days were so complete there was no sense of time in them, they had no definate beginning or ending, and formed a kind of terrestrial immortality. After days like these we are ready for any fate—pain, grief, death or oblivion—with grateful heart for the glorious gift as long as hearts shall endure. In the meantime, our indebtedness is growing ever more. The sun shines and the stars, and new beauty meets us at every step in all our wanderings.
***** The waycup, or flicker, so familiar to every (child) in the old Middle West States, is one of the most common of the wood-peckers hereabouts, and makes one feel at home. I can see no difference in plumage or habits from the Eastern species, though the climate here is so different—a fine, brave, confiding, beautiful bird. The robin, too, is here, with all his familiar notes and gestures, tripping daintily on open garden spots and high meadows. Over all America he seems to be at home, moving from the plains to the mountains and from north to south, back and forth, up and down, with the march of the seasons and food supply. How admirable the constitution and temper of this brave singer, keeping in cheery health over so vast and varied a range! Oftentimes, as I wander through these solemn woods, awe-striken and silent, I hear the reassuring voice of this fellow wanderer ringing out, sweet and clear, 'Fear not! Fear not!' ***** One of our best playgrounds was the famous old Dunbar Castle to which King Edward fled after his defeat at Bannockburn. It was built more than a thousand years ago, and though we knew little of its history, we had heard many mysterious stories of the battles fought about its walls, and firmly believed that every bone we found in the ruins belonged to an ancient warrior. We tried to see who could climb highest on the crumbling peaks and cags, and took chances that no cautious mountaineer would try. That I did not fall and finish my rock-scrambling in those adventurous boyhood days seems now a reasonable wonder... I was so proud of my skill as a climber that when I first heard of hell from a servant girl who loved to tell its horrors and warn us that if we did anything wrong we would be cast into it, I always insisted that I could climb out of it. I imagined it was only a sooty pit with stone walls like those of the castle, and I felt sure there must be chinks and cracks in the masonry for fingers and toes. Anyhow the terrors of the horrible place seldom lasted long beyond the telling; for natural faith casts out fear. ***** The Juniper or Red Cedar is preeminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements in the upper silver fir and alpine zones, at a height of from 7000 to 9500 feet. Some trees are mere storm-beaten stumps about as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of old castles scantily draped with ivy...Most of the trees eight or ten feet thick, standing on pavements, are more than twenty centuries old rather than less. Barring accidents, for all I can see they would live forever; even when overthrown by avalanches, they refuse to lie at rest, lean stubbornly on their big branches as if anxious to rise, and while a single root holds to the rock, put forth fresh leaves with a grim, never-say-die expression. ***** No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems resonable that what interests God may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains—beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken. ***** It is interesting to note among the passengers the play of quickened action in the minds of those who, brought up in the shadows of city business, have been sleeping all their lives. They gaze at the hills of the coast with curious wonder as if never before had they seen a hill. Objects seen every day are scarce seen at all; clocks strike without being heard, as one may even hear the discharge of a cannon so often in the same tone and volume of sound that it is no longer heard. So much need is there for change of scene, new points of view. How many notice so glorious a phenomenon as the rising of the sun over a familiar landscape? All that is necessary to make any landscape visible and therefore impressive is to regard it from a new point of view, or from the old one with our heads upside down. Then we behold a new heaven and earth and are born again, as if we had gone on a pilgrimage to some far-off holy land and had become new creatures with bodies inverted; the scales fall from our eyes, and in like manner are we made to see when we go on excursions into fields and pastures new... ***** How boundless the day seems as we revel in these storm-beaten sky gardens amid so vast a congregation of onlooking mountains! Strange and admirable it is that the more savage and chilly and storm-chafed the mountains, the finer the glow on their faces and the finer the plants they bear. The myriads of flowers tingeing the mountain-top do not seem to have grown out of the dry, rough gravel of disintegration, but rather they appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to Nature's love in what we in our timid ignorance and unbelief call howling desert. The surface of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight, besides being rich in plants, shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline. The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing, sparkling in florious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work—every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.... Toward sunset, enjoyed a fine run to camp...enjoying wild excitement and excess of strength, and so ends a day that will never end. ***** If you wish to see how much of light, life, and joy can be got into a January, go to this blessed Twenty Hill Hollow. If you wish to see a plant-resurrection,—myriads of bright flowers crowding from the ground, like souls to a judgment—go to Twenty Hills in February. If you are traveling for health, play truant to doctors and friends, fill your pocket with biscuits, and hide in the hills of the Hollow, lave in its waters, tan in its golds, bask in its flower-shrine, and your baptisms will make you a new creature indeed. Or, choked in the sediment of society, so tired of the world, here will your hard doubts disappear, your carnal incrustations melt off, and your soul breathe deep and free in God's shoreless atmosphere of beauty and love. ***** At length, after gaining the upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we found a good place to rest and prepare ourselves to scale the dangerous upper curves of the dome.... Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through tangled line of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the dangerous slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made good speed nevertheless, and by noon all stood together on the utmost summit.... We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the vast maplike views (that) could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of mountains than on their frozen tops. Doubly happy, however, is the person to whom lofty mountain-tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below. ***** You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend. I don't envy you. You'll have a hard time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of this crowd of madmen. Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce-tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these poor, deluded, self-burdened people. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean from the earth-stains of the sordid, gold-seeking crowd in God's pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring to these people something better than gold. Don't lose your freedom and your love of the Earth as God made it. ***** Ramble to the summit of Mount Hoffman, eleven thousand feet high, the highest point in life's journey my feet have yet touched. And what glorious landscapes are about me, new plants, new animals, new crystals, and multitudes of new mountains far higher than Hoffman, towering in glorious array along the axis of the range, serene, majestic, snow-laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and rigdes shining below them, forests, lakes and meadows in the hollows, the pure blue bell-flower sky brooding them all—a glory day of admission into a new realm of wonders as if Nature had wooingly whispered, 'Come higher.' What questions I asked and how little I know of all the vast show, and how eagerly, tremulously hopeful of some day knowing more, learning the meaning of these divine symbols crowded together on this wonderous page. ***** Climbing along the dashing border of the cascade, bathed from time to time in waftings of irised spray, you are not likely to feel much weariness, and all too soon you find yourself beyond its highest fountains. Climbing higher, new beauty comes streaming on the sight.... All the streams and the pools at this elevation are furnished with little gardens, which, though making scarce any show at a distance, constitute charming surprises to the appreciative mountaineer in their midst. In so wild and so beautiful a region your first day will be spent, every sight and sound novel and inspiring, and leading you far from yourself.... With the approach of evening long, blue spiky-edged shadows creep out over the snowfields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepens, suffusing every peak and flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This is the alpenglow, the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light the mountains seem to kindle at a rapt religious consciousness, and stand hushed like worshippers waiting to be blessed. Then suddenly comes darkness and the stars. ***** No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the Cathedral itself, a temple displaying Nature's best masonry and sermons in stone. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing! This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshipper. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars. And lo, here at last in front of the Cathedral is blessed cassiope, ringing her thousands of sweet-toned bells, the sweetest church music I ever enjoyed. Listening, admiring, until late in the afternoon I compelled myself to hasten away.... ***** |
Read the story of the renegade camping trip Muir took with President Roosevelt.
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