John Muir

As is my wont to do, I was aimlessly perusing the bookshelves at the library the other day and came across a compilation of nature essays by the naturalist, and early conservationist John Muir.
This past winter while visiting the Visitors Center in Yosemite Valley I had a chance to look at an exhibit about him, and thought to myself that I should look up some of his writing...it only took me six months!
Anyway, he is a wonderful writer. I especially loved his essays on Yosemite. His writing style is a mix between textbook accuracy and a romance novel (the old-fashioned kind, not the seedy modern ones), and you can really sense the love he had for all things natural and wild, and the gentile, quiet, no-frills kind man that he was. His  flowery way of describing the wilderness is sort of peaceful to read, and is such that I can picture it easily in my mind. The sharp blue of the sky, the specific degree of fluffiness of a squirrels tale, the sound of a  stream as it flowed, all clearly imaginable and at my mental fingertips!
He was a great nature writer, a precursor to the likes of Barry Lopez, and Edward Abbey, and a true lover of the wild. (If you are interested I am sure you could find examples of his essays on the Internet.)
Here are a couple quotes that I jotted down while I was reading two essays about Yosemite. One was about the High Sierra, and the other about the kinds of animals in the Park. Enjoy!

"Former experience had given good reason to know that passionate storms, invisible yet, might be brooding in the calm sungold."


What a fine traveling companion [the creek] it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountains own joy!"


"In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality."


"But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illuminated with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone."


"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains. To behold this alone is worth the pain of any excursion a thousand times over!"