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The Wilderness Journeys
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." —John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra The name of John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Dunbar in 1838, Muir is famed as the father of American conservation. This collection, including the rarely-seen Stickeen, presents the finest of Muir's writings, and imparts a rounded portrait of a man whose generosity, passion, discipline, and vision are an inspiration to this day. Combining acute observation with a sense of inner discovery, Muir's writings of his travels though some of the greatest landscapes on Earth, including the Carolinas, Florida, Alaska, and those lands which were to become the great National Parks of Yosemite and the Sierra Valley, raise an awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension. These journals provide a unique marriage of natural history with lyrical prose and often amusing anecdotes, retaining a freshness, intensity, and brutal honesty which will amaze the modern reader. Introduced by Graham White.
736 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 1998
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206 people want to read
About the author
John Muir
626 books1,438 followersJohn Muir was far more than a naturalist; he was a secular prophet who translated the rugged language of the wilderness into a spiritual calling that saved the American soul from total surrender to materialism. Born in 1838 in the coastal town of Dunbar, Scotland, Muir’s childhood was a blend of seaside wanderings and a brutal religious upbringing. His father, Daniel Muir, was a man of uncompromising faith who forced John to memorize the New Testament and most of the Old Testament by age eleven. When the family immigrated to the frontier of Wisconsin in 1849, this iron-fisted discipline continued on their farm. However, for the young Muir, the "Book of Nature" began to rival the Bible. He saw the divine not just in scripture, but in the black locust trees and the sun-drenched meadows of the midwest.
The pivotal moment of Muir’s life occurred in 1867 while working at a wagon wheel factory in Indianapolis. A tool slipped, piercing his cornea and leaving him temporarily blind in both eyes. Confined to a darkened room for six weeks, Muir faced the terrifying prospect of a life without light. When his sight miraculously returned, he emerged with a clarity of purpose that would change the course of American history. He famously wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." He immediately set out on a 1,000-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico, beginning a lifelong odyssey of exploration.
Muir eventually found his "true home" in California’s Sierra Nevada. To Muir, the mountains were not mere piles of rock, but "the range of light." He spent years as a shepherd and guide in Yosemite, living a life of extreme simplicity—often traveling with nothing but a tin cup, a crust of bread, and a volume of Emerson’s essays. His scientific contributions were equally profound; he defied the leading geologists of the day by proving that the Yosemite Valley was carved by ancient glaciers. While the state geologist, Josiah Whitney, dismissed him as a mere "shepherd," the world’s leading glaciologists eventually recognized Muir’s genius.
His transition from explorer to activist was born of necessity. Seeing the "hoofed locusts"—domestic sheep—devouring the high mountain meadows, Muir took up his pen. His landmark articles in The Century Magazine and his 1903 camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt became the catalysts for the modern conservation movement. Under the stars at Glacier Point, Muir convinced the President that the wilderness required federal protection. This meeting laid the groundwork for the expansion of the National Park system and the eventual return of Yosemite Valley to federal control.
As the co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club, Muir spent his final years in a fierce philosophical battle with Gifford Pinchot. While Pinchot argued for "conservation" (the sustainable use of resources), Muir championed "preservation" (the protection of nature for its own sake). Though he lost the battle to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed, the heartbreak of that loss galvanized the American public, ensuring that future "cathedrals of nature" would remain inviolate. John Muir died in 1914, but his voice remains ubiquitous, reminding us that "into the woods we go, to lose our minds and find our souls."
The pivotal moment of Muir’s life occurred in 1867 while working at a wagon wheel factory in Indianapolis. A tool slipped, piercing his cornea and leaving him temporarily blind in both eyes. Confined to a darkened room for six weeks, Muir faced the terrifying prospect of a life without light. When his sight miraculously returned, he emerged with a clarity of purpose that would change the course of American history. He famously wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." He immediately set out on a 1,000-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico, beginning a lifelong odyssey of exploration.
Muir eventually found his "true home" in California’s Sierra Nevada. To Muir, the mountains were not mere piles of rock, but "the range of light." He spent years as a shepherd and guide in Yosemite, living a life of extreme simplicity—often traveling with nothing but a tin cup, a crust of bread, and a volume of Emerson’s essays. His scientific contributions were equally profound; he defied the leading geologists of the day by proving that the Yosemite Valley was carved by ancient glaciers. While the state geologist, Josiah Whitney, dismissed him as a mere "shepherd," the world’s leading glaciologists eventually recognized Muir’s genius.
His transition from explorer to activist was born of necessity. Seeing the "hoofed locusts"—domestic sheep—devouring the high mountain meadows, Muir took up his pen. His landmark articles in The Century Magazine and his 1903 camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt became the catalysts for the modern conservation movement. Under the stars at Glacier Point, Muir convinced the President that the wilderness required federal protection. This meeting laid the groundwork for the expansion of the National Park system and the eventual return of Yosemite Valley to federal control.
As the co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club, Muir spent his final years in a fierce philosophical battle with Gifford Pinchot. While Pinchot argued for "conservation" (the sustainable use of resources), Muir championed "preservation" (the protection of nature for its own sake). Though he lost the battle to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed, the heartbreak of that loss galvanized the American public, ensuring that future "cathedrals of nature" would remain inviolate. John Muir died in 1914, but his voice remains ubiquitous, reminding us that "into the woods we go, to lose our minds and find our souls."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 7, 2025
Throughout reading this book, I’ve been back and forth on how to rate it and my feelings about it. What originally sparked my interest in learning about John Muir was the tales of a man who had been known as a wildlife activist and earned the title, “Father of the National Parks”.
Muir is exceptionally great at finding the humanity within the plants and animals he encounters on these journeys, writing, “How many mouths Nature has to fill, how many neighbours we have, how little we know about them”, though the impact of his words falls short when he spends the next page unable to accept the humanity of people who differ from him. Oftentimes, excelling at perpetuating the harmful stereotypes that to this day still plague Indigenous and African American populations.
It became less a book documenting one man's journey through vast expanses of flora and fauna, and rather a window into an uncomfortable past, holding true the biases and favored judgments of the time. I don't believe Muir was an anomaly of prejudice. In fact, I believe, had any other white man written a book during this time and had he been on the same journey as Muir, he too would have written about these minorities in the same ways.
It's said that Muir's views on Indigenous Americans shifted in the second-to-last book, ‘Travels in Alaska’, and although hesitant about the validity of that statement, I was intrigued to witness his growth with age. I, however, was not that surprised to find that in this book, he spends the majority of his time traveling with Christian missionaries. Though it wasn't initially Muir's journey to convert the densely indigenous population of Alaska, with an already rich and long-standing culture and belief system, to Christianity, it tracks that these are the people with which Muir chose to voyage and keep company beside. In recounting these meetings between the Christian missionaries and various tribes, there was a bold throughline of almost every one. This being a tribe leader thanking, to some capacity, the missionaries greatly and demeaning their own intelligence and beliefs. An example of one leader's words talking of the missionary group, "that he and all his people compared to ourselves were only children." This narrative, being pushed by John himself in his writing, doesn't certainly make it true, nor can it entirely be proven as false. However, it comes across as patronising and is saturated with a white savior tone, perhaps in this case quite literally.
When judging the literature itself, not the humanity of the author, I can't deny that it was an intriguing read. It made me think a lot, sometimes having to roll my eyes and put the book down for the night. Other times, getting very invested in the logs of his journey. I would say my favorite was ‘My First Summer in the Sierra’, documenting his travels through Yosemite with day-to-day journal entries. This is what I had originally bought the book for. I don't know if this kind of uncharted exploring exists anymore. Traveling on foot, and trusting in the kindness of fellow man to house and feed you every night for no money. I think that's what kept drawing me back, what seems an alien reality of true freedom, adventure so few get to experience.
It can be tricky territory holding someone in the past to the standards of our present, as said before, Muir is a man of his time. His hypocrisy is what leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I don’t know how a person can so unwaveringly rejoice in the humanness of the nature that surrounds him, but be so blind in judgment to people who share his same being.
Muir is exceptionally great at finding the humanity within the plants and animals he encounters on these journeys, writing, “How many mouths Nature has to fill, how many neighbours we have, how little we know about them”, though the impact of his words falls short when he spends the next page unable to accept the humanity of people who differ from him. Oftentimes, excelling at perpetuating the harmful stereotypes that to this day still plague Indigenous and African American populations.
It became less a book documenting one man's journey through vast expanses of flora and fauna, and rather a window into an uncomfortable past, holding true the biases and favored judgments of the time. I don't believe Muir was an anomaly of prejudice. In fact, I believe, had any other white man written a book during this time and had he been on the same journey as Muir, he too would have written about these minorities in the same ways.
It's said that Muir's views on Indigenous Americans shifted in the second-to-last book, ‘Travels in Alaska’, and although hesitant about the validity of that statement, I was intrigued to witness his growth with age. I, however, was not that surprised to find that in this book, he spends the majority of his time traveling with Christian missionaries. Though it wasn't initially Muir's journey to convert the densely indigenous population of Alaska, with an already rich and long-standing culture and belief system, to Christianity, it tracks that these are the people with which Muir chose to voyage and keep company beside. In recounting these meetings between the Christian missionaries and various tribes, there was a bold throughline of almost every one. This being a tribe leader thanking, to some capacity, the missionaries greatly and demeaning their own intelligence and beliefs. An example of one leader's words talking of the missionary group, "that he and all his people compared to ourselves were only children." This narrative, being pushed by John himself in his writing, doesn't certainly make it true, nor can it entirely be proven as false. However, it comes across as patronising and is saturated with a white savior tone, perhaps in this case quite literally.
When judging the literature itself, not the humanity of the author, I can't deny that it was an intriguing read. It made me think a lot, sometimes having to roll my eyes and put the book down for the night. Other times, getting very invested in the logs of his journey. I would say my favorite was ‘My First Summer in the Sierra’, documenting his travels through Yosemite with day-to-day journal entries. This is what I had originally bought the book for. I don't know if this kind of uncharted exploring exists anymore. Traveling on foot, and trusting in the kindness of fellow man to house and feed you every night for no money. I think that's what kept drawing me back, what seems an alien reality of true freedom, adventure so few get to experience.
It can be tricky territory holding someone in the past to the standards of our present, as said before, Muir is a man of his time. His hypocrisy is what leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I don’t know how a person can so unwaveringly rejoice in the humanness of the nature that surrounds him, but be so blind in judgment to people who share his same being.
January 23, 2022
Wilderness Journeys is actually 4 books: Muir's early life, his 1000-mile trek from the Midwest to Florida, his 1st summer in the Sierra Mountains, and his travels in Alaska. Keep this in mind if you take the book out of the library--it's going to take a while to get through. I read it in 2 sessions--half the book in the autumn and then I came back after the holidays to finish it. It's not a book to read in hurry. There's too much to think about.
The first book is about Muir's boyhood in Scotland, his immigration to America where his family settled in Wisconsin, his interest in and talent for mechanical things and his inventions, which earned him enough for college where he developed his passion for the natural world. In this book you get a feel for Muir's good humor, optimism, and Scottish stubbornness.
His walk to Florida took place in 1867. Not only does he talk about his studies and documentation of the flora, fauna and geology along the way, but you learn quite a bit about the post-Civil-War South and Muir's attempts to avoid politics when in need of supplies or a place to sleep. His descriptions of the natural world--in this case mountains, forests, swamps, savannahs and the coastal regions--put you right there alongside him.
His 1st visit to the Sierra Mountains was working as an aide to a shepherd taking a herd of sheep up into the mountains to graze for the summer. Again, his descriptions of nature, especially of the Yosemite Valley, are incredible, but he includes lots of amusing anecdotes about his companions and a few adventures with bears.
The most harrowing adventures were in his travels in Alaska in 1879, hiking out across glaciers by himself, often in storms (Muir had a love of storms). I expect by this time in his writings, he knew how to weave a minor adventure into an epic saga, but even so...some of those stories will have you on the edge of your seat. Again, his descriptions, and insights, about glacial formation, flora, fauna, etc., and especially his experiences seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, are worth the read. And more anecdotes about the missionaries he traveled with and the Alaska Natives he met. In retrospect, some of the stories of relations between natives and especially missionaries were sad--the natives eager for education for their children, but not realizing that it would lead to separation from parents and outlawing of their culture and language in later years.
Muir does tend to take his prejudices for granted, as did almost all white men of that century. He seemed to rely on the opinions of other whites as to the characters of blacks and Indians in the areas he traveled, avoiding people unlike himself rather than meeting them and forming his own opinion. He DID show somewhat of an evolution regarding the natives in Alaska, coming to respect and befriend several, though he also spent more time and shared adventures with them. I will say he hardly ever mentions women at all, yet he must have met some on his travels.
But Muir is a great storyteller and for that alone I would highly recommend this book.
The first book is about Muir's boyhood in Scotland, his immigration to America where his family settled in Wisconsin, his interest in and talent for mechanical things and his inventions, which earned him enough for college where he developed his passion for the natural world. In this book you get a feel for Muir's good humor, optimism, and Scottish stubbornness.
His walk to Florida took place in 1867. Not only does he talk about his studies and documentation of the flora, fauna and geology along the way, but you learn quite a bit about the post-Civil-War South and Muir's attempts to avoid politics when in need of supplies or a place to sleep. His descriptions of the natural world--in this case mountains, forests, swamps, savannahs and the coastal regions--put you right there alongside him.
His 1st visit to the Sierra Mountains was working as an aide to a shepherd taking a herd of sheep up into the mountains to graze for the summer. Again, his descriptions of nature, especially of the Yosemite Valley, are incredible, but he includes lots of amusing anecdotes about his companions and a few adventures with bears.
The most harrowing adventures were in his travels in Alaska in 1879, hiking out across glaciers by himself, often in storms (Muir had a love of storms). I expect by this time in his writings, he knew how to weave a minor adventure into an epic saga, but even so...some of those stories will have you on the edge of your seat. Again, his descriptions, and insights, about glacial formation, flora, fauna, etc., and especially his experiences seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, are worth the read. And more anecdotes about the missionaries he traveled with and the Alaska Natives he met. In retrospect, some of the stories of relations between natives and especially missionaries were sad--the natives eager for education for their children, but not realizing that it would lead to separation from parents and outlawing of their culture and language in later years.
Muir does tend to take his prejudices for granted, as did almost all white men of that century. He seemed to rely on the opinions of other whites as to the characters of blacks and Indians in the areas he traveled, avoiding people unlike himself rather than meeting them and forming his own opinion. He DID show somewhat of an evolution regarding the natives in Alaska, coming to respect and befriend several, though he also spent more time and shared adventures with them. I will say he hardly ever mentions women at all, yet he must have met some on his travels.
But Muir is a great storyteller and for that alone I would highly recommend this book.
September 14, 2009
My Boyhood & Youth: It was a little slow to start, but it picked up. It is truely amazing what Muir was able to do with such little formal education.
1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf: So far this one is much harder to get through. It is written like a journal so it is somewhat hard to follow. Very choppy. And only half the book is actually him walking from the north to Florida. He then gets on a boat and goes to Cuba, then New York, then California.
First Summer in the Sierra: Again written like a journal so kinda choppy in the day-to-day thoughts. What I don't get is why someone so concerned with the beauty of plants and the natural environment would spend a summer with a sheep herder. Sheep eat and destroy everything in their path which is why they were so eager whenever they moved camps. Muir is famous for relating nature with religion and religous sayings...this was very evident in this book.
Travels in Alaska: Amazing some of his adventures and risks he took. I enjoyed this story much more than the previous two.
Stickeen: This 20 page edition was my favorite part of the whole book. It is truely amazing what man's best friend is capable of doing. Stickeen has been immortalized through the writings of John Muir.
1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf: So far this one is much harder to get through. It is written like a journal so it is somewhat hard to follow. Very choppy. And only half the book is actually him walking from the north to Florida. He then gets on a boat and goes to Cuba, then New York, then California.
First Summer in the Sierra: Again written like a journal so kinda choppy in the day-to-day thoughts. What I don't get is why someone so concerned with the beauty of plants and the natural environment would spend a summer with a sheep herder. Sheep eat and destroy everything in their path which is why they were so eager whenever they moved camps. Muir is famous for relating nature with religion and religous sayings...this was very evident in this book.
Travels in Alaska: Amazing some of his adventures and risks he took. I enjoyed this story much more than the previous two.
Stickeen: This 20 page edition was my favorite part of the whole book. It is truely amazing what man's best friend is capable of doing. Stickeen has been immortalized through the writings of John Muir.
September 12, 2009
As a strong environmentalist, I figured it would be interesting to check out the writings of John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, one of the fathers of conservation in the US, and also the individual who supported the preservation side of the debate over the Hech-Hechy debate against Gifford Pinchot, another great conservationist. The book contains several stories from his youth on. So far I don't think he's the greatest writer who ever lived, but the passion he feels for the beauty of the natural world shines through, and so far it has been fascinating to see how his belief in wilderness preservation has developed. Stickeen might have been the strongest of his stories and the one I liked best.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews