We’re fresh on the heels of the birthday of one of Yosemite’s true heroes, the great Scottish-American naturalist and conservationist John Muir—born April 21, 1838.
Muir’s irremovably linked to the story of Yosemite National Park: His infatuation with the Sierra Nevada was love at first sight, and he labored tirelessly for Yosemite’s preservation as he rambled its skyscraping forests and glacier-buffed high country. When you bed down at a
Scenic Wonders cabin, you’re calling home a slice of Muir’s exalted heaven-on-Earth.
These days, Muir’s often justly remembered for his wilderness-preservation sermons and essays, but we oughtn’t lose sight of his daring, adventurous exploits. Here was a man who’d think nothing of striking off into the Sierra backcountry for weeks on end with nothing but a loaf of bread and a bundle of tea. His ceaseless rambling into farflung lake basins, up mountaintops, and down rough canyons helped formulate his ideas for the
glacial origin of Yosemite Valley and other similar cathedrals in the Sierra—a geological origin story lambasted by the “experts” of his age but ultimately borne out.
Muir attained California via a dramatic route: Upon miraculously recovering his sight after a terrible accident in the factory he was working in, he struck off on a grand foot-trek from Indiana to the subtropics of Florida (memorialized in his
A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf). He’d originally intended to journey on to the Amazon, but a bout with malaria routed him instead to San Francisco—and then to our mighty Sierra.
He lived for several seasons in Yosemite Valley, inhabiting a stream-anchored cabin of his own design along Yosemite Creek. Windstorms, earthquakes, snowstorms—when the tourists fled for shelter, Muir was apt to be bounding out to experience primordial Nature. His lasting influence in the American conservation movement is immense: He guided Theodore Roosevelt through the Yosemite wilderness to sing the praises of the national-park idea, for example, and helped found the Sierra Club.
So let’s all wish a happy birthday to old John Muir, one of the true patron saints of Yosemite country!
We’re fresh on the heels of the birthday of one of Yosemite’s true heroes, the great Scottish-American naturalist and conservationist John Muir—born April 21, 1838.
Muir’s irremovably linked to the story of Yosemite National Park: His infatuation with the Sierra Nevada was love at first sight, and he labored tirelessly for Yosemite’s preservation as he rambled its skyscraping forests and glacier-buffed high country. When you bed down at a Scenic Wonders cabin, you’re calling home a slice of Muir’s exalted heaven-on-Earth.
These days, Muir’s often justly remembered for his wilderness-preservation sermons and essays, but we oughtn’t lose sight of his daring, adventurous exploits. Here was a man who’d think nothing of striking off into the Sierra backcountry for weeks on end with nothing but a loaf of bread and a bundle of tea. His ceaseless rambling into farflung lake basins, up mountaintops, and down rough canyons helped formulate his ideas for the glacial origin of Yosemite Valley and other similar cathedrals in the Sierra—a geological origin story lambasted by the “experts” of his age but ultimately borne out.
Muir attained California via a dramatic route: Upon miraculously recovering his sight after a terrible accident in the factory he was working in, he struck off on a grand foot-trek from Indiana to the subtropics of Florida (memorialized in his A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf). He’d originally intended to journey on to the Amazon, but a bout with malaria routed him instead to San Francisco—and then to our mighty Sierra.
He lived for several seasons in Yosemite Valley, inhabiting a stream-anchored cabin of his own design along Yosemite Creek. Windstorms, earthquakes, snowstorms—when the tourists fled for shelter, Muir was apt to be bounding out to experience primordial Nature. His lasting influence in the American conservation movement is immense: He guided Theodore Roosevelt through the Yosemite wilderness to sing the praises of the national-park idea, for example, and helped found the Sierra Club.
So let’s all wish a happy birthday to old John Muir, one of the true patron saints of Yosemite country! 
