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John Muir wrote many wonderful books about his travels, but one story—about his long walk from San Francisco to Yosemite—is one book he did not author himself. In April 1868, a very young John Muir stepped off a boat in San Francisco and inquired about the quickest way out of town. “But where do you want to go?” was the response, to which Muir replied, “Anywhere that is wild.” Using Muir’s personal correspondence and published articles, Peter and Donna Thomas have reconstructed the real story of Muir’s literal ramblings over California hills and through dales, with lofty Sierra Nevada peaks, Englishmen, and bears mixed in for good measure. The trip is illustrated by charming cut-paper illustrations that take their inspiration from Muir's love of nature. John Muir’s story-telling is so compelling that even 150 years later, seeing the world through his eyes makes us want to head out into the wild.
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About the Author:
Peter and Donna Thomas are book artists. In 2006 they walked from San Francisco to Yosemite following the footsteps of John Muir on his first trip to Yosemite and later published a guidebook for following this route. Since 2010, they have traveled the United States as “Wandering Book Artists,” giving talks, workshops, and demonstrations.
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Introduction
What follows is the story of John Muir’s 1868 walk across California from San Francisco to Yosemite. John Muir, noted naturalist, writer, and father of the worldwide conservation movement, was born in Scotland in 1838. His family immigrated to America in 1849 and settled near Portage, Wisconsin. Muir grew up as a hard-working farm boy with a deep, abiding love of nature. He proved to be an able inventor, creating machines composed of whittled cogs and levers to perform various semipractical operations, like a mechanism that connected a clock to his bed and tipped him out when it was time to rise. When he was twenty-two, he entered the University of Wisconsin, studying the natural sciences and intending to become a physician as a way to help humanity. Then, as part of his eclectic, self-directed education, Muir began to study botany. In the summer of 1863, he set off on his first long walk, accompanied by two fellow students; it was a botanical and geological tour down the Wisconsin River Valley and into Iowa. On completing this trip, instead of returning to school, he set out on another walking trip, this time from Wisconsin to Canada, into what he called “the University of the Wilderness.”
It is interesting to contemplate that John Muir might never have come to California to take this walk—and thus, might never have been in the position to influence President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside Yosemite as a national park—if he hadn’t first had an accident. In 1867, after returning home from his walk to Canada, Muir took a job in a wagon-wheel factory in Indianapolis and, while at work one day, pierced his right eye with an awl. Both eyes went blind. Muir, whose passion at this time was botany, vowed if he ever recovered his sight, he would not return to work on his mechanical inventions but would travel the world, and “devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.”
Fortunately, his eyesight did return; and soon after, he set off, walking from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico with the intention to go on to South America and the source of the Amazon, where he would build a raft and float to the Atlantic. But Muir contracted malaria in Florida and changed his plans: “I decided to visit California for a year or two to see its wonderful flora and the famous Yosemite Valley. All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.”
The Book Muir Did Not Write
John Muir wrote many books and articles during his lifetime. Some were autobiographical, some told tall tales of his adventures in the wilderness, and some shared his observations of nature. But he never wrote a book that told about his 1868 ramble across California to see Yosemite and the giant trees of the Mariposa Grove. When he was alive, it was not a story that would have interested many people. Back when there was still plenty of open space in California—when the roads were lined with natural beauty and walking along them was not so unsafe—people would have wanted to read of an epic adventure in the wilderness rather than a story about trying to get to the wilderness. But time has changed things; and now, if someone walks from San Francisco to Yosemite, it is a story worth telling. In fact, it is front-page news. We know that is true because it happened to us.
What follows is the story of John Muir’s 1868 walk across California from San Francisco to Yosemite. John Muir, noted naturalist, writer, and father of the worldwide conservation movement, was born in Scotland in 1838. His family immigrated to America in 1849 and settled near Portage, Wisconsin. Muir grew up as a hard-working farm boy with a deep, abiding love of nature. He proved to be an able inventor, creating machines composed of whittled cogs and levers to perform various semipractical operations, like a mechanism that connected a clock to his bed and tipped him out when it was time to rise. When he was twenty-two, he entered the University of Wisconsin, studying the natural sciences and intending to become a physician as a way to help humanity. Then, as part of his eclectic, self-directed education, Muir began to study botany. In the summer of 1863, he set off on his first long walk, accompanied by two fellow students; it was a botanical and geological tour down the Wisconsin River Valley and into Iowa. On completing this trip, instead of returning to school, he set out on another walking trip, this time from Wisconsin to Canada, into what he called “the University of the Wilderness.”
It is interesting to contemplate that John Muir might never have come to California to take this walk—and thus, might never have been in the position to influence President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside Yosemite as a national park—if he hadn’t first had an accident. In 1867, after returning home from his walk to Canada, Muir took a job in a wagon-wheel factory in Indianapolis and, while at work one day, pierced his right eye with an awl. Both eyes went blind. Muir, whose passion at this time was botany, vowed if he ever recovered his sight, he would not return to work on his mechanical inventions but would travel the world, and “devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God.”
Fortunately, his eyesight did return; and soon after, he set off, walking from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico with the intention to go on to South America and the source of the Amazon, where he would build a raft and float to the Atlantic. But Muir contracted malaria in Florida and changed his plans: “I decided to visit California for a year or two to see its wonderful flora and the famous Yosemite Valley. All the world was before me and every day was a holiday, so it did not seem important to which one of the world’s wildernesses I first should wander.”
The Book Muir Did Not Write
John Muir wrote many books and articles during his lifetime. Some were autobiographical, some told tall tales of his adventures in the wilderness, and some shared his observations of nature. But he never wrote a book that told about his 1868 ramble across California to see Yosemite and the giant trees of the Mariposa Grove. When he was alive, it was not a story that would have interested many people. Back when there was still plenty of open space in California—when the roads were lined with natural beauty and walking along them was not so unsafe—people would have wanted to read of an epic adventure in the wilderness rather than a story about trying to get to the wilderness. But time has changed things; and now, if someone walks from San Francisco to Yosemite, it is a story worth telling. In fact, it is front-page news. We know that is true because it happened to us.
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- PublisherYosemite Conservancy
- Publication date2018
- ISBN 10 1930238835
- ISBN 13 9781930238831
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages64
- EditorThomas Peter, Thomas Donna
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