The tallest redwood has grown to 260 feet. The average age of these magnificent old-growth redwoods is 600 to 800 years; the oldest is dated at 1,200 years. These trees stand in Muir Woods, a tidy 550 acres located about 40 miles north of San Francisco, California. Muir Woods was declared this nation’s 10th national monument by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1908. The 100th anniversary of that significant forest preservation decision was celebrated two years ago.
The year-long celebration of Muir Woods was kicked off on January 9, 2008, with its listing in the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. Part of the ceremony included the environmental storyteller Garth Gilchrist dressing up as John Muir and delivering one of Muir’s passionate pitches for common sense with regard to preserving our forests: “Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools—only Uncle Sam can do that.”
But Muir’s passion for preservation began 41 years before Roosevelt created the Muir Woods monument. Those early days would create in him steely eyes for Nature’s glories. But, as most of us learn, life is difficult to read. For John Muir (1838-1914), reading anything then could well have been impossible after a fateful day in March of 1867. Working in Indianapolis, Indiana, as an industrial engineer in a wagon factory, he was attempting to file a machine component. The file slipped. It pierced one eye. The other eye soon went dark too.
Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland. His family immigrated to the United States in 1849, settling in Portage, Wisconsin. In spite of not having much schooling—besides, that is, what education he picked up while working on the family farm—he did find his way to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. What got him there was following his knack and reputation for inventing things. One of his more creative contraptions was what he called an early rising machine. It was an alarm clock with an attitude: At the desired wake-up hour it tipped up his bed and tumbled him to the floor.
But it wouldn’t be either finishing college or tending machines that became Muir’s destiny. Denied sight, he said that if he ever regained his vision, he’d follow his dream of enrolling in the University of the Wilderness. Almost on cue, his eyesight began to return. He reiterated that life was too short and too unpredictable to waste precious time working in a wagon factory. And he considered it a miracle that he was given a second chance to use his eyes. There was a new world in the making and he decided to devote his life to studying its unfolding.
Muir boldly announced to his friends and family that he was going for a walk to see what he could see. On September 1, 1867, he set out on what he called a botanical and geological excursion from Indianapolis to . . . the Gulf of Mexico! This thousand-mile “walk” was the beginning of Muir’s ambling nature travels for just short of the next 50 years. Those travels—mostly in California—combined with his extraordinary writing career were the human beginnings of the wilderness preservationist movement in modern America. The Sierra Club was founded by John Muir in 1892. Muir was its president until he died in 1914. Over time his walking paths would cross with those of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Torrey, Clinton Hart Merriam, Joseph LeConte, Louis Agassiz, and President Theodore Roosevelt.
Muir, as he wrote only a couple of days before taking the first steps on his long trek to Florida, said he was “doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose.” He continued: “I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.” Had not Muir contracted a severe case of malaria in Florida, he would have pressed on with a foolhardy plan to tackle the tropical jungles of South America. Ironically, malaria probably saved his life.
Beyond choosing to be voluntarily homeless, Muir hadn’t given much thought to his route to Florida. “My plan was to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest.” The steady record of his travels was published posthumously in 1916. In it we have one of the most original walking journals ever written.
His route turned out to be from Indianapolis to Louisville, Kentucky, and then on to Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, the Gulf Coast, and even a short schooner trip to Cuba. His chapters describe his walks through Kentucky’s forests and caves, crossing the Cumberland Mountains, on through the river country of Georgia, to spending many nights in the Bonaventure Graveyard in Savannah, Georgia, into the Florida swamps and forests, and on to Cedar Keys. Muir made it to Florida by late October. A thousand miles in seven to eight weeks. His walk averaged 18 to 20 miles per day.
Muir traveled light. When a ruffian on horseback tried to rob him, all the thief could find in Muir’s bag was “a comb, brush, towel, soap, a change of underclothing, a copy of Burns’ poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and a small New Testament.” What was aplenty for Muir’s body and spirit was of no apparent value to the robber. He rode off in a huff of dust and left Muir be.
On reading Muir’s journal, one is struck far more with the generosity of post-Civil War Southerners—black and white, rich and poor—than with rude inhospitalities to strangers. All through the South, Muir was given food, shelter, good conversation, and plenty of advice.
Sure, there were the occasional threats from wild animals, dangerous river crossings, poisonous snakes, thorny plants, and sometimes nasty weather. But, on the human side of things, he was treated by the Southerners as a guest, not as a mere visitor. Even, and especially, Nature rooted him on. “I shouldered my little bag and plant press and strode away among the old Kentucky oaks. Rejoicing in splendid visions of pines and palms and tropic flowers in glorious array, not, however, without a few cold shadows of loneliness, although the great oaks seemed to spread their arms in welcome.”
In his words, a few observations:
In Kentucky, just starting out: The sun was gilding the hill-tops when I was awakened by the alarm notes of birds whose dwelling in a hazel thicket I had disturbed. They flitted excitedly close to my head, as if scolding or asking angry questions, while several beautiful plants, strangers to me, were looking me full in the face. The first botanical discovery in bed!
Leaving Philadelphia, Tennessee: Walked through many a leafy valley, shady Prove, and cool brooklet. Reached Madisonville, a brisk village. Came in full view of Unaka Mountains, a magnificent sight. Stayed overnight with a pleasant young farmer.
Following the Hiwassee River: All the larger streams of uncultivated countries are mysteriously charming and beautiful, whether flowing in mountains or through swamps and plains. Their channels are interestingly sculptured, far more so than the grandest architectural works of man. The finest of the forests are usually found along their banks, and in the multitude of falls and rapids the wilderness finds a voice. Such a river is the Hiwassee, with its surface broken to a thousand sparkling gems, and its forest walls vine-draped and flowery as Eden. And how fine the songs it sings!
In Murphy, North Carolina: In the afternoon, from the summit of a commanding ridge, I obtained a magnificent view of blue, softly curved mountain scenery. Among the trees I saw Illex (holly) for the first time. Mr. Beale informed me that the paleness of most of the women in his neighborhood, and the mountains in general hereabouts, was caused chiefly by smoking and by what is called “dipping.” I had never even heard of dipping. The term simply describes the application of snuff to the gum by means of a small swab.
In Georgia now: Today I met a magnificent grass, ten or twelve feet in stature, with a superb panicle of glossy purple flowers (pampas grass). Its leaves, too, are of princely mould and dimensions. Its home is in sunny meadows and along the wet boarders of slow streams and swamps. It seems to be fully aware of its high rank, and waves with the grace and solemn majesty of a mountain pine. I wish I could place one of these regal plants among the grass settlements of our Western prairies. Surely every panicle would wave and bow in joyous allegiance and acknowledge their king.
Camping in the Bonaventure cemetery: In Georgia many graves are covered with a common shingle roof, supported on four posts as the corner of a well, as if rain and sunshine were not regarded as blessings. Perhaps, in this hot and insalubrious climate, moisture and sun-heat are considered necessary evils to which they do not wish to expose their dead.
Finally arriving in Florida: I threw down my press and little bag beneath a thicket, where there was a dry spot on some broken heaps of grass and roots, something like a deserted muskrat house, and applied myself to eat my bread breakfast. Everything in earth and sky had an impression of strangeness, not a mark of friendly recognition, not a breath, not a spirit whisper of sympathy came from anything about me. . . . While thus engaged, I was startled from these gatherings of melancholy by a rustling sound in the rushes behind me. Had my mind been in health, and my body not starved, I should only have turned calmly to the noise. But in this half-starved, unfriended condition I could have no healthy thought, and I at once believed that the sound came from an alligator. I fancied I could feel the stroke of his long notched tail and could see his big jaws and rows of teeth, closing with a springy snap on me, as I had seen in pictures. Well, I don’t know the exact measure of my fright either in time or pain, but when I did come to a knowledge of the truth, my man-eating alligator became a tall white crane, hand-some as a minister from spirit land—only that. I was ashamed and tried to excuse myself on account of Bonaventure anxiety and hunger.
Thus began the remarkable life of a young man who became known for his indefatigable efforts to slap the collective leaders of this young country upside the head with the life-giving connections between preserving Nature’s spirit and cultivating our own. A brief biographical sketch published by the Ecology Hall of Fame summed up Muir’s impact on wilderness preservation with this anecdote:
Perhaps the greatest tribute ever given to Muir took place in a private conversation between two great contemporary mountaineers. Galen Rowell once asked Rheinhold Messner why the greatest mountains and valleys of the Alps are so highly developed, why they have hotels, funicular railways, and veritable cities washing up against sites that, in America, are maintained relatively unencumbered by development. Messner explained the difference in three words. He said, “You had Muir.”
