I fully endorse it! Let’s try it at once!

“The scenario would be far more improbable today. A bearded mountain man who tried to sneak off alone into the wilds with the president of the United States would be lucky to escape alive after ground and air pursuit by armed park rangers and Secret Service agents.”

-Galen Rowell’s introduction to John Muir’s My First Summer in Yosemite

In honor of this swift change in the seasons, I’m reading John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra. Now, John Muir is a mixed bag. He emigrated from Scotland with his family Wisconsin in 1849. He later managed to drop out of college, walk from Indiana to Florida, almost lose his eyesight, and contract malaria, which derailed his plans to continue in to South America. How he managed to do all this with the Civil War raging around him, I don’t know.

Anyway, off he went to California in 1868 and quickly made his way to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and what is today Yosemite National Park. He was astounded by the beauty of Yosemite and wrote his oft-quoted words, "No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite.” Of course, the beauty of Yosemite was known to those folks who had, ahem, been living there for centuries, but that was neither here nor there to New Englanders who had not conceived of such natural wonders.

Most of you know the rest of the story, that John Muir went on to take President Theodore Roosevelt on a famous camping trip, found the Sierra Club, and advocate for the creation of national parks (which was a mixed bag itself, but that’s a soapbox for another day). Muir’s account is worthwhile read, but I warn you he took with him a copy of Emerson’s Nature on his journey, so be prepared for extensive ruminations about the meaning of God and nature.