My First Summer in the Sierra
John Muir, 1911
A young Scot joins a sheep drive into the high Sierra in 1869 and writes daily, ecstatic journal entries about granite, light and water, as if seeing mountains for the first time.
John Muir
1838–1914
In 1867 an industrial accident temporarily blinded Muir. When his sight returned he gave up factory work and set out on a long walk south, which led him eventually to California.
Feels like wonder, nature and joy.
Pull on any one thing and the whole mountain moves.
No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests Him may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Books by John Muir
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