The name of John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Dunbar in the east of Scotland in 1838, Muir is famed as the father of American conservation, and as the first person to promote the idea of National Parks.
Combining acute observation with a sense of inner discovery, Muir's writings of his travels through some of the greatest landscapes on Earth, including the Carolinas, Florida, Alaska and those lands which were to become the great National Parks of Yosemite and the Sierra Valley, raise an awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension. These journals provide a unique marriage of scientific survey of natural history with lyrical and often amusing anecdotes, retaining a freshness, intensity and brutal honesty which will amaze the modern reader.
This collection, including the never-before-published Stickeen, presents the finest of Muir's writings, and imparts a rounded portrait of a man whose generosity, passion, discipline and vision are an inspiration to this day.

John Muir lived, as he put it, 'in an infinite storm of beauty.' 'No other writer is so ceaselessly astonished by the natural world, or communicates that astonishment more urgently., (Robert Macfarlane)

About the Author
John Muir (1838-1914) was born and raised in Dunbar, East Lothian. When his family emigrated to Wisconsin in 1849, young John was bought up to hard labour on his father's homestead. A natural inventor, he first discovered the joys of walking, and writing, after an industrial accident nearly blinded him. His journals, articles and lectures helped to develop international awareness of the need to preserve and protect the environment, and led to the foundation of the General Grant, Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in the US, as well as important conservation areas in his native East Lothian. John Muir has been honoured ever since as the father of the modern environment movement.

Reviews
It was after reading John Muir that I fell under his spell. The quality of the man...came out in his writing. -- Elisabeth Inglis * * Scotsman Weekend * *
It is fascinating...the memoirs have beguiling warmth and immediacy. * * Glasgow Herald * *
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe * * My First Summer in the Sierra * *



Book Information
ISBN 9780862415860
Author John Muir
Format Paperback
Page Count 672
Imprint Canongate Books
Publisher Canongate Books
Weight(grams) 450g
Dimensions(mm) 195mm * 130mm * 20mm