As we mark John Muir Day, April 21, Peter Pearson, Chair of the John Muir Trust, invites hillwalkers and mountaineers to get involved with the organisation that honours his name.
“Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing,” noted John Muir in My First Summer in the Sierra, a collection of journal entries describing his 1869 adventures in the magical mountain wilderness of Yosemite.
Muir would later rise to fame in the USA as a writer, scientist and campaigner. He is today hailed as the founding father of the modern conservation movement, and the inspiration behind the establishment of national parks and other protected wilderness areas.
But his first love was climbing. He honed his skills at an early age, clambering his way up the steep cliffs around Dunbar Harbour in the East Lothian coastal town where he spent the first ten years of his life.
When he set sail across the Atlantic with his family in 1849, the railway had not yet reached the Highlands, whose distant mountains were inaccessible to the average Lowlander.
But in his adopted country, Muir explored relentlessly and wrote eloquently of his experiences in what he called “the University of the Wilderness”, where danger and beauty walked hand in hand.
Descending the 14,400 foot summit of Mount Shasta in California, he described how “the storm at once became inconceivably violent, with scarce a preliminary scowl. The thermometer fell twenty-two degrees, and soon sank below zero. Hail gave place to snow, and darkness came on like night.
“The wind, rising to the highest pitch of violence, boomed and surged like breakers on a rocky coast. The lightnings flashed amid the desolate crags in terrible accord, their tremendous muffled detonations unrelieved by a single echo, and seeming to come thudding passionately forth from out of the very heart of the storm.”
He became the first person to climb Mount Ritter in the Sierras Nevada. “My first day was pure pleasure; simply mountaineering indulgence, crossing the dry pathways of the ancient glaciers, tracing happy streams, and learning the habits of the birds and marmots in the groves and rocks.”
But at 12,800 feet he was “brought to a dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I must fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.”
Then suddenly he “became possessed of a new sense… my trembling muscles became firm again… my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete.”
Reaching the 14,700 foot summit, he gazed upon “a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak.”
John Muir is one of Scotland’s greatest sons. What makes him such an attractive figure, with such enduring appeal, is not so much his specialist expertise but his breadth and diversity.
He was an avid explorer, driven by an insatiable urge to see and touch and feel the wildest places of America. He was an inspirational writer who brought to life the wonders of the natural world. He was a rigorous scientist whose observations laid the groundwork for modern ecology.
John Muir (right) with President Theodore Roosevelt, above Yosemite
He was a progressive philosopher whose defence of nature in the face of economic growth placed him a century and more ahead of his time. He was a formidable campaigner who persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to protect the great wildernesses of the United States.
Today, we live in a different world. But the basic ethos of John Muir, with its spirit of adventure, depth of understanding and determination to get things done, lives on.
To mark John Muir Day, April 21, you may want to consider joining the organisation that carries on his legacy in the land of his birth.
During the period 16-24 April you can join the John Muir Trust, or give a gift of membership for half the normal price – £18 (instead of £36 for individual membership) and £24 (instead of £48 for joint or family membership).To do so, visit this link.
