I’m personally grateful for the life and work of John Muir, who gave most of his life to let people know the value and majesty of the wilderness. He publicized the beauty of the wilderness, to persuade Americans to protect it from commercialization. Muir persuaded U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt to camp overnight in Yosemite with him, influencing him to make it a National Park. That experience prompted Roosevelt to see many wild lands as treasures, and establish the National Park System.

Even when young, Muir began to “read rocks, tracing the creativity of the glaciers which had polished the domes and cut the valleys, preparing the earth for the life and beauty now apparent.” ² As an adult, Muir had settled down, living in Martinez on a sheep ranch with his wife, pouring his very health into the years of effort. At long last, his wife set him free to return to the Yosemite wilderness he so loved.

“At length [it] left me wholly free—born again!” said Muir. “As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.” ³

Two outstanding books about John Muir are well worth reading: The Wilderness World of John Muir, edited by Edwin Way Teale, and Richard Cartwright Austin’s Baptized into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir.

Yours in love with God’s creation,

Betsy Schwarzentraub

See also: John Muir, Earth Steward

¹ – Muir called the Sierra Nevada “The range of light.” Generations later, the great Ansel Adams gloriously expressed the phrase with his life’s work of dramatic black and white photographs.

² – Richard Cartwright Austin, Baptized into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir, p. 23.

³ – Ibid., pp. 12f.