the john muir exhibit - life - tributes from those who knew him
Tributes to John Muir From Those Who Knew Him
In addition to the excerpts we provide below - most reprinted from the "John Muir Memorial Issue", Sierra Club Bulletin , Vol. 10, No. 1, January, 1916.], you will find additonal typescript reminiscences by John Muir's contemporaries that had a direct bearing on Muir's life and career at the University of the Pacific's John Muir Papers. Several of those were collected by William F. Badè probably as research for his book Life and Letters of John Muir.
A word from the President ...
Theodore Roosevelt
:
He was a dauntless soul... Not only are his
books delightful, not only is he the author to
whom all men turn when they think of the Sierras
and Northern glaciers, and the giant trees of the
California slope, but he was also - what few
nature-lovers are - a man able to influence
contemporary thought and action on the subjects to
which he had devoted his life. He was a great
factor in influencing the thought of California
and the thought of the entire country so as to
secure the preservation of those great natural
phenomena - wonderful canyons, giant trees, slopes
of flower-spangled hillsides - which make
California a veritable Garden of the Lord.... Our
generation owes much to John Muir. Full Text
[from
The Outlook
, January 6, 1915, pp. 27-28.]
More...
[The following are reprinted from the "John Muir Memorial Issue",
Sierra Club Bulletin
, Vol. 10, No. 1, January, 1916.]
James Bryce
:
He was the patriarch of American lovers of mountains, one who had
not only a passion for the splendours of Nature, but a wonderful
power of interpreting her to men. The very air of the granite
peaks, the very fragrance of the deep and solemn forest, seem to
breathe round us and soothe our sense as we read the descriptions
of his lonely wanderings in the Sierras when their majesty was
first revealed. California may well honour the service of one who
did so much to make known her charms and to shield them from
desecration. And yo of the [Sierra] Club will cherish the memory
of a singularly pure and simple character, who was in his life
all that a worshipper of nature ought to be. Full Text
Enos Mills
:
The grandest character in national park history
and nature literature is John Muir. He rendered
mankind a vast and heroic service. We are yet too
close to the deeds of this magnificent man to
comprehend the helpfulness of his work to
humanity. His books and his work are likely to be
the most influential force in this century. His
memory is destined to be ever with the silent
places, with the bird songs, with wild flowers,
with the great glaciers, with snowy peaks, with
dark forests, with white cascades that leap in
glory, with sunlight and shadow, with the splendid
national parks, and with every song that Nature
sings in the wild gardens of the world. Full Text
Robert Underwood Johnson
:
One almost hesitates to use the word "great" of
one who has just passed away, but I believe that
history will give a very high place to the
indomitable explorer who discovered the great
glacier named after him, and whose life for eleven
years in the High Sierra resulted in a body of
writing of marked excellence, combining accurate
and carefully co-ordinated scientific observation
with poetic sensibility and expression. But
Muir's public services were not merely scientific
and literary. His countrymen owe him gratitude as
the pioneer of our system of national parks. Out
of the fight which he led for the better care of
the Yosemite by the State of California grew the
demand for the extension of the system. To this
many persons and organizations contributed, but
Muir's writings and enthusiasm were the chief
forces that inspired the movement. All the other
torches were lighted from his.
. . . . .
Muir was not without wide and affectionate regard
in his own state, but California was too near to
him to appreciate fully his greatness as a
prophet, or the service he did in trying to recall
her to the gospel of beauty. She has, however,
done him and herself honor in providing for a path
in the High Sierra, from the Yosemite to Mount
Whitney, to be called the John Muir trail.
William Kent, during Muir's life, paid him a rare
tribute in giving to the nation a park of redwoods
with the understanding that it should be named
Muir Woods. But the nation owes him more. It is
most appropriate and fitting that a wild Sierra
region should be named for him. The best monument
to him, however, would be a successful movement,
even at this late day, to save the Hetch Hetchy
Valley from appropriation for commercial
purposes. Full Text
William E. Colby
:
John Muir will never be fully appreciated by
those whose minds are filled with money getting
and the sordid things of modern every-day life.
To such Muir is an enigma - a fanatic - visionary
and impractical.... That a man should brave the
storms and thread the pathless wilderness, exult
in the earthquake's violence, rejoice in the icy
blasts of the northern glaciers, and that he
should do all this alone and unarmed, year in and
year out, is a marvel that but few can
understand.... His latter days were so full of the
rich experiences of these earlier years of
devotion to his chosen work and he looked with
such calm and serenity out upon the feverish haste
and turmoil of those about him, engaged in making
everything within reach "dollarable," that he
seemed to be living in a world apart - a world
created by his own wonderful spirit and efforts. Full Text
David Starr Jordan
:
The impression of his personality was so strong
on those who knew him that all words seem cheap
beside it. Those who never knew him can never,
through any word of ours, be brought to realize
what they have missed. He had a quaint, crisp way
of talking, his literary style in fact, and none
of the nature lovers, the men who know how to feel
in the presence of great things and beautiful,
have expressed their craft better than he. Full Text
Charles Keeler
:
Never have I met another man of such singleness
of mind in his devotion to nature as Muir. He
lived and moved and had his being as a devotee.
Of himself he took little heed, but no zealous
missionary ever went abroad to spread the gospel
with his fervor in communicating a love of nature.
And with him a love of nature meant an
understanding of her laws. Every tree and flower,
every bird and stone was to him the outward token
of an invisible world in process of making.... He
sauntered over the mountains, claiming kinship
with the rocks and growing things and gathering
them all to his heart. He has told me that he
found it necessary, in getting people to listen,
to tell them stories such as his immortal tale of
Stickeen
, but the real hope in his heart was to
awaken their interest so they would want to go to
nature themselves and to delve into the mysteries
of her ways. Full Text
Robert B. Marshall
:
His simplicity was his power. He knew nature as
no one else did... His affection for the
commonplace little pine-needle was as genuine as
that for the most beautiful flower or the grandest
tree, and the little flakes of snow and the little
crumbs of granite were each to him real life, and
each has a personality worthy of his wonderful
mind's attention; and he talked and wrote of them
as he did of the ouzel or the Douglas squirrel -
made real persons of them, and they talked and
lived with him and were a part of his life as is
our own flesh and blood. One cannot describe
Mount Rainier, one cannot describe the Grand
Canyon, one cannot describe his beloved Yosemite;
humanity is silent in their presence. So it was
with John Muir to all who knew him; so has his
influence affected mankind, and so will his life
and work impress generations to come. This most
wonderful of men, lifted above death and time by
his human sympathy no less than by his genius,
will forever influence the world, and it will be
the better for his example and his inspiration. Full Text
Harriet Monroe
:
I wonder sometimes if there was ever such another
lover of nature as John Muir. Never at least for
me! He really loved every littlest thing that
grows; studied the mole, the beetle, the lily,
with complete and perfect sympathy. Full Text
Henry Fairfield Osborn
:
I believe that John Muir's name is destined to be
immortal through his writings on mountains,
forest, rivers, meadows, and the sentiment of the
animal and plant life they contain. I do not
believe anyone else has ever lived with just the
same sentiment toward trees and flowers and the
works of nature in general as that which John Muir
manifested in his life, his conversations and his
writings. Full Text
William Frederic Badé
:
To few men was it given to realize so completely
the elements of eternity - of time-effacing
enjoyment in work - as it was to John Muir. The
secret of it all was in his soul, the soul of a
child, of a poet, and of a strong man, all blended
into one. An innate nobility of character, an
unstudied reverence for all that is sublime in
nature or in life, unconsciously called forth the
best in his friends and acquaintances. In the
spiritual as in the physical realm flowers
blossomed in his footsteps where he went. After
all it is to such men as John Muir that we must
look for the sustenance of those finer feelings
that keep men in touch with the spiritual meaning
and beauty of the universe, and make them capable
of understanding those rare souls whose insight
has invested life with imperishable hope and
charm. To all who knew John Muir intimately his
gentleness and humaneness toward all creatures
that shared the world with him, was one of the
finest attributes of his character. He was ever
looking forward to the time when our wild fellow
creatures would be granted their indisputable
right to a place in the sun.... John Muir's
writings are sure to live - by the law that men
who lift their eyes at all from the commonplace
ideals of work-a-day life will inevitably fix them
on the snowy crests of human thought and
achievement.... Among those who have won title to
remembrance as prophets and interpreters of nature
he rises to a moral as well as poetical altitude
that will command the admiring attention of men so
long as human records shall endure. Full Text
Source: Sierra Club Bulletin John Muir Memorial Number, January, 1916
Home
| Alphabetical Index
| What's New & About this Site