the john muir exhibit - press_releases - summering in the sierra
edited by
Robert Engberg
(
from the book's dust jacket
)
John Muir Summering in the Sierra
edited by
Robert Engberg
1984
University of Wisconsin Press.
Madison
During the year 1874 and 1875 John Muir wrote a
series of articles, commissioned by the
San Francisco Evening Bulletin
,
about his travels in California's mountains.
Unavailable to the general reading public
since their original publication, those articles have now
been assembled and reprinted in their entirety,
accompanied by Robert Engberg's historical introduction
and notes. The result is an important contribution to our
understanding of the early conservation movement in
America and a significant biographical key to Muir
himself, revealed here at the critical turning point from
solitary wanderer to social leader and at his vivid best
as a wilderness journalist. Conservationists, students
of Muir, and all who are interested in America's natural
heritage will welcome this lost classic.
Like all of Muir's writing, these fifteen "letters"
from the wild can be enjoyed purely for their descriptive
grace and power. Traveling to Mount Shasta, Kings
Canyon, Mount Whitney, Mono Lake, and back again to his
own beloved Yosemite, Muir reveals his ecstatic joy in
discovery and his profound appreciation of nature. His
innovative style of "Wilderness Journalism"
complements that appreciation. Composed in the
mountains and sent directly to his publisher without
revision or redrafting, these articles represent some of
Muir's most spontaneous, direct, and lyrical writing.
They are an invitation to his readers, an exhortation to
"climb the mountains and get their good tidings."
Yet underlying Muir's joyous invitation is a warning.
If the wanderer reveled in the beauty of our natural
heritage during his California odyssey, he also grew
increasingly aware of the threats to that heritage. The
fires deliberately set by sheepmen, the overgrazing by
mountain flocks, and the clear-cut logging techniques
employed by the timber companies all posed an
immediate danger to the Sierra's meadows and forests.
A new voice, triggered by this perception of danger and
calling for a radically altered relationship between
Americans and their natural resources, informs the
California "letters." Ultimately they become an
important historical document--as much the dramatic
story of Muir's own conservationist awakening and his
transformation into wilderness advocate as a simple
celebration of the wild.
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