the john muir exhibit - press_releases - letters from alaska
edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell
(
from the book's dust jacket
)
Letters from Alaska
by John Muir
edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell
1993
University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison
During the years 1879 and 1880 John Muir traveled the
waters of southeastern
Alaska
in a Tlingit Indian dugout
canoe. Letters from Alaska follows Muir on these voyages
in a series of articles he wrote for the
San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin
.
These "letters" are collected and
republished here for the first time in more than a
century, accompanied by an introduction and notes by
Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrell.
Muir revised his Alaskan writings many times before
they eventually appeared in his book, Travels in Alaska,
published in 1914. In Letters from Alaska we find the
original versions of the letters, each reworked from
journal accounts jotted down during his travels. They
have the freshness, immediacy, and candor that mark
Muir's best writing.
In these pages are rare accounts of southeastern
Alaskan history. Muir records his scientific observations
of glaciers and vividly describes Alaska in its early days.
Through Muir's eyes we see gold miners, rogue towns,
Fort Wrangel, Sitka, Taku Inlet, Endicott Arm,
Glacier Bay
, the infancy of the tourist industry, and the native
Tlingit Indians' struggle to retain their culture in the
face of Presbyterian attempts to convert them.
Muir's century-old accounts can be used as a guide for
modern ship-borne tourists following the sea routes of
his canoe voyages. Yet, Muir's letters are more than
simple descriptions of wilderness. With every stroke of
paddle and pen Muir was spreading his glacial gospel: that
wilderness adventures ultimately provide for journeys of
the spirit. He loved the Alaskan wilderness as a place in
which it was still possible to be wild. He urged
Americans to journey north. "Go," he said, "go and see....."
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