Mountaineering Essays

by John Muir, Edited and introduction by Richard Fleck

( from the book's dust jacket )

Mountaineering Essays
edited and with an introduction by Richard Fleck
1997
The University of Utah Press
Salt Lake City

John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, is one of the world's foremost writers of the mountaineering essay. His writings are finely wrought expressions of the transcendental joy he found in the mountains. Characterized by an iron endurance and an insatiable curiosity, Muir vowed to spend his days studying what he termed the "University of the Wilderness." Whether frozen in a subzero blizard on Mount Shasta, seemingly doomed on the unforgiving slopes of Mount Ritter, or exhilarated by the ice-scapes seen from the summit of Mount Rainier, Muir reveled in the mountain experience.

This volume contains eleven mountain adventures, from the high Sierras in California to first ascents in Alaska. In each Muir maintains a careful and subtle balance between the physical and symbolic aspects of ascending or observing the sublimity of his surroundings. Mountains are for him a source of discovery, not merely of new geography, but also of the inner human, and they represent a supreme test and an affirmation of the human spirit.

Richard F. Fleck, editor of this collection, is dean of arts and humanities at the Community College of Denver.

There is also a publisher's press release about this book.