the john muir exhibit - bibliographic_resources - press_releases -
on the trail of john muir by cherry good
(2000)
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john muir exhibit
On the Trail of John Muir
by Cherry Good
On the Trail of John Muir
by Cherry Good
Published by Luath Press Limited
Price: UK 7.99, US $14.95, Canada $19.95
ISBN 0 9464 87 626
Release Dates:
UK: January 17, 2000
US: April 21, 2000
Publisher's Press Release
Posted January 17, 2000
On the Trail of John Muir offers refreshing new insights into the
character and achievements of the young Scotsman who left his native
town of Dunbar in 1849 at the age of eleven to make a new life in the
United States. Drawing on Muir's own notes and published work, it
charts Muir's growth from early childhood in Scotland, through his
teenage years on the family farm in Wisconsin, to his acceptance as an
internationally recognised mountaineer, conservationist, founder of the
Sierra Club, and advisor to American presidents.
But this is not just another biography. Each stage of Muir's life and
development is set within the context of the places that were special,
magical to him - the Canadian forests, the glaciers of Alaska, Arizona's
Grand Canyon, and most important of all, the High Sierra of California,
where the John Muir Trail now runs for over two hundred miles from
Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney. By following the
directions and maps included in On the Trail, readers are able to
participate in Muir's adventures on both sides of the Atlantic, to feel
a part of Muir's world as they too experience the beauty of the
wilderness and the need to preserve it.
The author, Cherry Good, was born and raised in the settled districts of
England, and has been striving ever since to contradict her upbringing
by exploring the wild places of the earth. On the Trail of John Muir,
she was chased by aggressive ostriches on the Ningaloo Reef of Western
Australia, had close encounters of the uncomfortable kind with
rattlesnakes in the Mojave Desert, and had her supper eaten by black
bears in the Californian High Sierra.
Like John Muir, Cherry Good is more interested in being out there
experiencing it than in reading theoretical studies. She left an
academic career and a cosy country cottage for the wide open spaces and
hasn't regretted it for a moment. Her comprehensive knowledge of
Muir's life and work and her heartfelt admiration for the man himself -
his enthusiasm for the wild places of the earth - mean she is amply
qualified to follow his trail, by road and rail and air, but most of all
on foot, walking in Muir's beloved Yosemite, in the Arizona desert, in
Canada and Scotland.
Her need for wilderness is equalled only by her fondness for chocolate
labradors, freshly caught fish cooked over an open fire, her three
daughters laughing together, and the scent of the high desert after rain
- preferably all at the same time. When she tears herself away
periodically from a close acquaintance with the world's mosquito
population, she comes back to the Scottish Highlands or to her Devon
roots, where she still manages to lose her way on Dartmoor.
This is what she says about writing On the Trail of John Muir:
I wrote this book on the road, as I followed John Muir's trail from
Scotland to the American Midwest, through the inland waters and forests
of Canada and the lush humidity of America's Deep South to the glacial
meadows and crystal lakes of California's High Sierra.
It wasn't easy. In my attempt to get as close as I could to the places
which John Muir loved, I stayed in no hotels, slept in no comfortable
beds. Each night, whether it rained or snowed or blew sand, I camped
and wrote. In the Californian and Arizona deserts I slept on the bare
earth without a tent, worried about rattlesnakes, and came into close
contact with a tarantula. On my first visit to the High Sierra I
fretted constantly about black bears. In the New Zealand autumn I
relinquished any hope of ever being dry again, and in Australia I forded
rising creeks and was chased by aggressive ostriches - don't laugh,
those powerful feet pack a helluva wallop, enough to break your leg and
associated body parts.
But the bane of my life was - and still is - the mosquito. This
insignificant-looking little monster with its harpoon inhabits many of
the areas through which I travelled: Yosemite in springtime, the sand
country of Wisconsin, the bogs and lakes and woods of Ontario, the
southern states of the US. I yell and clutch and swat, then swell and
scratch, becoming irrational with mosquito-hate. My admiration for
John Muir and his apparent unconcern about mosquito bites reaches
unprecedented heights, as I debate the rival merits of sleeping under
the stars with the harpooneers versus locking myself into the truck.
When it comes down to the essentials, none of these inconveniences
really matter. Even with the mosquitoes it's worth it, the privilege
of being out there, seeing the desert bloom in springtime, Yosemite
Falls shooting its snow-thawed torrents in rocketing cascades to the
valley floor below, the yip-yip-yip of the coyote at dusk, the heat and
buzz of high summer, the pristine stillness of deep winter in the
mountains.
John Muir knew that each of us in our own way needs the wilderness, even
when it frightens or discomforts us, and that each of us needs to find
it for ourselves. On the Trail of John Muir provides an opportunity to
do just that, following in the footsteps of a Scottish boy with no
influence and little schooling who loved wild things and became
determined to protect them. Use the book as your passport to his world
- just watch out for those mosquitoes.
John Muir wrote "I care to live only to entice people to look at
Nature's loveliness." If On the Trail of John Muir has this affect, Cherry Good will be very happy.
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