the john muir exhibit - life - charles sprague sargent
John Muir
by Charles Sprague Sargent
Few men whom I have known loved trees as deeply and
intelligently as John Muir. The love of trees was born in
him, I am sure, and had abundant nourishment during his
wanderings over the Sierra, where for months at a time he
lived among the largest and some of the most beautiful trees of the world. No one has studied the Sierra trees as living beings more deeply and continuously than Muir, and no one
in writing about them has brought them so close to other
lovers of nature.
Muir and I traveled through many forests, and saw together all
the trees of western North America, from Alaska to Arizona. We
wandered together through the great forests which cover the
southern Appalachian Mountains, and through the tropical forests
of southern Florida. Together we saw the forests of southern
Russia and the Caucasus and those of eastern Siberia, but in all
these wanderings Muir's heart never strayed very far from the
California Sierra. He loved the Sierra trees the best, and in
other lands his thoughts always returned to the great sequoia,
the sugar pine, among all trees best loved by him; the incense
cedar, the yellow pine, the Douglas spruce, and the other trees
which make the forests of California the most wonderful
coniferous forests of the world. With these he was always
comparing all minor growths, and when he could not return to the
Sierra his greatest happiness was in talking of them and in
discussing the Sierra trees.
Source: Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1916 January)
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