On a Moonlight Night in March 1872, John Muir rushed from his cabin in Yosemite Valley shouting "A noble earthquake!"
Indians and whites alike were fleeing for safety, believing that the "bottom was falling out of the valley." But Muir remained for hours, entranced by the spectacle, watching a great cliff named Eagle Rock falling in an avalanche of roaring boulders, that generated such friction that it sent up a luminous fifteen-hundred-foot arc of fire, "sublime and beautiful" and as steady as a rainbow.
On another occasion when nature was holding "high festival," Muir climbed a tall pine tree in the midst of a violent windstorm, and staying high among its branches throughout the wildest part of the storm. The tip of this tree was swaying twenty or thirty degrees, and forest giants were crashing all around him. But he gloried in the music of this symphony, giving little thought to the danger.
In his eagerness to learn about the dramatic and beautiful world in which we live, this naturalist frequently risked his life. He climbed the highest mountains of our western ranges, crossed deeply crevassed Alaskan glaciers, accompanied only by his brave little dog, Stickeen, or wandered alone through hundreds of miles of wilderness, carrying only dry bread and a blanket.
He was one of our first great conservationists—a brave, bright, able man—who saved for his nation the beauties of Yosemite, a few of the majestic sequoia groves, and other natural wonders being plundered by greedy men. His exciting, purposeful life should inspire any young reader.
—from the dust jacket
Millions of Americans know the name and something of the fame of John Muir. A lake, a sequoia grove, a glacier, a mountain peak and a butterfly are but five of the many natural wonders named in his honor. Because of his years of struggle to defend from destruction Yosemite and many other sites of beauty and grandeur in the West he has been called the "Father of our National Parks."
He could be as interested in a bee as in a bear. Snow-banners steaming like silver ribbons from the mountain peaks fascinated and inspired him. He studied glaciers and measured their movements, wishing at times he might be an atom within within their crystal heart, the better to explain their secrets.
From his childhood in Scotland, through his laborious boyhood on a Wisconsin farm, to his great years of exploration through the "Range of Light"—as he always called the Sierras—he was a self-taught naturalist of great perception. He was also an inventor, expert fruit-grower and talented writer. But what he liked best was to go "over the fence" equipped with nothing but his blanket and a few slices of dry bread for a few weeks of lonely, happy adventure in the wilderness.
It is an event of literary and historical significance when a mountain climber and conservationist of the stature of Justice William O. Douglas writes so understandingly of such a worthy compatriot.
Sterling North
General Editor
—from the book
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