Customer Reviews

A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here, Donald Worster has delivered the most extensive and well-researched biography to date on the great conservationist John Muir. There are already several biographies on Muir available, not to mention his own partial autobiography. But here Worster digs deeply into Muir's personal correspondence, published and unpublished journals, and other period sources to place Muir in the social and political context of his times. Worster intertwines his biographical research with an engaging history of the conservation movement, Muir's complex relationship with it, and his enduring influence on it. And more than any previous biographer, Worster has conducted research into one crucial aspect of Muir's life - the evolution of Muir's religious beliefs and the integration of his complex belief system into the type of conservationist philosophy that he invented almost singlehandedly. Worster also delivers robust information on Muir's progress as a journalist and author later in life and how he pretty much invented grassroots environmentalism in his last battle - the unsuccessful fight against the Hetch Hetchy dam.

John Muir is deservedly revered for introducing his fellow Americans to the spiritual fulfillment to be found in natural beauty, as well as founding conservation as we know it today. But as expertly illustrated by Wortser herein, Muir was also a very deep thinker and spiritualist with a complex belief system built during a lifetime of outdoor sojourns and philosophical inspection. This more intricate side of his personality shines through in this biography, and Worster's book will soon be acknowledged as the definitive work on John Muir, his outdoor achievements, and his enduring philosophy of natural appreciation. [~doomsdayer520~]

This biography by the eminent historian Donald Worster is nothing less than magnificent. Clearly the most authoritative account of America's founding conservationist, it is painstakingly researched, thoroughly pondered, brilliantly imagined, and luminously crafted.
From the backdrop of nineteenth century Scotland where John Muir was born to a world torn by the Great War and an unstoppable avalanche of social and economic upheaval, this story reveals the life of a renowned American in the context of his time, his place, and his own personal triumphs and failures. With a brilliant talent for storytelling evident on almost every page, Worster takes us on the journey of Muir's life with a special focus on why--and how--he became the man he was. The people, ideas, events, and powerful geographies that influenced him are explained, the incongruities faced, the ironies, humor, and personal limitations recognized.
I found Worster's story gaining momentum toward an ending that gathered many elements of today's environmental movement and set the stage for my own reflections on where we have been, where we are headed, and what we ought to be doing. As this great biographer concluded, "Muir was a man who tried to find the essential goodness of the world, an optimist about people and nature, an eloquent prophet of a new world that looked to nature for its standard and inspiration. Looking back at the trail he blazed, we must wonder how far we have yet to go."
Donald Worster has given us a gift that will inform, inspire, and perhaps rekindle in others a new passion for nature.

Reviewed by Tim Palmer, author of Rivers of America and other books

Not the sort of biography I was hoping to read. This is an extremely dry recitation of facts and philosophies. How could you possibly make a ride on the cow catcher of a train seem boring? By simply stating that this is what Muir did. I am a nature lover and was so excited by the newspaper review of this book - but I absolutely, positively, could not wade through it, even though I tried skipping ahead to what I thought might be more interesting parts. Nothing of Muir's true wildness and love of nature come through - just a dry recitation of facts that left me struggling along, bored to tears.

My husband and I read the Kindle edition in the car -- he read it aloud while I drove, over a period of several months. It isn't a quick or simple read, but this book launched us into many discussions, and left us with a deep understanding of Muir. I was particularly struck by his capacity for pragmatic compromise. I came to know Muir and his evolution. Well done, highly recommended for thoughtful readers.

I must admit that I have never been a fan of John Muir. Besides his description of the wildflowers in the San Joaquin valley when he first crossed in 1867, I found his flowery prose too romantic, i.e. Wordsworthian, for my taste and some of his physical feats unbelievable. If we take him at his word, in his youth he was indeed a super athlete. But then again, many of us have climbed trees in storms while others have crossed glaciers at night subsisting on crusts of bread. If Muir according to his own word climbed into a Douglas fir to experience a gale because he knew it was stronger than nearby shallow rooted ponderosas (p. 226), and thereby safe (i.e. he claimed that if you understand nature there is little risk), he was wrong. Although I have little experience with the fragilities of ponderosa. I have seen many a Douglas fir flattened in the wind after rain has loosened the soil around its very shallow roots. A friend lost her house to one in her yard: splat, and, I eye the ones over my house with temerity hoping the laurels in between will act as a break. Despite this possible inaccuracy, there is no question that Muir was a monster of a mountain hiker but then many of the trappers in the Rockies 35 years before him lived a life in the wild continuously on the edge and not just as visitors.

When I began to read Don Worster's book I rebelled against the frame he was constructing for Muir: I have great reservations about the sociobiology he tentatively puts forward at the beginning of his text which claims humans have a genetic predisposition to be awed by nature. This fits nicely with Muir's beliefs in the healing of human wounds by associating with benevolent nature. Drawing on Wordsworth, Bobby Burns Muir saw nature as a godlike fountain of human regeneration from the wounds of society and industry. If Don Worster had stopped with this, my doubts about Muir would have been confirmed. In the early chapters Worster even seems to write like Muir. But as the book unfolds the subtlety of Worster's presentation becomes clearer as do the complex aspects of Muir's life and I no longer felt I was reading just another Muir groupie. By the end of the book I really appreciated the contribution that Worster made to understanding Muir's life and his place in the environmental movement in the United States. I no longer feel so judgmental even though I am not drawn to reading more of Muir's work.

Worster's book is a cultural, political, and psychological biography. Because I am interested in natural history, I expected an examination of the botany, geology, geography, and zoology of what Muir observed in nature, how he understood his observations and how they fit into science. I get no sense that Muir had a struggle like Thoreau's between the early transcendentalist and the later taxonomist, a struggle which only came to light after Thoreau's death. Nor do I really understand how Muir interpreted the theory of evolution. Worster says he was thoroughly absorbed in Darwinian science only taking exception to the struggle for existence, "nature, red in tooth and claw." Well certainly by the 1880s natural selection had come into question. Even Darwin's Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, would have liked evolution without it. For Muir: "All was beauty. All was God." Nature was benign and nurturing, somewhat akin to the ideas of the then popular nature writers William Long and Ernest Seton whom both Burroughs's and Roosevelt felt were "nature fakers." And as Worster points out, the two were disappointed with Muir's bird identification skills. He excuses that by saying Muir was more of a botanist. I wonder how good a botanist or geologist he was. Worster says he contributed to the theory of glaciation, ideas put forward by the elder Agassiz (who was discredited because of behaviors stemming from his blind opposition to Darwin c.f. David Dobbs, Reef Madness). I would have liked to have more of Muir's science in the biography. Muir was prescient believing that artificial selection of cows and sheep was a poor imitation of natural selection and that farmers should turn to the wild as a source of hardiness. Sheep are dumber and more destructive than mountain sheep, etc. But it is the glory of things in nature fitting together better that leads him to think this way, not any of the later Darwinian understanding of the process of domestication (which leaves humans also mostly inadequate in wild nature). Going through the bibliography I couldn't find references to evaluations of Muir as a natural historian. He seemed a bit like me, loving to be out of doors looking at flowers, recognizing say 85% of them but incapable of, say, identifying complex members of the sunflower family or recognizing an obscure rarity. What are in all those notebooks of Muir's? He was still looking at flowers and glacial scrapings late into his life.

Well, that is enough of my reservation about Worster's book. The one he did write rather than the one I would have liked him to write paints an interesting picture of the religious world into which Muir was born, a harsh Calvinism but a father who would have no one rule his beliefs. Muir's childhood was hard, his father unrelenting, but unlike Hamlin Garland, in "Son of the Middle Border" and so many other farm children, Muir did not flee the farm to escape its slavery. His father paid for his higher education. Despite the fact that Muir was opinionated, he had a series of, mostly female mentors, who inspired and supported his nature lust. In contrast to that, early in life he acquired inventive mechanical skills which played so much a role in the development of American manufacture and supported him until nature writing and guiding began to pay. Fleeing to Canada during the Civil War, he returned and walked through the devastated south bound for South America to imitate von Humboldt. The trip both reinforced his egalitarian instincts but also his Calvinist distaste for filth and poverty. It left him with complex feelings about blacks and native Americans which he never really resolved. They played only a marginal role in his thinking. He sometimes idolized the latter but never understood them. Though people liked him and patronized him for his knowledge and story telling, human nature was not one of Muir's strong points. Malaria interrupted his attempt of follow von Humboldt and he headed west where in the Sierra's he found his heart's home. There the mountains and tall trees reinforced he reverence for nature. His life unfolded as sheep herder, mechanic, guide and then nature journalist. The latter became the way he supported his adventuring, gave public statement to his nature romanticism and began his efforts to save the environment. Writing for magazines and newspapers paid his way to Alaska where he seemed to skip along glaciers, but he sometimes disappointed his editors by focusing on the wonders of nature avoiding the social conflicts and exploitation around him. While climbing Glenora mountain on the Stikine River to view hundreds of square miles of glaciers, Muir's companion, a minister, falls and dislocates both shoulders. Muir binds his shoulders and carries (?) him down.

But it is in his marriage, managing his wife's family's extensive estates that Muir finds a place in society from which to give authoritative voice to what becomes a political cause. He came to the defense of nature, but not a wild unimpacted nature rather a nature in which people could tour and be renewed. He even supported roadways to bring people to the mountains although he is aware of the contradiction. He would have liked everyone to hike off into the mountains like he but its was viewing the mountains undamaged by exploitation for which he settled. He also becomes patron of his kin and a man of means who entertained both scientists and other sympathetic men and women of means. He dies rich but Worster presents no evidence that his used his wealth to support his causes or worthy explorer/scientists. Although I taught history of the environment, I don't know the history of the environmental movement well. It was therefore of interest to me that the Republican William Henry Harrison coming between the two terms of the Democrat Cleveland who was the real father of national parks. And that in ways Muir would have preferred McKinley's support to the Social Darwinist Roosevelt's and Gifford Pinchot's both of whom he felt compromised nature with development. Although Muir disliked politics, he was used strategically by Sierra Club activists as a respected voice for nature to move issues. They brought him out to save Kings Canyon and again in the lost battle with the city of San Francisco over the damming of Hetch Hetchy. Worster's treatment of all of these issues shows the complexity of Muir's personality and ideas. He was not opposed to development but rampant destruction. He became more comfortable with men of power, accepting their largess and hoping their appreciation of nature would bring them to support his causes. In this he was often disappointed.

It is also interesting how after the death of his wife and the unexplained aloofness of his daughters that Muir becomes a bit of a misanthrope. Muir escapes from a lonely life at home heading first to Europe and points East with Sargent from Harvard and the Arnold Arboretum but they don't get along. It was as much from clashing personalities as Muir's more causal tourist bent making him impatient with Sargent's thorough taxonomic interests. In his seventies when others of his age where disabled or dead, he traipsed to South America and Africa filling notebooks with notations about flowers and observations of rock scrapings. For all of my reservations about Muir's nature romanticism, I found Worster's biography opened my eyes. It is a very good book.

Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

John Muir has been a hero of mine since I became aware of him. His accomplishments in the physical realm, in the moral, political and literary realms have always inspired my own dreams and guided me along certain paths both literal and figurative. But heroes are ultimately unreal, bounding across mountains, never feeling cold, hungry or tired, working effortlessly and perfectly, preaching their truths from the empyrean. One longs to feel a little closer to one's heroes. This book has helped me to do so. In gentle magisterial prose, historian Worster has helped me to understand Muir as a man. Worster's tone is always loving and affectionate. Yet, as a good companion would, he does not hesitate to point out when Muir was perhaps deceiving himself a little, perhaps a little inconsistent. Worster has helped me to understand how Muir, a mere mortal after all, became who he was, by dint of much struggle both philosophical and physical. The earlier portions of the book, detailing Muir's youth, his struggles with the rock-ribbed religious philosophy of his father and his eventual metamorphosis, especially during his "thousand mile walk" are even more appealing to me than the later portions detailing his more famous political activities. In later life he became the more remote hero that I knew him as. In earlier life he was more the walking companion I would like to go to the Sierra with. Worster elucidates all this for us and his contribution to those of us who love Muir and love the Sierra and all the land is great. A highly recommended read.

If you're interested in reading about Muir as an inventor, Muir as somewhat of a rebel with deep ties to the establishment, and Muir as an intellectual, this is a great book.

I had hoped that the main part of the book would be about the Sierra and Muir's never ending love affair with the Mountains. That is certainly covered, but the first 1/3rd of the book talks about Scotland and Wisconsin, inventions, and railroads. There's nothing wrong with that--it is well written.

But to me, a room full of clocks was boring.

Still, it does talk about the Sierra in the end, and that is very well written. So I can't not recommend the book. It is OK.

This book reminds me of Beef Wellington; it is a meaty biography, thickly encrusted in the environmental outlook of the author.

The biography is rich in detail. John Muir was a Scot who immigrated to America in 1849, when he was eleven years of age. Muir's father bought land and established a farm in rural Wisconsin. Young Muir had a knack for mechanics and mechanical drawing. He attended the University of Wisconsin for three years, then dropped out and wandered throughout the country, collecting botanical samples and working on farms and in saw mills to support his needs. His wandering took him south to the Gulf of Mexico and east to Florida. Finally, he found himself in San Francisco, California, where he walked up to the Yosemite Valley and worked as a sheepherder and as a worker in a saw mill.

Muir loved the mountains, and he wanted to learn more about them. He began to read about geology and glacial action, in addition to his wandering through the mountains. Eventually, Muir began to write about his travels in the High Sierras, incorporating his knowledge of botany, geology and glacial action with his first-hand mountain experience. He was a talented writer. He presented the mountains as the work of God through nature. In his mind, the dizzying heights were the same as cathedrals and deserved the same respect.

At the age of 42 years, he married the only child of the owners of a fruit and nut farm in a valley near San Francisco. He became the father of two daughters, and the manager of his in-law's farm. Despite his new domestic obligations, Muir continued to roam the mountains, and even journeyed to Alaska. He was away from home for months at a time.

In the early 1890s, Muir was recruited by a number of prominent conservationists as part of a group that became known as the Sierra Club. He was elected the club's president, a position that he held until his death. As the principal advocate for the Sierra Club and a featured writer for several significant magazines, Muir became known throughout the country. His role in advocating conservation brought him into contact with important people such as Presidents Roosevelt and Taft.

Muir continued to be active well into his seventies, traveling to South America and Africa, and unsuccessfully challenging the plans of San Francisco to build a dam and reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite Park. He died in 1914.

This story of John Muir's advocacy for the preservation of wilderness areas is inordinately affected by repeated interjections of the personal environmental views of the author. While an understanding of background issues is essential to an effective biography, the descriptions here are limited in scope and frequently one-sided. Muir's view of Nature as God leads to a number of comments to the effect that significant persons of Muir's time were dismissive of religious precepts. Many comments ring hollow: corporations are bad; labor unions misplace their priorities. It is a style of writing that bogs down the more interesting tale of John Muir's life.

All told, it was an interesting life. Muir was a man with many talents. He used those talents to great effect in the High Sierras of California. But, like many other notable figures in history, his success came at a great personal cost. It is almost as though John Muir was placed on this earth for the sole purpose of migrating to the High Sierras and articulating the case for preserving such sites.

This is the first book I've read about John Muir, and was quite pleased. It doesn't read like a novel, closer to a text book. I found it to be quite informative in that it provided a historical context of his life, as well delved quite deeply into his persona. I think it even has affected me a bit on how I perceive nature.

John Muir deserved a book like this. There should be more opportunities to learn about this amazing man's life. I hope it gets made into a documentary