A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf [Paperback]

John Muir (Author), Colin Fletcher (Foreword)

Book Description

Series: John Muir Library | Publication Date: March 31, 1992

One of John Muir’s best-loved books, this volume largely comprises diary entries he made during his memorable 1867 trek from Louisville, Kentucky, to Florida. Timeless observations of the natural world mingle with a vivid look at the post–Civil War South, encounters with colorful or desperate characters, and an archetypal portrait of a young man in search of himself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

It was 1867 when Muir (1838-1914) set off from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. At the end of Muir's illustrious life as conservationist and nature writer, William Frederic Bad<'e> put together the account from the original manuscript and revised typescript journal, and from other accounts of his adventures. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) (Booknews ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

In 1867, John Muir, age twenty-eight, was blinded in an industrial accident. He lay in bed for two weeks wondering if he would ever see again. When his sight miraculously returned, Muir resolved to devote all his time to the great passion of his life -- studying plants. He quit his job in an Indiana manufacturing plant, said good-bye to his family, and set out alone to walk to the Gulf of Mexico, sketching tropical plants along the way. He kept a journal of this thousand-mile walk and near the end of his life, now famous as a conservation warrior and literary celebrity, sent a typescript of it to his publisher. The result is a wonderful portrait of a young man in search of himself and a particularly vivid portrait of the post-war American South. Here is the young Muir talking with freed slaves and former Confederate soldiers, pondering the uses of electricity, exploring Mammoth Cave, sleeping in a Savannah cemetery, delirious with malarial fever in the home of strangers at Cedar Key, traveling to Havana, Cuba, and sailing to San Francisco Bay. Once in California, Muir promptly set out for Yosemite Valley -- 200 miles away. There Muir found his destiny -- and a mountain range to test his apparently inexhaustible capacity for walking. A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf bridges two Muir classics: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 154 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books (March 31, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871565919
• ISBN-13: 978-0871565914
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,268,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A view across time...., October 16, 2000

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: 1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf (Hardcover)

As the human population expands the natural world around us disappears. This is a fact we mostly ignore as we go about our daily life. One day, you wake up, and discover that within your own lifetime things have been permanently altered.

When John Muir made his "Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf" the U.S. was not as heavily populated as it is today, although much had changed from the time when European settlers first moved through the area he explored -- a path that stretched from Indianapolis Indiana to the Gulf just north of what is Tampa Florida today.

Muir moved South in the aftermath of the Civil War, so he encountered much unrest, unhappiness, and destruction along the way. He describes not only the flora and fauna he found but the condition of humans as they struggled to rebuild their lives.

He says, "My plan was to simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest." To a great extent, he was able to do that, however, he could not escape some of the realities of the world around him. For example, in Georgia, he encountered the graves of the dead, whom he says lay under a "common single roof, supported on four posts as the cover of a well, as if rain and sunshine were not regarded as blessings." A bit further he says, "I wandered wearily from dune to dune sinking ankle deep in the sand, searching for a place to sleep beneath the tall flowers, free from the insects and snakes, and above all my fellow man."

Muir wonders at the teachings of those who call themselves God's emissaries, who fail to ask about God's intentions for nature. He says, "It never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers that Natures's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more that a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of the unit--the cosmos?"

Partly as a result of his writing, and the writing of other Naturalists, the National Park System came into being, and today, more trees grow on the East coast than grew in the late 1700s (American Revolution). The fight is not over, however, it has only begun. Many of those trees are "harvested" every year. Sometimes, even within National Forests they are all felled at the same time through a process called clear cutting. The lovely large oaks that Muir beheld are mostly long gone and have been replaced by Pine.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Travel through the eyes of a youth--John Muir, December 30, 1998

By 

Dan Anderson (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (Paperback)

This is one of John Muir's best books (the other being _First Summer in the Sierra_). It's Muir's slightly-edited diary of his 1000-mile trip through the Southern U.S. to Florida, then Cuba. He traveled on foot observing nature and the people. The book holds your interest as it's written on the spot through the enthusistic eyes of a young man. It reminds me a little of Mark Twain's book _Roughin' It_, another story through the eye's of a young man latter to become famous (about working on antebellum riverboats).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Natures bounty in a war-torn land, May 21, 2007

By 

Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (Paperback)

John Muir (naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club) left his home in Indiana at age 29 and "rambled" 1,000 miles through the woods of the southern US ending in Florida in 1867/68. It was just 2 years after the end of the Civil War and he ran into "wild negros" and long-haired horse-riding ex-Confederate bandits who would "kill a man for $5". He passed through uninhabited stretches of burnt out fields and deserted farms and was often seen as a northern interluder mistrusted by his southern guests. He lived mostly on stale pieces of bread, almost dieing of starvation while camping in a graveyard outside of Savannah, GA. He caught malaria and was bed ridden for 3 months, cared for by a kind family in Florida.

This is a snapshot of the south right after the war and the contrast between Muir's beautiful nature writing and the devastation of war are just as striking today as they must have been for the many people who encountered this unusual walker in the woods. Muir's writing is under-stated - the book was published posthumously and is more a diary than a finished book, which gives it a truthfulness and matter of factness. Fundamentally a Romanticist world-view - the power of nature and mans relation to it - Muir delights in finding, sampling and discussing plants, animals and geography. The genre is best compared with Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes and Thoreau's The Maine Woods.