Hello all, I did post a piece on this author as a Fact of The Day.

John Muir

(1838 1914)

IN TURN a farmer, inventor, mechanic, saw-mill operator, wanderer, novelist, and poet, the conservationist John Muir spent just 11 years in Scotland before emigrating with his family to America in the mid-19th century. But his rigorous childhood in Dunbar undoubtedly defined the man who would become known as the father of the US national park system, whose legacy lives on through the wildernesses he helped preserve in his adopted land.

Born the third child to parents Daniel and Ann in 1838 and suitably in the name of Muir, which means "living by a moor or heath" John from the age of three attended Dunbar Grammar. It was effectively the only schooling he would receive in his storied life. In school, he was considered rebellious, and often outspoken; at home, his boyhood was one of discipline, prayer and toil.

An independent, curious child with an eye for invention and a love of the outdoors, Muir frequently swapped the schoolroom for the shore-pools of the East Lothian seaside town. He would later write in his journal: "When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild ... I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the shore to gaze and wonder at the shells and the seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of old Dunbar Castle."

In 1849, Muir's father made the decision to seek religious freedom and a better life in a new land. Daniel would eventually set sail from Scotland with his wife, two sons and five daughters, setting a course for Americas east coast and on to Wisconsin, in the harsh yet bountiful Midwest.

The family would leave behind Muir's grandparents, too senior for the trip and who would never again see their grandchildren. It was a loss that would particularly affect John, who from then would willingly assume responsibility for the well-being of the family.

Exploring the fields and woods with his brother, his adventures detailed in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), John Muir quickly found he had an affinity with the wide-open plains. After brief studies in university - at the age of 11 - and further exploration of botany in Canada and the northern US, an accident in which he briefly lost his sight resulted in a wake-up call of sorts. Muir turned his attention from his numerous, fantastical inventions - wooden clocks, thermometers, pyrometers, hygrometers, a barometer, a combination lock, a bed that tipped the sleeping Muir on to the floor to wake him up in quite a different way - to further explore his new country.

Leaving his homestead in 1867, he walked more than a thousand miles from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico. He sailed to Cuba, then to Panama. He crossed the isthmus, sailed up the west coast of Central and North America, eventually landing in San Francisco.

It was here, in March 1868, that a wandering, scraggy-bearded Muir inquired the nearest way out of what was then a shabby mining town. Muir would write: "'But where do you want to go?' asked the man to whom I had applied for this important information. 'To any place that is wild,' I said." From here, Muir discovered the Sierra Nevada, the self-described "most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains" to which the by-now committed environmentalist had borne witness.

Muir's wanderings became legend. Detailed in My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), where the now-experienced mountaineer wrote: "After reaching an elevation of about 12,800ft, I found myself at the foot of a sheer cliff which seemed to bar further progress. It was only about 50ft high and somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed slight and insecure as footholds. The dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of the cliff in front. After scanning its face again and again, I began to scale it, picking my holds with intense caution. After gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a dead stop, with arms outspread, clinging close to the face of the rock, unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I must fall."

In fact, he soared.

His writings on study and preservation would appear in the New York Times, and he also displayed a certain literary flair. In 1871, celebrated poet Ralph Waldo Emerson travelled to Yosemite park to seek out Muir, whose pioneering studies on glacier movement and botany were considered ground-breaking. Muir also gained recognition from many leading scientists such as Louis Agassiz, John Tyndall and Joseph LeConte, among other, whose work would influence Muir's passage from landscape discoverer to conserver.

Settling in his beloved mountains, in 1880, he married Louise Wanda Strentzel, raising two daughters, Wanda and Helen. He co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892, of which he became president and guiding light. His organisation continues to this day to preserve the parks Muir, by way of lobbying Congress, had managed to accomplish. In 1903, America's 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, camped with Muir on a visit to Yosemite. The pair talked late into the night, and slept in the open air, with Muir educating the president on the urgent need for conservation in a rapidly industrialising nation.

Muir would continue to campaign for the preservation of the great wildernesses of America until his death, from pneumonia, in Los Angeles in 1914. The National Park System - which now includes Yosemite, Yellowstone, vast swathes of the giant redwood forests, and many others - remains a triumph to nature and ecological conservation, a tribute and testament to Muir's untiring effort, which has resulted in the adventurous Scot from Dunbar becoming an adopted son and hero of the US.

This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/profiles.cfm?cid=1&id=1825412005

Last updated: 05-Sep-05 12:07 BST