Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail (24 page)

Chapter 25

Scottish-American Beacon

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.

John Muir

O
n the streets of Dunbar, Scotland, thousands of miles from where he would later achieve fame, it was evident early on that John Muir was
different.
The popular Scottish poet, Robert Burns, was the most decisive influence on his youth.

“On my lonely walks I have often thought how fine it would be to have the company of Burns,” Muir wrote. “Wherever a Scotsman goes, there goes Burns.”

Like so many Scots, Burns had a burning sense of social inferiority. Defiantly, he refused to use the imperial English language—the language of conquest. Burns wrote such classics as
Auld Lang Syne, Tam O’ Shanter
, and
Sweet Afton
in the old Scots dialect.

The Scots revered Burns as a national hero. His poetry, along with other Scottish poets (Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott), would inspire John Muir for the rest of his life in his fight on behalf of underdog causes.

“This sudden splash into pure wildness,” John Muir exulted, “How utterly happy it has made us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness.”

In 1848, Muir’s father had uprooted the family from Scotland, due to a dispute with the Church of Scotland. Nothing was more important to a Scot than land, given their bitter experience with imperial English landlords. Because Daniel Muir had saved up enough money in thrifty Scottish fashion, he was able to purchase 300 acres of Wisconsin farmland.

John was eleven at the time of that first American summer, and slept outside most of the time in order to fully imbibe the pristine wilderness. The amazing array of wildlife—squirrels, frogs, turtles, bears, rabbits—left him positively rhapsodic. The biggest cloud on the horizon, he would later recall, was that he soon joined all the other American boys in carrying a rifle. Like everyone, he killed animals in scores.

But John Muir was different than most red-blooded American boys. Soon he recoiled from this practice. In fact, he thought the whole practice had revealed a dark side of
human nature.

“Why should man value himself as more than a small part of creation?” he asked. “Every species has been made in the same way as humans.” Using alligators as an example, he even went so far as to reason that because they have a right to live, they have a right to eat whatever they catch. This would include an occasional human!

“If a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man,” he wrote, “I would be tempted to sympathize with the bears.”

Muir’s father was a stern Calvinist, and often set up piles of burning brush on the farm, signifying hellfire and brimstone (beatings soon followed). Ultimately, his father’s harshness towards both himself and the farm animals drove Muir away from the farm. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where he soon faced another major moral crisis. The Civil War broke out. Muir considered himself a Scot, first and foremost. More importantly, he didn’t believe in killing humans any more than animals. So he took the time-honored route of pacifists and headed to Canada.

After the war, Muir decided to travel the length of the country. Quickly, he developed his trademark style. He traveled
on foot
, carrying a loaf of bread and tea. When his loaf gave out he was known to occasionally knock on people’s doors asking for a loaf of bread in return for giving a hand at chores. Often he went hungry. But he never worried. Nature, he assumed, could never harm him, for it was the fundamental source of all health. Sickness was something that belonged to the cities.

During his extensive wanderings, Muir began hearing about a place called
Yosemite
in California. Quickly, he resolved to seek this
paradise
out. California would prove to lay such a deep hold on his affections that he would never again live anyplace else.

When Muir arrived in San Francisco in 1868, he allegedly asked the first passer-by how he could quickly get out of town. Asked where he was going, Muir simply said, “any place that is wild.” The trail led across the Bay and eventually into the Sierras.

Ecstatic is the only way to describe Muir when he first spotted the dark-green forest and smooth, unbroken walls of granite peaks. His first summer in the Sierras awakened the deepest and most intense passion of his life. His whole body seemed to pulse with the beauty around him.

“This splendid country,” he wrote, “flowing with more of milk and more of honey than did old Canaan in its happiest prime.”

Muir thought nature—especially mountains—actually led humans to goodness and light.

“I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer,” he exulted.

Californians who witnessed Muir wandering around the Sierras marveled at the risks he took. Muir simply couldn’t get enough. On a later trip to Alaska, he and his dog had gotten stuck on the massive Taylor glacier, and made a harrowing escape. Telling of the dog’s bravery jumping over crevasses became one of his famous tales.

Not everyone was enchanted, though.

He “knows less about camping than almost any man I’ve ever camped with,” remarked an amazed member of one of Muir’s far-flung expeditions.

He often set off deep into the back country with insufficient gear, and went long stretches with no food. He could easily have died from hypothermia or a fall off one of the precipices he constantly sought out. But Muir trusted so deeply in the benevolence of nature that he simply didn’t worry.

California’s population exploded upon completion of the Trans-Continental Railroad in 1869. Far-reaching decisions about the American West quickly moved to the forefront. Muir’s outdoor exploits had already made him legendary, which allowed him middle of the fierce debates.

He bought a house in San Francisco. In Donald Worster’s brilliant biography of Muir,
A Passion for Nature
, he points out that Muir was actually embarrassed at this bow to civilization. In fact, when greeting visitors he always tried to give the impression that he had just returned from the mountains. But it was a necessary evil, and gave him a larger platform. Better yet, unlike Thoreau who preferred to live in monastic-like solitude (Walden Pond), Muir was a people person who could win over almost anybody.

Great moment in American wilderness preservation. John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt posing at Glacier Point with Yosemite Falls in the background. No offense, Mr. President, but my vote goes to the dapper gentleman to your left!

One of those in the thrall of the Muir legend was the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt fancied himself an outdoorsman par excellence, and figured Muir to be a kindred soul. When planning his tour of the West in 1903 he wrote Muir a letter asking for a tour of Yosemite.

“I do not want anyone with me but you,” Roosevelt wrote him.

Upon arrival, President Roosevelt gave all the other gathered dignitaries short shrift, and shunted the Secret Service aside. Thus set off together two of the great raconteurs of all time, as well as seminal figures in American outdoor history. They would be together for three days and three nights. Needless to say, Muir knew exactly where to take him. They hiked to and camped in the most beautiful spots in Yosemite, including at the foot of Bridal Veil Falls with its fantastic view of El Capitan and Ribbon Falls gushing down from the valley’s north rim.

Muir proved masterful at stoking up Roosevelt’s wilderness fervor, filling him with one tale after another of reckless timber cutting. Soon he had Roosevelt shouting “swine” at these villains.

“I stuffed him pretty well regarding the timber thieves,” Muir fondly recalled.

Now he sought to get Roosevelt to add the scenic wonders in Yosemite Valley to the already federally-protected Yosemite National Park. Roosevelt heartily agreed and proved good to his word.

The only sour point in this veritable love-fest came one night around a campfire when the 44 year-old Roosevelt uncorked his colorful array of tales of big-game hunting. The 65 year-old Muir couldn’t resist himself.

“Mr. Roosevelt,” he asked, “when are you going to get beyond the boyishness of killing things?”

Roosevelt was temporarily taken aback, but finally responded in an uncharacteristically soft manner. “Muir, I guess you are right.” However, Roosevelt never gave up hunting big game.

Their three days in Yosemite rated as a highlight in both of their lives, and both would speak glowingly of the other (Muir—“I fairly fell in love with him.”) for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately though, his greatest defeat would follow on the heels of it.