"'Spegelsalen' in Trollheimen, Norway," photographed by Richard Strimbeck, 2006. Larger.
Imagine the California landscape and you might conjure the crisp ocean waves, warm rays of sunlight, or statuesque forests of redwood. But what about our majestic Sierra glaciers?
John Muir penned some our best descriptions of California's many mountains and valleys, and in this 1871 account, he describes the heart of a glacier near Yosemite Valley.
"'Spegelsalen' in Trollheimen, Norway," photographed by Richard Strimbeck, 2006. Larger.
Creeping along the edge of the schrund, holding on with benumbed fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was beautifully revealed [. . .] A series of rugged zigzags enabled me to make my way down into the weird under-world of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings from currents that were feeling their way thorough veins and fissures in the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened to engulf me; yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the water and the lovely light.
The astounding beauty of California has inspired many a naturalist to hike the backcountry trails of the golden state. But no one knew this outdoor world better than Scotsman John Muir, one of California's preeminent nature writers.
John Muir spent years in the Sierra Nevada, climbing its peaks, exploring its valleys, and thrilling to the power of Nature. Here in "Earthquake Storms" is John Muir's enthusiastic description of such power, as the Inyo Earthquake of 1872 reshapes the Yosemite Valley:
At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake!" feeling sure I was going to learn something. The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking as if on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the high cliffs of the Valley could escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, towering above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent—-flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,-—as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still better one.
No one did more for conservation than did John Muir, first president of the Sierra Club and a writer whose work helped create the public and political will to win for Yosemite Valley the protection afforded a National Park.
Samoset
From The Life and Letters of John Muir, 1923. Read Online
"Ralph Waldo Emerson," drawn by Samuel Worcester Rowse engraved by Stephen Alonzo Schoff, 1878. Larger.
California may mark the western edge of the American continent, but even so, a great mind can mark in its grandeur the immanence of the great over-soul that connects all things.
In 1871, when Ralph Waldo Emerson traveled west to California, he visited with John Muir. Among the giant sequoias, reported Muir, the "Sage of Concord" was overwhelmed.
He hardly spoke a word all evening, yet it was a great pleasure simply to be with him, warming in the light of his face as at a fire. In the morning we rode up the trail through a noble forest of pine and fir into the famous Mariposa Grove, and stayed an hour or two, mostly in the ordinary tourist fashion—looking at the biggest giants, measuring them with a tape line, riding through prostrate fire-bored trunks, etc., though Mr. Emerson was alone occasionally, sauntering about as if under a spell. As we walked through a fine group, he quoted "There were giants in those days," recognizing the antiquity of the race. To commemorate his visit, Mr. Galen Clark, the guardian of the grove, selected the finest of the unnamed trees and requested him to give it a name. He named it Samoset, after the New England sachem, as the best that occurred to him.
Muir recalled his recollections of Emerson among the redwoods in an 1896 speech at Harvard University.
"John Muir," photographed by H. W. Bradley and William Rulofson, 1872. Larger.
California's natural wonders lie all about us, but maybe the way to appreciate them best is by the flicker of a campfire.
John Muir was a consumate outdoorsman, at home just about anywhere there was an open sky and a place to build a friendly fire, the kind of setting perfect for contemplating the cycle of life.
I have set fire to two pine logs, and the neighboring trees are coming to my charmed circle of light. The two-leaved pine, with sprays and tassels innumerable, the sliver fir, with magnificent frouded whorls of shining boughs, and the graceful nodding spruce, dripping with cones, and seeming yet more spiritual in this campfire light. Grandly do my logs give back their light, slow gleaned from suns of a hundred summers, garnered beautifully in dotted cells and in beads of amber gum; and together with this outgush of light, seems to flow all the other riches of their life, and their living companions are looking down as if to witness their perfect and beautiful death. But I am weary and must rest. Good night to my two logs and two lakes, and to my two domes high and black on the sky, with a cluster of stars between.
John Muir's article "Yosemite Glaciers" originally appeared in the New York Tribune in 1871.
"Water-Ouzel Diving and Feeding," illustration for The Mountains of California, 1894. Larger.
The California Valley Quail was adopted as the state bird in 1931. But if naturalist John Muir was still around, it's tempting to think he'd lobby for a different choice.
One of Muir's most arresting essays is his loving tribute to the American Dipper, known to Muir as the Water-Ouzel, the bird that "must sing though the heavens fall."
One wild winter morning, when Yosemite Valley was swept its length from west to east by a cordial snow-storm, I sallied forth to see what I might learn and enjoy. A sort of gray, gloaming-like darkness filled the valley, the huge walls were out of sight, all ordinary sounds were smothered, and even the loudest booming of the falls was at times buried beneath the roar of the heavy-laden blast. The loose snow was already over five feet deep on the meadows, making extended walks impossible without the aid of snow-shoes. I found no great difficulty, however, in making my way to a certain ripple on the river where one of my ouzels lived. He was at home, busily gleaning his breakfast among the pebbles of a shallow portion of the margin, apparently unaware of anything extraordinary in the weather. Presently he flew out to a stone against which the icy current was beating, and turning his back to the wind, sang as delightfully as a lark in springtime.
Muir was constantly delighted and surprised by the Water-Ouzel; he observed one favorite for ten years and claimed to constantly hear notes and strains in his song that were new to Muir.
"A Bee-Ranch in Lower California," illustration for The Mountains of California, 1894. Larger.
The lush flora of California has ever inspired the gardners among us, ready to tame unruly nature; but the real rulers of the flowers are truly miniature monarchs—the bees.
Naturalist John Muir once described California as an almost endless bee-garden, imagining a Golden Age of apiary wonder
When California was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the ocean.
Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness—through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the mountains—throughout every belt and section of climate up to the timber line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish abundance. Here they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowering folds hunderds of miles in length—zones of polleny forests, zones of flowery chapparal, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden compositae, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of brysanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming somewhere all the year round.
Drawn to the magnificent scale of California's natural wonders, it's easy for us to miss more subtle manifestations of the non-human world. That's a mistake that naturalist John Muir would teach us to avoid.
No one loved the natural world—in all its forms—more than Muir, who spent his life pondering its secrets and reporting—-in evocative and loving prose—-on his observations. In this passage from his 1894 book, The Mountains of California, Muir shows his readers how to observe . . . the wind.
"Thunder-storm over Yosemite," photograph for My First Summer in the Sierra, by Herbert W. Gleason, 1911. Larger.
Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels.
Muir's works include not only The Mountains of California, but also The Yosemite and My First Summer in the Sierra, each volume a staple of American nature writing.
"A Wind-Storm in the California Forests. (After a sketch by the author)," illustration for The Mountains of California, 1894. Larger.
Why pay for an expensive concert when Mother Nature plays a masterpiece for free?
One December day in 1874, John Muir was exploring a Sierran valley in the middle of a fierce windstorm. He climbed to the top of a Douglas Spruce and, clinging to its branches, paused to listen to the symphony of the trees.
Nature was holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad excitement. . . Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees,—Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak,—and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way,—singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures,—manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen. . .
The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf—all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.
I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music. . . .
In The Mountains of California, Muir reflects on this musical encounter and other experiences in Californiaís great forests.
–Contributed by Stephanie Wilson.
Woody Gospel Letter
From The Life and Letters of John Muir, 1924. Read Online
"General Grant Tree - General Grant National Park," photograph for The Mountains of California by W. L. Huber, 1908. Larger.
There was no one like "poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist" John Muir. No wonder then that he styled his own brand of rhapsodic prose.
For Muir, the natural world deserved all of the praise and glory usually reserved for royalty. In a letter probably written in 1870, he makes his exuberance felt.
Do behold the King in his glory, King Sequoia! Behold! Behold! seems all I can say....Well may I fast, not from bread, but from business, book-making, duty-going, and other trifles, and great is my reward already for the manly, treely sacrifice....I am in the woods, woods, woods, and they are in me-ee-ee. The King and I have sworn eternal love — sworn it without swearing, and I've taken the sacrament with Douglas squirrel, drunk Sequoia wine, Sequoia blood, and with its rosy purple drops I am writing this woody gospel letter.
I never before knew the virtue of Sequoia juice....I wish I were so drunk and Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the juiceless world, descending from this divine wilderness like a John the Baptist, eating Douglas squirrels and wild honey or wild honey or anything, crying Repent, for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand!
John Muir's letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr was posted Squirrelville, Sequoia Co. and dated "Nut Time."
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