Wilderness Journeys, Canongate Classics

Five works by the naturalist considered the father of the modern conservation movement, documenting the unspoiled beauty of nineteenth-century America.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. —John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

The name of John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Scotland in 1838, Muir is famed as the father of American conservation and the founder of the Sierra Club. This collection, including the rarely seen Stickeen, presents the finest of Muir’s writings, painting a portrait of a man whose generosity, passion, and vision are an inspiration to this day.

Combining acute observation, amusing anecdotes, and a sense of inner discovery, Muir’s writings of his travels though some of the greatest landscapes on Earth, including the Carolinas, Florida, Alaska, and those lands that were to become the great National Parks of Yosemite and the Sierra Valley, raise an awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension.

Includes an introduction by Graham White