John Muir
John of the Mountains
16 x 20 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon
Biography
About the Painting
Selected Quote
Overview
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838. His family emigrated to America in 1849. Muir would eventually travel the world ablaze in a love of nature, writing articles and books on his naturalist philosophy. He was an avid reader of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays. Emerson once visited Muir in his spartan cabin in the Yosemite wilderness. In 1890, Muir led efforts to conserve the wilderness of Yosemite, prompting Congress to preserve it as a national park. In 1892, Muir co-founded the Sierra Club. Often referred to as the “Father of Our National Park System,” Muir played influential roles in the establishment of Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon national parks.
John Muir
John Muir Biography
The teachings and musings of Von Humboldt, Emerson, and Thoreau have influenced a great number of historical figures. However, there is one luminary, in particular, who absorbed the philosophies of these three men, assimilated them with his own latent genius, and thereby changed the world.
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21, 1838. In 1849, the Muir family immigrated to the United States. Muir’s father was seeking a stricter religious upbringing than was available through the Church of Scotland. They settled in Portage, Wisconsin and joined the Disciples of Christ. By this time, young John could already recite “by heart and sore flesh” the entire New Testament and a substantial amount of the Old Testament.
As a youth, Muir became a keen observer of the natural world and exhibited a unique talent for inventing machines. In 1860, he entered the University of Wisconsin. Apparently following the whims of his curiosities more than the structure of a degree, he took an unusual mix of courses. After two years of studies, he left for Southern Ontario where his brother had moved to avoid the U.S. Civil War draft. While in Canada, Muir delighted himself in studying plants wherever he found them.
In March 1866, Muir moved to Indianapolis where he worked in a wagon wheel factory. The following year he suffered an injury that temporarily blinded him while permanently changing his life. The experience caused him to reevaluate his priorities and realign his livelihood with his passion for plants, stating simply, “God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”
“God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”
Shortly after regaining his sight, he immersed himself in nature by walking a thousand miles from Jeffersonville, Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico before sailing on to Cuba. “How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt,” he claimed, referring to his inspiration of Alexander von Humboldt’s adventurous and scientific exploration of South America. Later Muir ventured to Panama and sailed up the Pacific Coast, arriving in San Francisco in March 1868. From there he intended to finally sail to South America in Humboldt’s footsteps, but those plans met a detour. Muir ventured to California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains where he was smitten by the high elevations and sweeping valleys.
It was in the Sierra Nevada, especially Yosemite, where he lived in a cabin, that Muir’s genius surfaced. An avid reader of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, he described his first summer in Emersonian terms, “We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it…” Emerson would eventually visit Muir in Yosemite as would many other luminaries including Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt visiting John Muir in Yosemite
Photo credit: Underwood And Underwood via Wikimedia Commons
Although Muir thoroughly devoured Emerson’s work, Muir considered himself a “disciple” of Thoreau. Some years after Emerson’s passing, Muir traveled to Europe by way of New York. He took time out from his itinerary to travel to Concord, Massachusetts where he placed flowers on the graves of Emerson and Thoreau.
Over the years, Yosemite became Muir’s providential domain, but his wanderlust never abated. In addition to his European trip, he traveled to Alaska many times, and to Australia, China, and Japan. In August 1911, at the age of seventy-three, Muir immersed himself in his last epic journey. In a long overdue answer to the call of Von Humboldt’s inspiration, Muir embarked on an eight-month, 40,000-mile voyage that finally brought him to South America and across to Africa.
He traveled the world ablaze in a love of nature, writing 300 articles and 12 books on his naturalist philosophy with soaring poetic prose and rich spiritual verve. His thoughts and words were imbued with an energy that had the power to move the hearts of readers in consequential ways.
In 1890, Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson led efforts to conserve the wilderness of Yosemite, prompting Congress to create Yosemite National Park. Often referred to as “John of the Mountains,” he also became known as the “Father of Our National Park System.” Muir played influential rolls in the establishment of Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon national parks. In 1892, Muir co-founded the Sierra Club. He is revered internationally by environmentalists to this day.
John Muir died of pneumonia on Christmas Eve in 1914. He is buried in a peaceful, shady plot in the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California.
About the Painting
John Muir’s writings reveal the depth to which he felt the divine eminent in nature. In his writings about wild places, he urged us to come along and experience this divinity of nature in us and us in nature. He is shown here physically connected to wood and stone while contemplatively gazing at perhaps a spire or pinnacle that he would reverently refer to as “Nature’s cathedrals.”
John Muir Windstorm by Steve Simon, oil wash on gessoed panel, 12 x 16 inches
In December 1874, John Muir was exploring a tributary valley of the Yuba River as a powerful windstorm struck. In recounting the experience, Muir described in rhapsodic terms the rich “anthem” of sounds he could distinguish. He ascended the highest ridge in the vicinity and then climbed to the very top of a 100-foot Douglass fir. He wanted to feel what it was like to be a tree whipping and arcing in the wind. He concluded the tree, like himself, reveled in the excitement.
“I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past.”
John Muir Climbs Mt. Ritter by Steve Simon, oil wash on gessoed panel, 16 x 12 inches
John Muir was in the Sierra Nevadas with a group of artist friends. As the artists set up for the day’s work, Muir headed up nearby Mount Ritter, attracted by its majestic beauty and the challenge of reaching a peak that no man had yet summited.
At one point during the climb, he had maneuvered himself into a predicament. The usually confident Muir felt lost, incapable of safely moving in any direction. Recalling the situation, Muir wrote, “My doom appeared fixed.” Then Muir experienced the mystical.
“I seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, instinct, or guardian angel—call it what you will—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as through a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings my deliverance could not have been more complete.”
Later that day, Muir achieved the summit, beholding with great reverence the entire Sierra Nevada he affectionately called the “Range of Light.”
Selected John Muir Quote
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.“
