In April 2006, Robert Hanna, the great-great-grandson of the famous environmentalist John Muir, spoke to the Sierra College class named Interdisciplinary 6: The Sierra Nevada.

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Biography

Robert Hanna is the great-great-grandson of the famous environmentalist John Muir

John Muir was called “John of the Mountains,” a wild-haired, eccentric Scotsman fired with enthusiasm for the Sierra Nevada. Some saw him as saint, others viewed him as irritating crank, but none could doubt his passion and commitment to his beliefs. He was John Muir.

Born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, Muir emigrated to Wisconsin in 1849. A budding inventor, John Muir won a prize for his clever devices at the 1860 Wisconsin State Fair. Soon afterward, he entered the University of Wisconsin. Muir attended the college for four years, but did not receive a degree. Leaving the state, Muir walked to the Gulf of Mexico and then headed west to California. Arriving in 1868, Muir spent six years in and near Yosemite Valley. There he built a cabin which had running water — a mountain stream ran through it.

Enthralled by the natural beauty, John Muir hiked throughout the region, jotting down notes in pencil in a remarkably disorganized fashion. Muir simply opened his notebook and on whatever page appeared he started writing. He became an expert on residual glaciers, discovering sixty-five in the Yosemite area alone. His theories on the formation of Yosemite Valley by glaciers ran counter to the prevailing notion that the valley was the result of a sudden collapse of the earth’s crust. Critics branded him a kook, but Muir was proven correct.

Muir’s notebooks contain many memorable passages. For instance he recounts an evening spent high in a pine tree during an intense Sierra thunderstorm. Muir wrote more than sixty journals and hundreds of notes during this period of his life. His notebooks were bulging with natural observations and often lyrical praise for the entrancing merits of Yosemite.

And then, he stopped. For awhile.

In 1880, Muir married and devoted a decade to fruit farming in Martinez, a community near the San Francisco Bay. He became financially independent and headed back to the mountains. John Muir devoted the rest of his life to conservation and preservation causes. In the years that followed, Muir traveled the world promoting his environmental vision. He explored Nevada, Utah, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Siberia, Manchuria, Japan, Egypt, Australia, and New Zealand. Muir wrote dozens of articles in support of natural issues, strengthening of the National Park system, and in opposition to destructive exploitation of natural resources.

In 1892, Muir founded the Sierra Club and remained its president until 1914. He fought to make Yosemite a national park and unsuccessfully battled against the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley within the park’s boundaries. While Muir penned numerous articles and editorials for years, his first book The Mountains of California did not appear until 1894. His unpublished journals and notes were not collected and published until 1938.

John Muir’s writings are unique among the journals of the 19th century American West. Unlike other narratives that emphasize “getting there” and triumph over physical hardship, Muir celebrated what he called the “spiritual affinities” of the natural experience. Mountains were not obstacles to overcome, but cathedrals. Storms were not terrifying occurrences, but delightful evidence of a supernatural plan. Muir’s journals reflect this transcendentalism and are powerfully evocative and poetic.

John Muir continued to write and proselytize until his death in 1914 at age 76.