Wilderness Essays

by John Muir

“It is still the morning of creation, the morning stars are singing together and all the Sons of God shouting for joy!”

The air was still soft and like a poultice; the land and waters still teemed with plant and animal life.

“Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the great creation?” True, the universe would be incomplete without man, but it would also be incomplete without even the smallest microscopic creature.

Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence; you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.

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When conditions were right, the wind picked up these snowflowers, whirled them through the air, and they streamed from the mountain tops in long snow banners, fluttering against a vivid, clear blue sky.

Part of Muir’s attractiveness to modern readers is the fact that he was an activist. He not only explored the west and wrote about its beauties–he fought for their preservation.

Muir’s prose is clean and direct, because his powers of observation were keen, and he drew his figures of speech, his similes and metaphors from the natural world.

sunshine streamed through the luminous fringes of the clouds, and fell on the green waters of the fiord, the glittering bergs, the crystal bluffs of the two vast glaciers, the intensely white, far-spreading fields of ice, and the ineffably chaste and spiritual heights of the Fairweather Range, which were now hidden, now partly revealed, the whole making a picture of icy wildness unspeakably pure and sublime.

When the highest peak began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into the body of the sun itself.

and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had gained would enrich our lives forever.

I seemed to be poised in a vast hollow between two skies of equal brightness.

Here and there in the heart of the icy wilderness are spacious hollows containing beautiful lakes, fed by bands of quickglancing streams that flow without friction in blue crystal channels, making most delightful melody, singing and ringing in silvery tones of peculiar sweetness, sun-filled crystals being the only flowers on their banks.

and amid all this wild, auroral splendor ever and anon some huge newborn berg dashes the living water into a yet brighter foam,

Though apparently as motionless as the mountains about its basin, the whole glacier flows on like a river, unhalting, unresting, through all the seasons from century to century, with a motion varying in every part with the depth of the current and the declivity, smoothness, and directness of different portions of the channel.

by the same way that you came you speedily arrive in civilization, rich in wildness forevermore.

But to the few travelers who are in earnest – true lovers of the truth and beauty of wildness – we would say, Heed nothing you have heard; put no questions to “agent,” or guide-book, or dearest friend; cast away your watches and almanacs, and go at once to our gardenwilds – the more planless and ignorant the better.

Drift away confidingly into the broad gulf-streams of Nature, helmed only by Instinct. No harsh storm, no bear, no snake, will harm you.

What horizons of flame! What atmospheres of ashes and smoke!

To lovers of the wild, these mountains are not a hundred miles away. Their spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, as a circle of friends.

Every tree during the progress of gentle storms is loaded with fairy bloom at the coldest and darkest time of year, bending the branches, and hushing every singing needle. But

I was almost always alone in my mountaineering, the way that the fresh beauty was reflected in their faces made for me a novel and interesting study.

Somber peaks, hacked and shattered, circled halfway around the horizon, wearing a savage aspect in the gloaming, and a waterfall chanted solemnly across the lake on its way down from the foot of a glacier.

But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging over glaciers and torrents, and up perilous heights, let the judgment forbid as it may.

My doom appeared fixed. I must fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.

Eastward, the whole region seems a land of desolation covered with beautiful light.

But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks.

Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of Nature manifested.

On the contrary, under nature’s direction, the massive beasts act as gardeners. On the forest floor, carpeted with needles and brush, and on the tough sod of glacier meadows, bears make no mark; but around the sandy margin of lakes their magnificent tracks form grand lines of embroidery.

I felt degraded by the killing business, farther from heaven, and I made up my mind to try to be at least as fair and charitable as the snakes themselves, and to kill no more save in self-defense.

Fortunately, almost as soon as it was discovered it was dedicated and set apart for the benefit of the people, a piece of legislation that shines benignly amid the common dust-and-ashes history of the public domain, for which the world must thank Professor Hayden above all others; for he led the first scientific exploring party into it, described it, and with admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to preserve it.

Among the gains of a coach trip are the acquaintances made and the fresh views into human nature; for the wilderness is a shrewd touchstone, even thus lightly approached, and brings many a curious trait to view.

Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature’s darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

rattlesnakes, the other big irrational dread of over-civilized people, are scarce here, for most of the park lies above the snake-line. Poor creatures, loved only by their Maker, they are timid and bashful, as mountaineers know; and though perhaps not possessed of much of that charity that suffers long and is kind, seldom, either by mistake or by mishaps, do harm to any one.

You are sure to be lost in wonder and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.

Of course this destruction was creation, progress in the march of beauty through death.

and with curious chemistry decomposing the rocks, making beauty in the darkness; these forces, seemingly antagonistic, working harmoniously together.

Stay on this good fire-mountain and spend the night among the stars.

Watch their glorious bloom until the dawn, and get one more baptism of light.