Source of
book: I own this.
It is
impossible to be a outdoor sort in California without feeling some connection
to John Muir. More than any other person, he was responsible for the protection
of our magnificent National Parks
here in this state, and can be said to have founded the American conservation
movement. Without his efforts, Yosemite National Park would have been looted by
developers and miners - it was his guided tour of the future park with
president Theodore Roosevelt which gave the necessary push to create the park.
Later, he would co-found the Sierra Club, which has done more to protect the
natural world and the environment than any other group over the last 100 years.
Without Muir and the Sierra Club, the magnificent giant sequoias would likely
have been logged to extinction. Muir came along at the right time - before the
growing oligarchs had the power to buy everything up and destroy it. He
correctly understood that conservation was a matter of justice: destroying the
natural world literally steals from the future generations. (Something our
current despoilers need to be taught all over again.)
Muir also
has a lake or two named after him - and a certain trail leading from Yosemite
to the top of Mt. Whitney. Some of us might say you can still feel his presence
as you walk the slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the places his feet fell all
those years ago.
Born in
Scotland, Muir and his family immigrated to the US when he was eleven. As an
adult, he migrated here and there before settling in California. For years, he
scraped by without much of a regular job, trying to find his place. Eventually,
with his pen, he made a reputation for himself, and went on to inspire
countless others. We visited his home in Martinez a few years ago, and you can read about that here.
My First
Summer in the Sierra was written in 1911, a good many years after the
actual events took place in the summer of 1869. Muir mostly copied his own
journal entries and sketches, but fleshed out the narrative with additional
information and background. Because of this, some of the entries read very much
like the original - very “journaly” for lack of a better term. Others go on
longer and include philosophical musings, information on plants and animals,
and background information on the people he traveled with and met.
The journey
itself begins in the foothills west of Yosemite, traverses the ridge and plateau
to the north of the canyon, and continues over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake and
back. The route roughly follows that of state highway 120, although not
exactly. While I have travelled much of the southern and central Sierra Nevada,
this is one route I have not yet taken. A few of the kids and I had planned to
do so the summer before last, but a large wildfire shut down the entire area,
and we ended up backpacking west of Lake Tahoe instead. Despite the lack of
personal knowledge of the exact places on the plateau, I have been to a number
of the places mentioned, such as the top of Yosemite Falls, the Yosemite
Valley, the upper Merced River, Half Dome, and Mono Lake. Muir made the trip as
part of a sheep grazing expedition, which is why it took all summer. He signed
on in exchange for his food and a bit extra cash, with the understanding that
he would help as needed, but have the freedom to explore when he wasn’t.
While one
can certainly enjoy this book without having ever visited the Sierra, it
certainly adds to the reading experience. Muir describes sights and sounds,
smells and textures, which are instantly familiar to a regular hiker like
myself. The plants and animals are also easy to recognize, even though the
names can vary a bit. Just one example of that, Muir refers to the “yellow
pine,” which is the older name for what is now recognized as two closely
related species, the Ponderosa and Jeffrey Pines. (Don’t mix them up: you can
boil the sap of the Ponderosa to make turpentine. Try that with a Jeffrey, and
you will blow yourself up.) Likewise, the White Fir and Red Fir have different
names, and Muir thought the Yellow Bellied Marmot
was a kind of groundhog. It is important to remember that he did this in 1869,
long before modern genetics, which helped distinguish species from each other
and sort living things into the correct slots based on evolutionary history.
That so few things are now anachronistic is a testament to Muir’s memory and
observation. (On a related note, he memorized all of the New Testament and half
of the Old Testament as a kid - and he was renowned in his old age for his
still-sharp ability to memorize things.)
As a person
who loves the mountains and has a poetic bent, I really found that Muir’s
writing resonated with me. He was definitely a kindred spirit. Here are just a
few things that I loved. This is how the book opens.
In the great Central Valley of
California there are only two seasons--spring and summer. The spring begins
with the first rain-storm, which usually falls in November. In a few months,
the wonderful flowery vegetation is in full bloom, and by the end of May it is
dead and dry and crisp, as if every plant had been roasted in an oven.
I’ve lived
in Southern California most of my life, and for the last two decades in the
Central Valley. This is pretty accurate. And it is why sheep - and humans -
tend to want to head for higher altitude for the summer.
While in the
foothills, Muir comments on Poison Oak, which is rather abundant in the middle
altitudes.
Like most other things not apparently
useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question, “Why was it made?”
goes on and on with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for
itself.
Indeed. And
for that matter, Poison Oak is an attractive plant, particularly in the fall,
when the leaves become a brilliant red.
Muir writes
early and often about the clouds, and the thunderstorms which visit the
mountains on many summer afternoons. Here is just one of his eloquent
descriptions of them.
Cumuli rising to the eastward. How
beautiful their pearly bosses! How well they harmonize with the upswelling
rocks beneath them. Mountains of the sky, solid-looking, finely sculptured,
their richly varied topography wonderfully defined. Never before have I seen
clouds so substantial looking in form and texture. Nearly every day they rise
with visible swelling motion as if new worlds were being created. And how
fondly they brood and hover over the gardens and forests with their cooling
shadows and showers, keeping every petal and leaf in glad health and heart. One
may fancy the clouds themselves are plants, springing up in the skyfields at
the call of the sun, growing in beauty until they reach their prime, scattering
rain and hail like berries and seeds, the wilting and dying.
Muir also
makes a rather disturbing observation. He sees the deer and bears and other
creatures visit the meadows full of flowers, and notes that they tend to leave
the flowers alone, eating only what they need. “Man alone, and the animals he
tames, destroy these gardens.”
In the
center of the narrative is a fascinating episode. Muir, having been in the
mountains for over two months, is sitting on North Dome, overlooking the
Yosemite Valley, writing and sketching, when he has a peculiar sense that a friend
of his, who had promised to visit California sometime that year, was in the
valley. Muir starts down the 3000 foot cliff before realizing that it will be
dark before he gets there. He hikes back to camp, then wakes up early the next
day and hikes down into the valley. (For what it is worth, that’s an absolute
butt-kicker of a hike, even with the modern trail!)
Sure enough,
when he inquires at the old lodge, his friend is indeed in the valley.
Muir hikes up to Nevada Falls and meets his friend halfway up Liberty Cap. Say
what?! Muir has no real explanation for how he knew - he just...knew. And he
was right. (Also, hiking down into Yosemite then just sprinting up the, um,
John Muir Trail a few more thousand feet. In the same morning. Muir was a fantastic
hiker, to say the least. As those who tried to keep up with him noted
often.
Alas, the
visit is short, because his friend has a job and places to be. Muir muses, “I’m
glad I’m not great enough to be missed in the busy world.” That’s kind of my
aspiration. I’m not there yet - I still have to earn a living - but I can still
head into the mountains on a regular basis.
I also have
to quote his description of Vernal and Nevada Falls. We have hiked this route
about every other year for the last decade (see this post),
and it is one of the prettiest hikes ever. It should be on everyone’s bucket
list. Come to California in May or June and I will be happy to take you on a
hike.
The Vernal, four hundred feet high and
about seventy-five or eighty feet wide, drops smoothly over a round-lipped
precipice and forms a superb apron of embroidery, green and white, slightly
folded and fluted, maintaining this form nearly to the bottom, where it is
suddenly veiled in quick-flying billows of spray and mist, in which the
afternoon sunbeams play with ravishing beauty of rainbow colors. The Nevada is
white from its first appearance as it leaps out into the freedom of the air. At
the head it presents a twisted appearance, by an overfolding of the current
from striking on the side of its channel just before the first free outbounding
leap is made. About two thirds of the way down, the hurrying throng of
comet-shaped masses glance on an inclined part of the face of the precipice and
are beaten into yet whiter foam, greatly expanded, and sent bounding outward,
making an indescribably glorious show, especially when the afternoon sunshine
is pouring into it. In this fall--one of the most wonderful in the world--the
water does not seem to be under the dominion of ordinary laws, but rather as if
it were a living creature, full of the strength of the mountains and their
huge, wild joy.
The passage
continues, describing the Silver Apron and Emerald Pool and other iconic
sights. Muir clearly loves these places he describes. He also captures a
thought about fishing as “sport.” (Muir, like myself, didn’t mind the idea of
hunting or fishing for food - but didn’t like the idea of killing for
fun.)
It seems strange that visitors to
Yosemite should be so little influenced by its novel grandeur, as if their eyes
were bandaged and their ears were stopped. Most of those I saw yesterday were
looking down as if wholly unconscious of anything going on about them, while
the sublime rocks were trembling with the tones of the mighty chanting
congregation of waters gathered from all the mountains round about, making
music that might draw angels out of heaven. Yet respectable-looking, even
wise-looking people were fixing bits of worms on bent pieces of wire to catch
trout. Sport they called it. Should church-goers try to pass the time fishing
in baptismal fonts while dull sermons were being preached, the so-called sport
might not be so bad; but to play in the Yosemite temple, seeking pleasure in
the pain of fishes struggling for their lives, while God himself is preaching
his sublimest water and stone sermons!
I did laugh
at this one. There was a more serious moment later on, when Muir left the camp
to hike to Mono Lake. He met a group of Native Americans, and felt guilty at
his response. Muir may have lived in a time when the indiginous peoples were
largely dismissed as “savages,” but he genuinely pushed back at this idea.
Realizing that colonialism had displaced them from their homes and ways of
living, he noted that their current impoverished state was the fault of their
conquerors. Thus, when he felt repulsed when asked for whiskey, he noted his
deep sadness that he felt repulsion from his fellow human beings. As in other
places, he quoted Scotish poet Robert Burns:
“It’s coming yet, for a’ that, that man to man, the warld o’er, shall brothers
be for a’ that.”
Once Muir
got to Mono Lake, he mentions more about the Native Americans in the area,
particularly their traditional diet. Of the foods mentioned, two are ones that
I have experience with. First is pine nuts. When I lived in the mountains, we
had Singleleaf Pinion Pines all over (and they are in the Sierra Nevada too),
which had large and tasty nuts. A Navajo acquaintance showed me how to roast
them properly. The second is the fly larvae which live in Mono Lake, and are
blown to shore in huge piles. A ranger guided hike there introduced me to the
larvae, and a couple of the kids and I tried them. Kind of like tiny shrimp,
perhaps.
My First
Summer in the Sierra is a thoroughly enjoyable book, particularly for
anyone with a love of the forest, mountains, or foothills of California.
***
From my own perambulations:
North Dome from the base of Half Dome. (For more on that hike, see here.)
Half Dome (left) and Liberty Cap (right) from the John Muir Trail.
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