Diary of an Autodidact: My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

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.

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From my own perambulations: