For forty years he spent the most of his time camping and exploring and studying in the wilderness along the Pacific Coast, chiefly in the Sierra of California. He neither fished nor carried a gun. He frequently went hungry; many times was without bedding; often he was entirely alone for weeks. These were glorious years!
He rambled through parts of Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and made five trips to Alaska. He also made visits to Australia, India, Switzerland, Sweden, South America, and Africa. Long and intimately he associated with Nature in the Yosemite National Park.
He married in 1879, and for ten years devoted a part of his time to business, amassing a fair fortune. But in each of these years he managed to have several weeks in the wilderness.
He had a large share in arousing the public interest that led to the creation of forest reserves. For years he splendidly led the movement for National Parks. His work and his writing glorified the scenic outdoors.
In his Autobiography he says, "When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures." In his boyhood Wisconsin home he was so enraptured with Nature that, as he says, he could hardly believe his senses except when he was hungry or his father was thrashing him.
In another case he says, "Every wild lesson a love lesson; not whipped into us but charmed into us." Commenting on leaving college, he declares, "I was only leaving one university for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness." Stevenson wrote, "There should be nothing so much a man's business as his amusements." John Muir's amusements occupied the major part of his life, and the result is an inspiring and ennobling influence on the world. More than anything else, his work is likely immeasurably to help the human race by getting us outdoors.
While ever enjoying the beauty of Nature, he was continually searching for facts. He had the poetic appreciation of Nature. He was the greatest genius that ever with words interpreted the outdoors. No one has ever written of Nature's realm with greater enthusiasm or charm. He once said, "In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves." He also felt that "dry words and dry facts will not fire hearts." Much that he wrote is prose poetry or is enlivened with the poetic fire of his genius.
His writings contain a wealth of National Parks material, and I wish that every child might know of them. His books are: "The Mountains of California," "Our National Parks," "Stickeen," "My First Summer in the Sierra," "The Yosemite," "The Story of my Boyhood and Youth," "Travels in Alaska," and "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf."
In December, 1914, the grandest character in National Parks history and in nature literature vanished into that mysterious realm into which all trails inevitably lead. He had rendered mankind a vast and heroic service. His triumphs were of the very greatest. They were made in times of peace for the eternal cause of peace. We are yet too close to the deeds of this magnificent man to comprehend their helpfulness to humanity. His practical labors and his books are likely to prove the most influential force in this century for the profitable use of leisure hours.
He has written the great drama of the outdoors. On Nature's scenic stage he gave the wild life local habitation and character—did with the wild folk what Shakespeare did with man. He puts the woods in story, and in his story you are in the wilderness. His prose poems illuminate the forest, the storm, and all the fields of life. He has set Pan's melody to words. He sings of sun-tipped peaks and gloomy cañons, flowery fields and wooded wilds. He has immortalized the Big Trees. His memory is destined to be ever associated with the silent places, with the bird-songs, with wild flowers, with the great glaciers, with snowy peaks, with dark forests, with white cascades that leap in glory, with sunlight and shadow, with the splendid National Parks, and with every song that Nature sings in the wild gardens of the world.