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Article: John Muir's Alaskan rhapsody.
- Article from:
- American Scholar
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Phi Beta Kappa Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John Muir (1838-1914), being diligent first and a dreamer second, wore many hats. So although he was a visionary--a founder of the Sierra Club and savior of Yosemite National Park--we do have quite a wonderfully meticulous record of the progress of his visions. In middle age and on the brink of his belated marriage, after considerable wandering in the Great Lakes and Appalachian wildernesses as a rattled and anguished but indefatigable young man, and then more definitively in California's High Sierra as an amateur botanist and geologist, he went almost inevitably to Alaska. Where else would an American rhapsodist of wild places ultimately go? Joy, in fact, was his ...