John Muir was a true mountain man, naturalist, and a key player in the preservation of wilderness in the United States. Muir was known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks”. In 1892 he founded The Sierra Club, which is now the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. Muir was very influential with President Roosevelt, even went camping with him. Muir’s writings inspire adventure, conservation and a true love of the natural world.
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.”
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
“Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.”
“Earth has no sorrow that earth can not heal.”
“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.”
“None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly, so long as they are wild.”
“And into the woods I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
“The sun shines not on but in us.”
“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
“I don’t like either the word hike or the thing.
People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike!”
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
“We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men.”
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.”
“Most people are on the world, not in it. ”
“I never saw a discontented tree.”
“Going to the mountains is going home.”
“The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.”
“The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.”
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
tranquility begins in the wild . .