Steep Trails (The John Muir Library) - Softcover

Muir, J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871565358 ISBN 13: 9780871565358

Publisher: University of California Press, 2002

Synopsis

No one wrote about nature with more eloquence or passion than John Muir, and this collection of essays, spanning nearly three decades of his work, shows him at his best. These writings about his travels to the lakes, canyons, and mountains of the American West make a fitting addition to the John Muir Library Series, our ongoing program to reissue the complete works of the first great conservationist author. The two dozen magazine articles and letters in this collection present the natural treasures of an unspoiled land as white settlers found them a century ago: the Great Salt Lake, the San Gabriel Mountains, Mount Rainer, the Grand Canyon.Here are Muir's accounts of a "perilous night" caught in a snowstorm on the summit of Mount Shasta; his rapture at sailing through Puget Sound and seeing the forests of Washington (as well as his ire, describing the proliferating lumber mills, at "this fierce storm of steel that is devouring our forest"); "A Geologist's Winter Walk" in Yosemite, where he found a "living glacier" with which to prove his controversial theory that glacial erosion had formed Yosemite Valley; "the feathered people" - golden eagles, ospreys, hawks, jays, hummingbirds, and others - "sailing the sky and enlivening the rocks and bushes through all the (Grand Canyon) wilderness"; and much more. Filled with Muir's characteristic boldness and emotion, these stirring essays will appeal to his loyal readers today, just as they did a century ago.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ublished in 1918, this brilliant collection of letters and magazine articles spans nearly thirty years of Muir's writing and is one of the lesser known gems of the Muir canon. Gathered shortly after Muir's death by family friend William Frederic Bade, these passages are learned, funny, exalted, and quirky in one amazing turn after another. Here is Muir caught in a snowstorm below the peak of Mount Shasta; interviewing the one remaining miner in a Nevada ghost town; bathing "clean as a saint" in the Great Salt Lake, and sparring with Mormon elders; exploring the forests of Puget Sound, and climbing Mount Rainier; peering into the Grand Canyon, "a collection of stone books covering thousands of miles of shelving, tier on tier." Steep Trails is Muir at his wondering, joyful, ebullient best.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871565358
• ISBN 13: 9780871565358
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300