Muir, John

The Development of Muir's Wilderness Ideology

Born April 21, 1838, in Dunbar, Scotland, John Muir was the first of seven children born into a middle class family who immigrated to Wisconsin when Muir was 11. His father Daniel practiced a hard and humorless Campbellite religion, which took a rational, simple, and straightforward approach to, and interpretation of, the Bible. While his father dismissed anything but religious or practical books as frivolous and impious, Muir's intellectual horizons were opened during early adolescence when he was introduced to Romantic poets from the neighborhood boys. Muir's interest in Byron, Poe, and Wordsworth expanded into travel essays, novels, biographies, history, mathematics, and philosophy. He became consumed with images of the wilderness set forth by the Romantics. From his intellectual curiosity (especially in the areas of science and mathematics) arose a desire to apply his newly acquired knowledge. At the age of 22, Muir was admitted into the University of Wisconsin, although he never graduated.

Muir's Images of Nature

Muir arrived in Yosemite Valley in 1868 and immediately saw himself in spiritual partnership with nature. To Muir, all beings have spiritual strivings and he believed that it was in nature that the longings of the soul could be consummated. Muir was transformed by the majesty of the Sierra Nevada, which was the spark that drove his experiences, moving him into a life of passionate environmentalism and preservation.

Muir saw value in all of creation and the ecological interconnectedness of all things. For him, studying [Page 303]the wilderness was not a means to discover how to best exploit the natural resources available for use by humans, but, rather, was a religious activity. He would explore the mountains in ways he likened to devout Christians who read their Bibles. Like his father, he rejected orthodox religion and preached the Gospel according to his own beliefs; for his father, it was the Campbellite gospel, and for Muir, the gospel of the wilderness. Moreover, while his father believed that only God had the ability to redeem our sins through God's own divine will, so did Muir believe that human nature would resort to sin if one's spiritual education was neglected. Muir's solution to this issue was to get people into nature and away from civilization so that they could experience God as he experienced Him. It was through his prolific writings that Muir let the rest of the world into his spiritual life.

...