John Muir

I'm previewing an AO book for Year 11, Our National Parks, written by John Muir in 1901 as magazine articles to stir an interest in visiting the country's national parks. The book is online here.

His love for nature and desire to prevent human progress from ruining the land is very evident in his book. Here are a few quotes from the first two chapters; the first chapter is general comments about our national parks and the second chapter is about Yellowstone and the geysers.

"Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven."

"As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing."

"Again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, 'What are rattlesnakes good for?' As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God's ways."

"How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming,--a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy. The plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming like a hive, singing the old new song of creation."

"The shocks and out-bursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's heart."