"I am now writing up some notes, but when they will be ready for
publication I do not know... It will be a long time before anything
is arranged in book form." These words of John Muir, written in
June 1912 to a friend, proved prophetic. The journals and notes to
which the great naturalist and environmental figure was referring
have languished, unpublished and virtually untouched, for nearly a
century. Until now. Here edited and published for the first time,
John Muir's travel journals from 1911-12, along with his associated
correspondence, finally allow us to read in his own words the
remarkable story of John Muir's last great journey.
Leaving from Brooklyn, New York, in August 1911, John Muir, at the
age of seventy-three and traveling alone, embarked on an
eight-month, 40,000-mile voyage to South America and Africa. The
1911-12 journals and correspondence reproduced in this volume allow
us to travel with him up the great Amazon, into the jungles of
southern Brazil, to snowline in the Andes, through southern and
central Africa to the headwaters of the Nile, and across six oceans
and seas in order to reach the rare forests he had so long wished
to study. Although this epic journey has received almost no
attention from the many commentators on Muir's work, Muir himself
considered it among the most important of his life and the
fulfillment of a decades-long dream.
"John Muir's Last Journey" provides a rare glimpse of a Muir whose
interests as a naturalist, traveler, and conservationist extended
well beyond the mountains of California. It also helps us to see
John Muir as a different kind of hero, one whose endurance and
intellectual curiosity carried him into far fields of adventure
even as he aged, and as a private person and family man with
genuine affections, ambitions, and fears, not just an iconic
representative of American wilderness.
With an introduction that sets Muir's trip in the context of his
life and work, along with chapter introductions and a wealth of
explanatory notes, the book adds important dimensions to our
appreciation of one of America's greatest environmentalists. "John
Muir's Last Journey" is a must reading for students and scholars of
environmental history, American literature, natural history, and
related fields, as well as for naturalists and armchair travelers
everywhere.
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