John Muir: His Achievements/Journeys Essay, Research Paper
John Muir: His Achievements/Journeys
John Muir worked at a factory in Canada. He invented time and money
saving machines for the factories. But one day an accident changed his whole
outlook on life. As he was tightening a machine belt with a file, the file flew
out and pierced his right eye. His left eye grew dim to the reaction.
John’s friends and neighbors tried to help him and brought doctors.
Some friends read to him. Children brought him flowers and listened to his
stories. He finally began to regain his sight. His employer, grateful for the
work that he had done for his company, offered John a job as foreman and a
future partnership. But John gave up the chance to be a wealthy business man
because he wanted to use his precious sight to enjoy the creations of nature.
On September 1, 1867, John stepped off a train in Louisville, Kentucky.
The next day he set out on foot to walk from Louisville to Florida, a distance
of 1,000 miles. In Florida, he planned to catch a boat for South America
because he was eager to observe the plants of southern lands. This was known as
the thousand-mile walk. During his journey, he would stop to collect plant
samples and write about his observations in his journal.
John was weak from the trip and thought that he would need much more
energy to travel to South America. He decided to visit Yosemite Valley, where
he would regain his strength. He took up the job as a herder there and began to
explore the area. Then he got a job as guide to the Yosemite. Muir quickly
became an expert on Yosemite. John believed that glaciers had helped in the
formation of the valley. People began to pay attention to his ideas. Some
agreed and some didn’t. John spent years studying glaciers and tracking
glaciers in the Sierra Nevada.
In 1874, Jeanne Carr introduced John Muir to Louie Wanda because she
wanted John to leave his lonely life. John first tramped the wilderness of
California, Nevada, Utah, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska. Then he decided
that he should settle down and went to visit Louie Wanda in the Alhambra Valley.
They got married and had two daughters, Annie and Helen Wanda.
John worked on Louie’s farm for many years, but started to miss the
wilderness. Louie Wanda saw what was happening to John and decided to let him
travel to Alaska. He visited the Alaskan tribes and Glacier Bay. In the next
ten years of visit to Alaska, Muir would track glaciers and observe them.
John Muir will spend the rest of his life writing books about nature and
speak out for nature. He will suffer the lost of his wife and abate his grief
by observing a pertrified forest. John Muir really was a man of the mountains.
I believe that John Muir was a very hard working and determined man.
The fact that he overcomes the struggles of his life to accomplish all that he
did makes him an even more remarkable man. I think that it is great that there
is a man that would speak out for such a wonderful thing like nature in a time
where people didn’t care. He has accomplished so much in his life that I am
surprised that he is not as well-known. He should be written about and taught
about more. John Muir can inspire a person to care more for nature and become
more considerate and passionate to it.
CHILDHOOD
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, on April 21, 1838. He had two
older sisters named Margaret and Sarah and two younger brothers named David and
Daniel, Jr. and twin sisters named Mary and Annie. They were all born in Dunbar
except a younger sister, Joanna, that was born after they moved to the United
States. John’s father was Daniel Muir and John’s mother was Ann Gilrye Muir.
Daniel was a man of strong feelings. His religious beliefs made him put
aside fun and music thinking that they were the devil’s workshop. He believed
that mealtime was a sacrament and that idle talk and laughing had no place at
the table. John was forced to memorize a passage from the bible every day. He
would be beaten if he did not recite them correctly.
John’s mother was a gentle and kind woman. She had been brought up to
appreciate poetry and art. Her parents had forbidden her to marry Daniel
because they considered him to be too strict and too passionate in his religious
views. But Ann was strong-willed and she loved Daniel.
The life of the Muir’s in Scotland would soon change. Daniel Muir had
become unhappy with the Presbyterian church of his wife’s family so he joined
the Disciples of Christ. A few of his fellow Disciples had begun to form
religious communities in North America. There they had found rich farmland and
a chance for success. On February 18, 1849, Daniel rushed back home and told
them that they would be on their way to America in the morning. The boys were
crazed with excitement, but Grandfather Gilrye told them that they would find a
lot of hard work there.
After a journey of a few months, the Muir family settled in Marquette
County, Wisconsin. Daniel Muir worked the children hard. He had become a
preacher and a strict parent who believed that when he whipped his children, he
was beating the devil out of their souls. While the children planted, hoed,
raked, and harvested, Daniel spent less time on the farm work and more time
studying his bible. When Daniel was away, John and the rest of the family would
joke and sing. The girls could take out their embroidery, which their father
considered frivolous, and John could recite a poem or dance a highland jig.
Since John was the oldest son, he had the hardest work on the farm.
John had to split rails for fences, pry up rocks, and haul wood. When John just
turned twelve, his father sent him out to plow the first fields. The ground had
never been broken, so John had to dig out roots and guide the plow as the oxen
pulled it.
After eight years, the Muir’s farm became drained of nutrients. They
then moved to a place they called Hickory Hill. John had to labor in the fields
again. He had to clear the new land for the crops again. It was very hard work
for a boy and affected John’s health. John learned endurance and developed
strength in the ten plus years of farm work. During that time, he also learned
to respect and love the creatures of the woods and farm. ATTENDING SCHOOL
John and his brothers and sisters did not go to school during their years of
farm work. But John borrowed books from neighbors who kept a small library.
His father saw no reason to read anything else besides the Bible and other
religious text. So he would not allow John to stay up to read after the others
had gone to bed. He did allow John to get up early in the morning to read.
It was too cold to sit still and read in the winter so John began
working in the cellar on ideas for labor-saving machines. His first invention
was a model of a sawmill. Soon he also invented many other things like the
waterwheel, thermometer, clocks, a device for lighting fire, and a machine that
would wake you up. A neighbor encouraged John to take his inventions to Madison
where he could exhibit them at the state’s agricultural fair. His inventions
were a hit at the fair and were written about in the local newspapers. His
family back at home was very happy and proud of him, but his dad warned him to
avoid the “sin of vanity”.
At the fair, John Muir met Jeanne Carr, a woman that would change his
life. Mrs. Carr was impressed with John. Her husband, Dr. Ezra Carr, was a
professor of natural science at the university. John would later enroll into
college and become a very good friend of the Carrs’. John did not immediately
enroll at the university because he had concerns about money. Instead, he
helped build iceboats, addressed advertising circulars, and drove a coach for an
insurance agent. One day he learned that he had enough money to enroll into
college, but he would have a very tight buget. He spent little on clothes and
food.
The next year at the university, John acquired a teaching job in a one-
room school. It was hard to keep up with the teachings and his studies, but the
money helped him considerably. John took chemistry and geology with Dr. Carr
and Latin and Greek classes with Dr. James Davie Butler. Both men opened new
worlds for John.
During John’s college years, the United States was suffering through the
Civil War. Many university students joined the army, but John saw the wounded
from the war and disliked it. He decided to go botanizing in Canada to dodge
the draft. His brother Daniel, Jr. had already gone to Canada, and John planned
to meet him near Niagara Falls in September.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) JOHN MUIR SAVING THE WILDERNESS; Corinne J. Naden and Rose
Blue;The Millbrook Press; 1992
2) JOHN MUIR SON OF THE WILDERNESS; Linnie Wolfe; The Ryerson Press;
1945