Tramping Through Our National Parks With John Muir
From Yosemite Valley to Los Angeles, California.
Categories: Renegade Roads
By: Johnny D. Boggs 06/01/2008
As Rod Miller writes in his entertaining biography, John Muir: Magnificent Tramp, “In his love for nature and his efforts to protect it, Muir was very much a man of his time—indeed, a man ahead of his time.”
Home is Where…
The best starting point on any John Muir trail is his home in Martinez, California. The John Muir National Historic Site preserves the 14-room Victorian house and—as Muir would have insisted—its fruit orchards and 326 acres of woods. The informative video, John Muir: Earth, Planet, Universe, provides an overview of Muir’s life and legacy, and the Muir House brings Muir the man and the Victorian age into sharp focus. Muir’s in-laws originally built the mansion in 1883, but Muir and his wife moved into the house in 1890. Muir would live there, and write there, until his death in 1914.
Naturally, you can’t really appreciate John Muir indoors, so it’s time to take a walk.
“Going to the woods is going home,” he wrote, “for I suppose we came from the woods originally.”
Just down the road in Mill Valley, Muir Woods National Monument—“the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world”—celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods offers six miles of trails where hikers, which there are plenty of, can view redwoods and a diverse array of flora and fauna. You don’t have to be a tree-hugger to appreciate the dignity and beauty of these woods.
Riding the High Country
Muir is most connected to California’s Sierra, so I leave the Bay Area for the high mountains and make my way west.
Malcontent motorists notwithstanding, it’s easy to forget idiotic drivers once you take in all the nobleness of Yosemite National Park. Muir led the fight to protect the area, resulting in the creation of the national park in 1890. Subsequent lobbying and preservation efforts—including a losing effort to stop the Hetch Hetchy dam—led to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, to protect and preserve all national parks and, according to its mission statement, “leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
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