MUST SEE, MUST READ
THE WILD MUIR: TWENTY-TWO OF JOHN MUIR’S GREATEST ADVENTURES
(1994, by John Muir, selected and introduced by Lee Stetson): There is no better introduction to John Muir’s adventure stories than this collection selected by Lee Stetson. Renowned for his live performances as Muir, Stetson [johnmuirlive.com] certainly knows his subject. Through Muir’s own words readers see the intrepid Scot as not just the brilliant naturalist, but as a man who loved a good adventure. Time and again Muir seems one misstep from plummeting off a peak, one crust of bread away from starvation. But through his hardiness and ingenuity—not to mention the “second self”—Muir delightfully always returns from the brink.
A Walk in the Woods (1998, by Bill Bryson): John Muir fittingly appears on the opening page of Bryson’s autobiographical trek along the Appalachian Trail. “Who could say the words ‘Great Smoky Mountains’ or ‘Shenandoah Valley,’’ the author writes, “and not feel an urge, as the naturalist John Muir once put it, to ‘throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence’?” In the spirit of Muir, albeit with a dose of sarcasm, Bryson takes us on an epic, sidesplitting journey through the wilds of Appalachia, where we experience the joys and travails of the trail.
Remaking History and Other Stories (1994, by Kim Stanley Robinson): It’s a shame the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t considered John Muir as a caped superhero (although Muir Woods is featured in Ant-Man and the Wasp). As at home in a laboratory as a mountainside, Muir would be a perfect fit. In the meantime, readers who hunger for Muir science fiction will eat up Robinson’s short story “Muir on Shasta.” Bearing similarities to the graphic novel From Hell, by Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Robinson’s reimagining of Muir’s roughest night is something all fans of the genre should experience.
