The Mountains of California

By John Muir and Bill McKibben

When John Muir traveled to California in 1868, he found the pristine mountain ranges that would inspire his life’s work. The Mountains of California is the culmination of the ten years Muir spent in the Sierra Nevadas, studying every crag, crook, and valley with great care and contemplation.

Bill McKibben writes in his Introduction that Muir "invents, by sheer force of his love, an entirely new vocabulary and grammar of the wild . . . a language of ecstasy and exuberance."

The Mountains of California is as vibrant and vital today as when it was written over a century ago.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes the photographs and line drawings from the original 1898 edition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307758453

John Muir

John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States.

Reviews for The Mountains of California

[encephalical · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I don't know what I was expecting, but not this. I found this to be a total slog. Endless reeling off of names of plants. Describing everything as "indescribable". Anthropomorphization run amok.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Muir spent decades trekking and exploring the magnificent nature of the United States, particularly california, British Columbia and Alaska. He turned to wrriting about his observations relatively late in life, using his notebooks and memories. The mountains of California (1894) was the first of his writing to appear in book form. It is included in Penguin Books series of Classics.To Muir, the beauty of nature was a manifestation of God, and the nature of the United States overwhelmed him more than anything else. When Muir came to the States, much of that natural wealth was also still in pristine condition, and as danger crept in to destroy or threaten that, towrads the end of his life Muir became a great conservationalist, born out of the great naturalist he had been all his life.The mountains of California describes nature in extatic and exhalted language. The first chapters are devoted to the landscape, and how the landscape was formed. Throughout his life, John Muir was fascinated by glaciers, and he was one of the first to realize how glaciers had sculpted the landscape, and how through their workings the great forms of mountains, valleys and lakes had come about, tens of thousands of years ago.The largest part of the book is devoted to the forests. Muir had trained as a botanist, and this particular interest in shown in the devotion and detail with which he described the trees found on the mountains. Unlike some of his later books, Muir uses very little Latin in The mountains of California, and most plants and trees are known by their common English names. The book is mainly descriptive, and on very few occasions anecdotes are included, which make his later works so attractive. The two most endearing chapters are about the Douglas squirrel and the American Dipper, or Water Ouzel, as Muir preferred to call him.In The mountains of California Muir clearly tries to find words to describe the magnificence of nature in ever changing and ever original ways. Muir had excellent observation skills and sensitivity to note every fragrance, sound or feature of the landscape. He also makes the reader feel how much time and experience is collected in his observations: Muir spent decades to explore and record. Thus, many of his observations come across as deeply-felt emotions.To express himself in myriad forms, Muir uses a broad vocabulary. The mountains of California does not only express the richness and wealth of natural beauty, but is also a pleasure to read in that the text is a rich pattern.