The quake woke Muir in the early morning, and he ran out of his cabin "both glad and frightened," exclaiming, "A noble earthquake!" Famed singer-songwriter John Lennon founded the Beatles, a band that impacted the popular music scene like no other.

In one such article, his focus was Muir's debt to Carr, stating that she was his "guiding star" who "led him into the noble paths of life, and then kept him there. The presidential entourage then traveled by stagecoach into the park. After entering the park and seeing the magnificent splendor of the valley, the president asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite. [8] Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. He sometimes took his daughters with him.[15]. [21] While there, he continued "botanizing", exploring the escarpment and bogs, collecting and cataloging plants. Muir has been called the "patron saint of the American wilderness" and its "archetypal free spirit." He wrote, "I never tried to abandon creeds or code of civilization; they went away of their own accord ... without leaving any consciousness of loss." "[31]:53 Emerson spent one day with Muir, and he offered him a teaching position at Harvard, which Muir declined. Elsewhere in his writings, he described the conventional image of a Creator, "as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater. John and Louisa had two daughters, Wanda Muir Hanna and Helen Muir Funk. After showing his inventions at the state Fair, Muir attended the University of Wisconsin during the early 1860s. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Pinchot was the first head of the United States Forest Service and a leading spokesman for the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the people. [25]:150, 154 Muir boarded the ship, and while in Havana, he spent his hours studying shells and flowers and visiting the botanical garden in the city. He proved valuable to his employers because of his inventiveness in improving the machines and processes; he was promoted to supervisor, being paid $25 per week.

He was sustained by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living. He was the third of eight children: Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department's approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. Even before they entered the park, he was able to convince Roosevelt that the best way to protect the valley was through federal control and management. Senger and San Francisco attorney Warren Olney sent out invitations "for the purpose of forming a 'Sierra Club.' [100] An image of Muir, with the California condor and Half Dome, appears on the California state quarter released in 2005. They were both born the same year in Scotland and shared a love for the mountains of California. However, three days after accepting the job at Hodgson's, Muir almost died of a malarial sickness. Muir built a small cabin along Yosemite Creek,[29]:207 designing it so that a section of the stream flowed through a corner of the room so he could enjoy the sound of running water. Muir was extremely fond of Thoreau and was probably influenced more by him than even Emerson. "His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous and punishable." [23] He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks to regain his sight, worried about whether he would end up blind. Muir became a major figure in the creation of parks for the Grand Canyon and Sequoia regions as well. [17] Stephen Fox recounts that Muir's father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in faith and practice, leading to their immigration and joining a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement, called the Disciples of Christ.

Muir was the first person honored with a California commemorative day when legislation signed in 1988 created John Muir Day, effective from 1989 onward.
His son, John Quincy Adams, was the nation's sixth president. The piece was published anonymously, identified as having been written by an "inspired pilgrim". He traveled into British Columbia a third of the way up the Stikine River, likening its Grand Canyon to "a Yosemite that was a hundred miles long". She thought they did and "saw in his entries evidence of genius worthy of special recognition," notes Miller.

It was "through his letters to her that he developed a voice and purpose."

The following places are named after Muir: John Muir was featured on two U.S. commemorative postage stamps. A 32-cent stamp issued on February 3, 1998, was part of the "Celebrate the Century" series, and showed Muir in Yosemite Valley, with the inscription "John Muir, Preservationist". Finally settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. In contrast, Muir proclaimed, "Dam Hetch Hetchy! One source appears to indicate he worked at the mill/factory until the summer of 1865,[20]:37 while another says he stayed on at Trout Hollow until after a fire burned it down in February 1866. 1. Muir had no such fear and promptly made a moonlit survey of new talus piles created by earthquake-triggered rockslides. Engberg, Robert and Donald Wesling, 1999. Records showed his class status as "irregular gent" and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later wanderings. [72] He not only led the efforts to protect forest areas and have some designated as national parks, but his writings presented "human culture and wild nature as one of humility and respect for all life."[26]. In 1873 and 1874, he made field studies along the western flank of the Sierra on the distribution and ecology of isolated groves of Giant Sequoia. "[19]:95, 115, When he was 22 years old, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own way for several years. Muir confronted Pinchot and demanded an explanation. [39] Muir recorded over 300 glaciers along the river's course.[40]. Jeanne Carr, 35 years of age, especially appreciated his youthful individuality, along with his acceptance of "religious truths" that were much like her own. Muir often told her, "This business of writing books is a long, tiresome, endless job. When he did, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light". "Preserving "God's Wildness" for Redemptive Baptism: Muir and Disciples of Christ Theology," in. [68], John Muir died at California Hospital (now California Hospital Medical Center)[69] in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914, of pneumonia[70] at age 76, after a brief visit to Daggett, California, to see his daughter Helen Muir Funk. During his lifetime John Muir published over 300 articles and 12 books. Both men opposed reckless exploitation of natural resources, including clear-cutting of forests. Folsom House, where Muir worked as a printer, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.". [citation needed][32], In 1871, after Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, with a number of academic friends from Boston, arrived in Yosemite during a tour of the Western United States. One week later Muir was elected president, Warren Olney was elected vice-president, and a board of directors was chosen that included David Starr Jordan, president of the new Stanford University.
"This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm. Up there," pointing towards the Sierra Nevada, "is my home. Describing the sight of two African Americans at a campfire, he wrote, "I could see their ivory gleaming from the great lips, and their smooth cheeks flashing off light as if made of glass. Yet the boy had a major inclination for learning and creativity, coming up with an array of inventions such as a horse feeder, a table saw, a wooden thermometer and a device that pushed the youngster out of bed in the early morning.

In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Kentucky to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. "[52]:xviii In one of his essays, he gave an example of the deficiencies of writing versus experiencing nature. As a result of his intense desire to remember facts, he filled his field journals with notes on precipitation, temperature, and even cloud formations. "[54]:45 He often described his observations in terms of light.

Several books were subsequently published that collected essays and articles from various sources.