A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir.

3/5 rating. 80 pages.

Book #75 of 2020. Read October 20, 2020.

This is Muir’s journal kept during his (almost all walking) trip from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico, then his trip to Cuba and eventually California.

This book perfectly sums up Muir’s passions and work to catalog, and preserve nature. His journal is split between descriptions of plants, short snippets of how he spent his days, and some of the most beautiful language I have ever heard used to describe nature.

Muir is a naturalist through and through. He constantly sees the beauty of god and higher plains through his communes with nature. I understand the awe he feels when surrounded by it and hate that we have lost this in today’s world. If you want to read some of his writings, this is a very short book that can give you a taste. Here are some of my favorite quotes, they show his pure adoration for nature:

“But let the children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights.”

“The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.”

“The sky was perfectly delicious, sweet enough for the breath of angels; every draught of it gave a separate and distinct piece of pleasure.”

“Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.”

Quotes:

“They tell us that plants are perishable, soulless creatures, that only man is immortal, etc.; but this, I think, is something that we know very nearly nothing about. Any how, this palm was indescribably impressive and told me grander things than I ever got from human priest.”

“I think that most of the antipathies which haunt and terrify us are morbid productions of ignorance and weakness.”

“But what is the size of the greatest man, or the tallest tree that ever overtopped a grass! Compared with other things in God’s creation the difference is nothing. We all are only microscopic animalcula.”

“Let a Christian hunter go to the Lord’s woods and kill his well-kept beasts, or wild Indians, and it is well; but let an enterprising specimen of these proper, predestined victims go to houses and fields and kill the most worthless person of the vertical godlike killers, – oh! that is horribly unorthodox, and on the part of the Indians atrocious murder!”

“The climate of these precious islets is simply warm summer and warmer summer, corresponding in time with winter and summer in the North.”

“The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts.”

“[Their God] is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentleman in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater.”

“This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation’s plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.”

“The little craft trimmed and snugged, her inviting sails spread open, and away she dashed to her ocean home like an exulting war-horse to the battle.”

“Now I was a stranger, indeed. I was delighted, astonished, confounded, and gazed in wonderment blank and overwhelming as if I had fallen upon another star.”

“As we advanced the scenery increased in grandeur and beauty.”

“None can tell how far man’s knowledge may yet reach.”

“One would fancy that these California days receive more gold from the ground than they give to it. The earth has indeed become a sky; and the two cloudless skies, raying toward each other flower-beams and sunbeams, are fused and confolded into one glowing heaven.”

“If you are traveling for health, play truant to doctors and friends, fill your pocket with biscuits, and hide in the hills of the Hollow, lave in its waters, tan in its golds, bask in its flower-shine, and your baptisms will make you a new creature indeed.”

“[H]ere will your hard doubts disappear…and your soul breathe deep and free in God’s shoreless atmosphere of beauty and love.”

“Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.”

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