"I am now writing up some notes, but when they will be ready
for publication I do not know... It will be a long time
before anything is arranged in book form." These words of
John Muir, written in June 1912 to a friend, proved
prophetic. The journals and notes to which the great
naturalist and environmental figure was referring have
languished, unpublished and virtually untouched, for nearly a
century. Until now. Here edited and published for the first
time, John Muir's travel journals from 1911-12, along with
his associated correspondence, finally allow us to read in
his own words the remarkable story of John Muir's last great
journey.
Leaving from Brooklyn, New York, in August 1911, John Muir,
at the age of seventy-three and traveling alone, embarked
on an eight-month, 40,000-mile voyage to South America and
Africa. The 1911-12 journals and correspondence reproduced
in this volume allow us to travel with him up the great
Amazon, into the jungles of southern Brazil, to snowline in
the Andes, through southern and central Africa to the
headwaters of the Nile, and across six oceans and seas in
order to reach the rare forests he had so long wished to
study. Although this epic journey has received almost no
attention from the many commentators on Muir's work, Muir
himself considered it among the most important of his life
and the fulfillment of a decades-long dream.
John Muir's Last Journey provides a rare glimpse
of a Muir whose interests as a naturalist, traveler, and
conservationist extended well beyond the mountains of
California. It also helps us to see John Muir as a
different kind of hero, one whose endurance and
intellectual curiosity carried him into far fields of
adventure even as he aged, and as a private person and
family man with genuine affections, ambitions, and fears,
not just an iconic representative of American
wilderness.
With an introduction that sets Muir's trip in the
context of his life and work, along with chapter
introductions and a wealth of explanatory notes, the
book adds important dimensions to our appreciation of
one of America's greatest environmentalists. John
Muir's Last Journey is a must reading for students
and scholars of environmental history, American
literature, natural history, and related fields, as
well as for naturalists and armchair travelers
everywhere.