Quote

Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.

John Muir

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John Muir
Age: 76 †
Born: 1838
Born: April 21
Died: 1914
Died: December 24
Author
Autobiographer
Botanist
Conservationist
Ecologist
Engineer
Essayist
Explorer
Geologist
Glaciologist
Inventor
Mountaineer
Naturalist
J. Muir
Saws
Summit
Called
Purple
Lying
Ice
Burnished
Light
Thick
Dreamily
Desert
Mono
Heavy
Beheld
Silent
Granite
Sun
Glare

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Hiking. I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains...the se mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.
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To ask me whether I could endure to live without friends is absurd. It is easy enough to live out of material sight of friends, but to live without human love is impossible.
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Rivers flow not past, but through us tingling, vibrating, exciting every cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.
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Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts . . .
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The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things in move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars.
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I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.
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What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
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In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.
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Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
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God never made an ugly landscape. All that sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.
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Every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality.
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So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees.
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Man and other civilized animals are the only creatures that ever become dirty.
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The substance of the winds is too thin for human eyes, their written language is too difficult for human minds, and their spoken language mostly too faint for the ears.
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In the eternal youth of Nature, you may renew your own.
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The United States government has always been proud of the welcome it has extended to good men of every nation, seeking freedom and homes and bread.
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We all flow from one fountain.
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Come to the woods, for here is rest.
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Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
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Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally.
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