John Muir's Birthplace

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Content updated Mon, 19 Jul 1999 22:47:45 GMT

An Infinite Storm of Beauty... [home]

The Turning Point

Explorer and Mountaineer

Father and Farmer

The Journeys of John Muir

For over forty years, from 1870 to 1914, Muir explored, studied, and campaigned for the conservation of, the American wilderness and its wildlife.

Muir made solo ascents of many hitherto unclimbed mountains above 13,000 feet. These included the first ascents of Cathedral Peak, Mount Ritter and Mount Whitney more than twenty years prior to mountaineering becoming a sport on either side of the Atlantic. He climbed alone, and without ropes, crampons or specialist clothing. In Muir's pioneering days these modern aids were simply not available. Today, American rock climbers regard Muir as the pioneer of clean climbing, forsaking ropes and assorted ironmongery.

On his epic journeys in the High Sierras and Alaska, Muir discovered and mapped unknown glaciers, and collected plants previously unknown to science. Hew was the first to map the distribution of the giant redwoods, and carried out the first botanical and biological studies of the High Sierra. Muir continued to learn for the 'great book of nature', and his original work attracted the praise of the leading scientists of the day: Asa Gray of Harvard and Sir Joseph Hooker of Kew. In later life Muir was showered with honours by the greatest universities in America.

The great and the good beat a path to John Muir's door. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England philosopher and arguably the most famous living American of his day, travelled 3,000 miles to Muir's wooden shack in Yosemite, and judged Muir to have the most original mind and powerful intellect of anyone he had met, they became life-long friends.

An Infinite Storm of Beauty will include historic photographs of Muir and contemporaries from the John Muir Archives at the University of the Pacific, in Stockton, California. THe wild places loved by Muir will be depicted by the paintings of William Keith, which Muir used as visual references when lecturing, and in the classic landscape photographs of Ansel Adams, Galen Rowell, and others.