John Muir's Birthplace

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Content updated Mon, 19 Jul 1999 23:18:37 GMT

An Infinite Storm of Beauty... [home]

Self-Taught from the Great Book of Nature

The Turning Point

Explorer and Mountaineer

John Muir's Life takes a new Direction

"Now I had arisen from the grave!"

John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913)

As a pacifist, Muir spent time in Canada avoiding the American Civil War, by the mid-1860s Muir's inventive genius wa shard at work managing an Indianapolis carriage works. He designed and installed semi-automatic saws, lathes and assembly lines, and carried out one of the first scientific time and motion studies. It is possible that John Muir might have gone on to become an industrial magnate, like his fellow Scot Andrew Carnegie, but a terrible accident changed the direction of his life forever. While maintaining an engine drive-belt Muir was involved in an accident that punctured his right eye. Within seconds he was blind in that eye. Within a few hours his other eye failed as a result of the shock.

Devoutly religious, Muir believed he was being punished for abandoning his love of nature and the great outdoors in favour of industry and the factory. His doctor's prognosis was permanent blindness in the right eye and impaired vision in the left. Muir took a second opinion, and after two weeks lying in a darkened room with his eyes tightly bandaged sight returned in both eyes. Immersed in scripture since childhood, Muir regarded his recovery as resurrection, He had been returned to the world of light, of birds and flowers from the darkness of the pit. Muir vowed that his future life would be spent in the mountains, woods and gardens of God's creation, and he turned his back forever on industry and machines.

After returning home to see his family, Muir set off on what was to become a thousand mile trek to the Gulf. He had taken the first steps on the road to becoming the pioneer of conservation in the United States.