John Muir’s Sierra Journal

This paper will examine John Muir’s observations as described in the classic work of environmental literature My First Summer in the Sierra. Muir’s ideas as to how each part of nature is “hitched together” and man’s connection with it will be explored as this theme is laid out in My First Summer in the Sierra. This paper also takes an in depth look at Muir’s relationship to the transcendental movement as it can be seen in Muir’s writing done while travelling throughout the Sierras. Firstly, it examines how in the American experience, Transcendentalism existed in between Puritanism and Pragmatism in American history and how Muir was heavily indebted to New England Transcendentalist writers. Second, the paper shows how Muir’s life and work clearly demonstrates that both he and Thoreau entrusted themselves to nature more than Emerson. Most objections to viewing Muir in a clear lineage with Emerson are based on the fact that Emerson was more focused on himself, not nature, and that not only was he lacking in physical contact with the wilderness, but his view of it was too cerebral. Finally, this paper attempts to show that most of the Transcendentalist romantic writers when in nature never really saw it, and how it was Muir fully lived in his nature’s gospel.