John Muir: Travels in Alaska

John Muir is a Man. I want to be him.

To know why, read The Writings of John Muir. You'll want to be him too. He's the Brahms of glaciers, if you know what I mean.

For the sake of drama I though about ending right there. But since that was largely impenetrable for anybody with a brain outside of my skull, I should elaborate.

John Muir [how the pus do you say "Muir"? Moo-EER? Myur? MOO-er? Mweer?] is a late-19th century explorer, often described as the country's first conservationist and the founder of the Sierra Club. Writings is a collection of his--what else?--writings detailing his explorations in various places, mostly California and Alaska. In other words there is no plot. But plot is the last thing this book needs. Plots pull you forward through a book. This book is best appreciated slowly and repeatedly, with relish, like Gorgonzola. And like Brahms, I might add. Each page contains fantastically vivid descriptions of his cherished wilderness without the cloud of literary cynicism and post-modern understatement that has obsoleted this kind of book [yes, obsoleted is a word. Everything is a word in the OED.].

I just opened the book to a random paragraph to give you an idea. He is hiking up a glacier for kicks:

"I greatly enjoyed my walk up this majetic ice-river, charmed by the pale-blue,
ineffably fine light in the crevasses, molins, and wells, and the innumerable
azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the network of surface streams, large
and small, gliding, swirling with wonderful grace of motion in their
frictionless channels, calling forth devout admiration at almost every step and
filling the mind with a sense of Nature's endless beauty and power."

If that made you nauseaus, don't even think about thinking about reading this book, or the rest of this post either. But if that made you long for a solitary walk up an ancient isolated Alaskan glacier, and for times when profuse romantic language used only for the sake of glorifying beauty was not scoffed, then read this book. Slowly and repeatedly [just like you'll have to read that last sentence in order to extract any meaning from it].

Mendelssohn might be considered a better analog for John Muir; they both incessantly gloried in pretty things and created works that were neat and pleasant but rather light philisophically. But John Muir is Brahms. Here's the reason: John Muir is Man, just like Brahms is Man. Both epitomise what the Romantic era was all about [beauty!] while maintaining a totally modern manliness that was unparalleled in their generation. Listen to the last movement of Brahms' Piano Quintet in f Minor then read Muir's chapter on traversing the Taylor Bay Glacier. Then do it the opposite order. Despite Muir's blissful I'm-at-peace-with-Creation front, he's the bravest and craziest and most insanely passionate man Testosterone has ever created. Except maybe Brahms. In that movement Brahms loses grip and goes absolutely nutty. But it is profound, glorious nutty and it's some of the best music ever written. When John Muir goes completely nutty he does it without volume, but with just as much machismo. Read it and find out what I mean.

But I'd still love Brahms without the Quintet. And most of what makes John Muir great is his innocent, uncynical, enlightened romance with pure wilderness. This is pure Scripture for anybody who has felt the urge to seek true wilderness. And you find it better in this book than you can within a half-day's drive of your house.

Brevitously [ok, not in the OED]: read it. You need it.