Take a moment and look at the man in this photo.
What do you see?
He is clearly of another time. He is older. He is sitting somewhere outside, presumably far from any city.
This is John Muir—a man who took a stand in his life for wilderness and wild things. His work is alive and well today over 96 years after his death.
You probably already know something about this famous Californian and we’ll be talking about him more in this space.
For now, please take a few moments to read these words from John Muir, naturalist, author, and wilderness advocate:
“Looking eastward from the summit of the Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow compositae. And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flowerbed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and radiant, it seemed not clothed in light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple; all these colors, from the blue sky to the yellow valley smoothly blending as they do in a rainbow, making a wall of light ineffably fine. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spay of countless waterfalls, is still seems above all others the Range of Light.”
California is an amazing and beautiful place—that was true in the 19th century, and it is true now.
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Tags: California, central valley, Conservation, green, John Muir, Pacheco Pass, San Diego, Sierra Nevada