JOHN MUIR'S LAST JOURNEY: SOUTH TO THE AMAZON AND EAST TO AFRICA

Feather River Inn

My presentation will discuss the importance of Muir's late travel journals and letters. Overlooked and unpublished, Muir's late writings document the fulfillment of his lifelong dream to visit the tropical rainforests of the Amazon, the Araucaria forests of the Andes, and the baobab forests of central Africa. Muir made the 40,000-mile journey--which constituted what he later called "the most fruitful year of my life"--in 1911-12, alone, at age 73. In these remarkable journals and letters we see a man whose intrepid enthusiasm for the wilderness remains unabated, but whose love for his family has become the anchor of his old age. The materials I will discuss are particularly valuable for three reasons: they offer an unprecedented study of Muir's relationship to his family in his later years; they demonstrate clearly that Muir's environmental concerns were global; they complete the story, begun in Muir's early journals, of his ambition to visit the forests of South America and Africa. The materials I will discuss will be published in my edited book John Muir's Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa, scheduled for release in late spring, 2001, by Island Press/Shearwater Books.