Event Title
Meeting Muir's Mountains
Location
Feather River Inn
Start Date
4-5-2001 7:30 AM
End Date
6-5-2001 12:30 PM
Description
"The most extravagant description I might give of this view to any one who has not seen similar landscapes with his own eyes would not so much as hint its grandeur and the spiritual glow that covered it" --John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (115)
John Muir, like many authors of American environmental literature, demonstrates a self-conscious awareness that his words fall short of the landscapes they are meant to describe. For Muir, the native flora and fauna, the geology, topography, weather and natural history of each particular landscape he writes about, become his characters and direct his studies. One of the best ways to understand Muir is to study his works in relation to the particular places they are written about. In his own work, Muir repeatedly calls for readers to come to Yosemite and "read its lessons" (259). Muir invites his readers to get to know his circle of non-human family and friends directly, noting, for example, that the Sierra Lily is "A lovely flower, worth going hungry and footsore endless miles to see" (103). As he looks forward to his first summer in the Sierra, he invites us in, and enthusiastically states, "Glorious days I'll have sketching, pressing plants, studying the wonderful topography and the wild animals, our happy fellow mortals and neighbors" (122). Muir invites us to make these fellow wild creatures our neighbors as well, and to learn from them directly by encouraging us to have our own experiences in the field. In this paper I will examine Muir's approach to his nonhuman neighbors by discussing how we, as teachers of Muir's work, can effectively incorporate experiential field studies into our curricula.
Note: Quotations in this abstract are from Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra (Houghton Mifflin ed.)
Meeting Muir's Mountains
Feather River Inn
"The most extravagant description I might give of this view to any one who has not seen similar landscapes with his own eyes would not so much as hint its grandeur and the spiritual glow that covered it" --John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (115)
John Muir, like many authors of American environmental literature, demonstrates a self-conscious awareness that his words fall short of the landscapes they are meant to describe. For Muir, the native flora and fauna, the geology, topography, weather and natural history of each particular landscape he writes about, become his characters and direct his studies. One of the best ways to understand Muir is to study his works in relation to the particular places they are written about. In his own work, Muir repeatedly calls for readers to come to Yosemite and "read its lessons" (259). Muir invites his readers to get to know his circle of non-human family and friends directly, noting, for example, that the Sierra Lily is "A lovely flower, worth going hungry and footsore endless miles to see" (103). As he looks forward to his first summer in the Sierra, he invites us in, and enthusiastically states, "Glorious days I'll have sketching, pressing plants, studying the wonderful topography and the wild animals, our happy fellow mortals and neighbors" (122). Muir invites us to make these fellow wild creatures our neighbors as well, and to learn from them directly by encouraging us to have our own experiences in the field. In this paper I will examine Muir's approach to his nonhuman neighbors by discussing how we, as teachers of Muir's work, can effectively incorporate experiential field studies into our curricula.
Note: Quotations in this abstract are from Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra (Houghton Mifflin ed.)
