John Muir Quotes
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The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.
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The redwood is the glory of the Coast Range. It extends along the western slope, in a nearly continuous belt about ten miles wide, from beyond the Oregon boundary to the south of Santa Cruz, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, and in massive, sustained grandeur and closeness of growth surpasses all the other timber woods of the world.
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Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.
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Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.
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So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees,... .
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I did find Calypso hotdog - but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy.
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Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
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Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!
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How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.
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Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature's forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.
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Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.
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Cloudy all day. Showery on mtns. to eastward at noon. Fine thunderstorm evening, with grand display of zigzag intensely vivid & very near with keen cracks and grand trailing rain … Visited Elk ranch. About sixty old & young. Old bulls carry horns in noble style & grand airs.
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Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
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The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.
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The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar … the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. … No particle is ever wasted or worn out but eternally flowing from use to use.
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The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain-dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.
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Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.
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Sit down in climbing, and hear the pines sing.
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Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.
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Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.
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No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done.
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Many lawless mysteries vanish, and harmonies take their places.
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This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest … in our magnificent National Parks … Nature's sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.
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The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.