Essential Muir (Revised): A Selection of John Muir’s Best (and Worst) Writings

A new edition of Muir’s writings that places his environmentalist ideals alongside his damaging prejudices

Essayist. Preservationist. Mountain man. Inventor. John Muir may be California’s best-known icon. A literary naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, Muir left his legacy on the landscape and on paper. But the celebrity of John Muir does not tell the whole story. In Essential Muir, for the first time, Muir's selected writings include those that show his ecological vision without ignoring his racism, providing a more complete portrait of the man. Taking the best of John Muir’s writings on nature and placing them alongside his musings on religion, society, and his fellow humans, Essential Muir asks the reader to consider how these connect, and what that means for Muir’s legacy in environmentalism today.

Fred D. White’s selections from Muir’s writings, and his illuminating commentary in his revised introduction, reveal the complex man and writer behind the iconic name. In the new foreword, Jolie Varela (Tule River Yokut and Paiute) of Indigenous Women Hike speaks back to Muir, addressing the impact of his words and actions on California Indians. This collection, which highlights John Muir’s charms and confronts his flaws, is vital for understanding the history of environmental thought.

Foreword by Jolie Varela

I started up the Rock Creek trail enjoying the sun and anticipating the seven-mile hike ahead. Just a few feet up I saw a family scrambling for a photo in front of the John Muir Wilderness sign. They watched me approach and I already knew they would ask me to take their family photo in front of the sign. A sign that I feel erases my people’s history in the so-called Sierra Nevada. To understand the history we have to go back, and I mean way back. Before John Muir, and before the mountains were renamed the Sierra Nevada by Padre Pedro Font, a Spanish colonizer.

I am Nüümü, better known by our government name as Paiute. My people have lived among the mountains for thousands and thousands of years. Before the mountains were called Sierra Nevada by colonizers they were called Pamidu Toiyabe by my ancestors. Meaning the West mountains. From the Valley we call home the mountains sit to the west of us. Payahuunadü would be known as the Owens Valley, after Richard Owens, who actually never stepped foot in the Valley. Payahuunadü, the place of flowing water is home to our creation. People come from all over the world to recreate on our homelands. My relatives were born in places like the Buttermilk area and the Owens River Gorge which are now more commonly recognized as climbing destinations. No matter what colonizer names have tried to replace and erase our histories these places are our homelands. These new colonial names can’t sever ancient connections.

My people along with neighboring tribes would travel the Pamidu Toiyabe for trade and ceremony. Each tribe would have a name for the trails or mountains in their own languages. What is more commonly known as the John Muir Trail today is sprinkled with artifacts from this time. You can find arrowheads and chipped obsidian all along the trail. I’ve seen grinding stones and abalone as well. In an act of reclamation and responsibility to tell the true story of the trail we call the trail the Nuumü Poyo which means the people’s trail. John Muir followed trails that were already there. Even though we know this truth, as people Indigenous to these lands, it is a truth that many John Muir enthusiasts would vehemently deny. John Muir’s legacy as “Father of National Parks'' erases the stewardship and connection that Indigenous people, my people, have had on the land for millennia. I would also dare to say that because of John Muir’s views of Native peoples as “dirty”, “lazy”, and having no place in the pristine wilderness that he is in part responsible for the removal and genocide of the Indigenous people throughout the so-called Sierra Nevada. The stories that I’ve heard about John Muir are a lot different than the stories that most people have read in books. They’re passed down by word of mouth and not written down anywhere. Which many people would argue doesn’t make for a credible story but English is not my people’s first language. We passed down our knowledge and stories through oral tradition. Many people believe that Muir went off into the woods with nothing but a “loaf of bread and a pound of tea”. An elder shared stories she had heard as a child that tell a very different story. Muir relied heavily on the Indigenous people of the Pamidu Toiyabe. Not only did he follow our trails, he traded for our food, and I’m told at times he even stole it.

When I was asked to write the foreword for this book I thought “oh great, another book about Muir.” Aren’t there enough John Muir quotes floating around in the world? John Muir quotes are like the live laugh love of the conservation world. “The mountains are calling,” says nearly every outdoor enthusiast’s Instagram bio. When I was told this would be the best and worst of Muir I was intrigued. Muir is painted as this mystical gray bearded old man roaming the Sierra Nevada with nothing but a loaf of bread and a walking stick and people romanticize the hell out of that image. I’m writing this foreword because it allows me to tell the true history of the trail, my people’s history, which existed long before Muir.

Muir was racist. It’s all right there in his own writing. A common argument is that Muir was a product of his time. During that time there were also a lot of people that understood that racism was bad.

I started Indigenous Women Hike in 2017 as an act of reclamation, not only reclaiming land and names but also sacred spaces inside of ourselves. Connecting to our lands has been an incredibly healing experience for myself and other women involved. In 2018, we traveled the Nuumü Poyo without permits, because we don’t need permission to travel lands we have and will always be a part of. While we are reminded constantly by wilderness signs that our lands are colonized and Indigenous names changed we know the truth and we hold the history in our DNA.

I got closer to the sign and who I assumed was the grandfather asked me to take his family's photo just as I had expected. As I was taking their photo I told them I was going to take their picture but I was also going to give them a short history lesson. I told them that John Muir actually followed trails that were already there. These are trade routes that have been used by Indigenous people for thousands of years. These trails were made by my Nuumü ancestors, more commonly known as the Paiutes, as well as other tribes in these mountains who still exist today. John Muir also didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about my ancestors. I handed back the phone and the man told me that he had been coming to the Sierra for thirty years and had no idea, but that it made so much sense. They thanked me for the history lesson and I set off on the trail to enjoy my hike on my homelands.