My First Summer in the Sierra

This volume in the "John Muir Library Series" is the most popular of Muir's works: the naturalist's account of his first visit to the High Sierra and the Yosemite. There he recognized his life's calling: to preserve wilderness areas. Muir's extraordinary memoir vividly communicates the excitement and reverence he felt at discovering the spectacular natural world of the Sierra. Based on his journal entries for 1869, the text has an immediacy and spontaneity that bring alive the voice and emotions of the young Muir and the humor of his rough-and-tumble adventures as a California shepherd. The book brims with the budding naturalist's detailed observations of the region's flora and fauna as well as his memorable encounters with local characters and the region's Indians.This joyous book is Muir's celebration of the landscape that he came to love passionately - "my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion, when I crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. ""My First Summer in the Sierra" traces the emergence of his conservationist urge as he contrasts the Indians, "who walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds or the squirrels," with the white settlers - blasting roads, building intrusive structures, and altering the landscape. Muir shares his growing determination to preserve this "divine, enduring, unwastable wealth" for future generations.