JOHN MUIR, CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM, AND THE SPIRITUAL

VALUE OF NATURE, 1866 TO 1873

by

DENNIS C. WILLIAMS, A.B.

A THESIS

IN

HISTORY

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

Accepted

May. 1989

>.; ©

13 if?"}

Copyright 1989 Dennis Williams

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work would not have been possible without a

great deal of help from a group of very talented and

willing individuals. My thanks first goes to the three

scholars who agreed to read and comment on this work at

various stages of its production. Dr. Dan Flores, my

committee chairman, brought not only his editorial

insights and knowledge of environmental history to this

work but also his enthusiastic encouragement. Dr. John

Howe, who willingly served as a second reader though

handicapped by trans-oceanic communications as he

pursued research in Rome, supplied excellent methodolog­

ical analysis and broad insight to the entire work. Dr.

Ronald Rainger purveyed his understanding of nineteenth

century science and talented editing skills to round out

an unequaled editorial team.

Of course, no historian can work without sources

and to this end Texas Tech's Southwest Collection,

especially Cindy Martin, played a substantial role. Ms.

Martin and the Collection provided me with full access

to John Muir's manuscript collection by purchasing the

microfilm edition. Without their willingness to render

aid in these difficult economic times, I could not have

begun this project.

I would like to thank the staffs of the Univer­

sity's Graduate School and the Advanced Technology

ii

Learning Center, and Joan Weldon for their formatting

and printing advice and assistance. A number of others,

both colleagues and friends, have been helpful in

proofing my ideas and the text. I owe much to my

family, always a source of encouragement, and I am

especially greatful to my beautiful and talented wife

Joyce. Without her God-given patience and encouragement

I could not have run the race.

Ill

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i i

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER

I. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY 3

II. CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM 20

III. A THOUSAND-MILE WALK TO MYSTICISM 39

IV. WILDERNESS VALUES 69

V. CONCLUSION 98

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 108

IV

INTRODUCTION

John Muir, born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838 and

raised from age ten on the Wisconsin frontier, was one

of the most influential American nature writers and

philosophers. During the early years of the Civil War,

Muir was educated at the University of Wisconsin.

Though he earned no degree, Muir's education, both

formal and self-taught, provided him with the scientific

skills necessary to fulfill his chosen destiny.

Following in the steps of Alexander von Humbolt, his

hero, Muir set off for the Amazon in 1867 after an

accident in a wagon-wheel factory in Indianapolis

discouraged him from a career as an inventor. He ended

up in California's Yosemite valley instead.

Muir is remembered for his career as an author and

naturalist in California's Sierra Nevadas and for his

founding role in the Sierra Club, perhaps the most

influential modern American environmental organization.

He studied the geology, geography, and the flora and

fauna of the region while working as a shepherd, sawmill

operator, and tour-guide. Muir achieved notoriety

within the scientific world through his glacial studies

in the Sierras. He was the first to postulate that the

topography of the region was formed by glacial action as

opposed to the catastrophist interpretation of Califor­

nia's official geologist, Josiah Whitney. After much

research, which included mapping glacial routes and

discovering living glaciers in the high Sierras, Muir's

theory was accepted by the leading scientists of his

day. He later studied glaciers in Alaska's Glacier Bay,

where one of the glaciers bears his name. He also

authored a number of books and articles on the Sierra

Nevadas and the natural history of the American West.

Beyond these achievements, Muir is known for his

influence in developing an environmental preservationist

philosophy. He was instrumental in gaining National

Park status for Yosemite and surrounding mountains and

valleys. In 1892, he became a founding member of the

Sierra Club and helped create the club's reputation for

effective environmental lobbying. He and his friends,

notably publisher Robert Underwood Johnson, enlisted the

support of the nation as a whole to save the Hetch

Hetchy valley from being dammed by the city of San

Francisco. While San Francisco won the battle for Hetch

Hetchy, Muir and his allies educated the United States

public in the need to preserve wilderness from the

ravages of industrialization. The foundation of Muir's

preservationist philosophy, important for an understand­

ing of Gilded Age/Progressive Era conservation and the

later development of environmental philosophy, is the

topic of this study.

CHAPTER I

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

In the July/August 1986 edition of Sierra, the

principal publication of one of America's most success­

ful conservation organizations, Arthur W. Ewart argued

that the driving force behind John Muir's leadership in

developing a preservationist ethic and popularizing

conservation during the Gilded Age/Progressive Era was

his spirituality, which, according to Ewart, was in the

Transcendentalist tradition.•'• Ewart joins most recent

scholars, with the notable exceptions of Ronald Limbaugh

and Richard Cartwright Austin in assuming that Muir

rebelled against the monotheism of Christianity and

adopted something different when he left his family's

Wisconsin farm for a ramble to the Gulf of Mexico, and

for the rest of his life worshipped nature or the multi­

tude of spirits found in it. Although the present

historical consensus defines Muir as a pantheist, Muir's

writings up to 1873, formative years for his philosophy,

suggest that he adhered to the Christian monotheism upon

which the culture in which he lived was based and

personally subscribed to a form of mysticism based upon

Christian philosophy and ethics.

- Arthur W. Ewart, "Spiritual Sauntering," Sierra 71 (July/August 1986): 48-52. Notes will generally follow AHA style.

Linnie Marsh Wolfe initiated the trend of casting

Muir as a non-Christian mystic in the first compre­

hensive biography of Muir. In spite of her claim that

she emphasized Muir's pragmatism over his mysticism, she

portrayed John Muir, as many others have, in a prophet­

ic, even messianic role. Muir's destiny was to "lead

men back to a realization of their origins as children

of nature." The mature Muir led a crusade "to release

men from their shells and prisons in towns and houses,

prisons of religion, politics, and commerce." She went

on to say: "The Divine Logos was with him from the

beginning." It appears that Muir, reminiscent of Jesus

Christ, came to direct men to "healing for body and

spirit" and into "intimate communion with the Great

Mother."2

She implied that Muir rebelled against religion

early in life, pointing out that he hated the cruelty

men inflicted on animals and other people. Muir

seriously questioned, she said, "a religion so devoid of

love." She attempted to prove that Muir renounced the

Christian God of his youth by quoting a passage from his

Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf journal, written in 1867

when he was twenty-nine. Wolfe wrote:

Never before had he expressed so fully his emancipation from orthodox forms of belief:

Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1945), ix.

'The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men . . . have precise dogmatic insight of the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols. He is . . . as purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half-penny theater.'"

From this passage, or at least Wolfe's rendering of it,

Muir appears to be quite anti-orthodox.

According to Wolfe, Muir believed God was ensouled

as a "Principle" in all forms of matter. She notes that

Muir saw Alaskan Indian animism coming "nearer to the

truth of an immanent living Principle in all matter,

than did the tutored, civilized exponents of Chris­

tianity." Wolfe draws this interpretation from notes

like the one Muir wrote on March 15, 1873, in Yosemite.

Muir's discussion on that day concerned man's classifi­

cation of matter. He wrote:

What is 'higher,' what is 'lower' in Nature? We speak of higher forms, higher types, etc., in the fields of scientific inquiry. Now all of the individual 'things' or 'beings' into which the world is wrought are sparks of the Divine Soul variously clothed upon with flesh, leaves, or that harder tissue called rock, water, etc.

Now we observe that, in cold mountain altitudes. Spirit is but thinly and plainly clothed. As we descend down their many sides to the valley, the clothing of all plants and beasts and of the forms of rock becomes more abundant and complicated. When a portion of Spirit clothes itself with a sheet of lichen tissue, colored simply red or yellow, or gray or black, we say that is a low form of life.

" Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 38, 115.

Yet is it more or less radically Divine than another portion of Spirit that has gathered garments of leaf and fairy flower and adorned them with all the colors of Light, though we say that the latter creature is of a higher form of life? All of these varied forms, high and low, are simply portions of God radiated from Him as a sun, and made terrestrial by the clothes they wear, and by the modifications of a corresponding kind in the God essence itself.

Wolfe interprets the first paragraph of this note as a

definitive statement of Muir's concept of God. Muir

postulated, according to Wolfe, an "innate, unifying God

Principle," which acts to deify all matter. By inter­

preting Muir's use of the term "Divine Soul" to mean

"God Principle," Wolfe implies that Muir believed God to

be impersonal on one hand, while on the other, matter

was infused with personality due to its deification.^

Nineteen sixty-seven was a momentous year for

environmental philosophy. Roderick Nash published his

esteemed survey of wilderness ideology. Wilderness and

the American Mind, which included linking the fear of

wilderness with a perception of wilderness allegedly

rooted in the Old Testament—a locus horribilus to be

feared. Nash, echoing Wolfe's 1945 conclusions,

connected Muir with the Transcendentalism of Emerson and

Thoreau saying: "For John Muir Transcendentalism was

" Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, 103, 209. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, ed., John of the Mountains; The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938; reprint, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 137-138.

7

always the essential philosophy for interpreting the

value of wilderness." He also alluded to the panthe­

istic interpretation of future biographers, who were

working as Nash wrote the first edition of Wilderness

and the American Mind. He contrasted the new vision of

wilderness as espoused by Edward Abbey and others with

Muir's by describing the new conception as amoral, while

Muir conceived of wilderness as value laden. Nash de­

scribed the old argument for wilderness preservation,

which advocated that the moral value of wilderness was

greater than its economic value, as being characterized

by the "simple, if sincere pantheism of a John Muir."^

Also in 1967, Lynn White, Jr., published what would

become a widely republished and hotly debated article,

"The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis."

White contended that the present environmental crisis

was "a product of an emerging, entirely novel, demo­

cratic culture." This culture, founded on a biblically

based assumption advocating man's transcendence of and

mastery over nature, had brought the hitherto separate

fields of science and technology together. The marriage

of science and technology gave man the power and the

^Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 125, 270.

8

know-how to desecrate the natural world in the name of

God and progress.°

During the 1960s and early 1970s many young

environmentalists, along with most of the counter­

culture, saw Christianity as a cold, sterile religion

coopted by powerful, greedy capitalists in order to

sedate the poor upon whom the capitalist fed. Armed

with the arguments of Nash and White, environmentalists

began to search for a biocentric rather than anthropo-

centric philosophy that would place man and nature on a

more equal footing. Environmental poets such as Gary

Snyder sang the praises of Nature, and writers such as

Jack Kerouac and Fritjof Capra described their experi­

ences with westernized eastern religions. Young

environmentalists accepted these new ideologies but

began to search for something in the American tradition

that could legitimize their developing environmental

philosophies. For many their search ended with their

discovery of John Muir.

Muir biographers Stephen Fox, Bill Devall, and

Michael Cohen, who developed their environmental

philosophy during the 1960s, a decade of spiritual

^Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis," Science, 155 (10 March 1967): 1203-1207, reprinted in Western Man and Environmental Ethics; Attitudes Toward Nature and Technology, ed. Ian G. Barbour (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1973), 21-30.

wandering, and wrote in the 1980s, a decade of

materialistic greed, found Muir's unorthodox ideas

similar to those of the Oriental philosophies they

discovered in the 1960s. They also tended to reason

from the present to the past by anachronistically

inserting Eastern ideas into the philosophy John Muir

built during his wanderings in the 1860s. Their

biographies of Muir, like most literature, seem to

reflect their spiritual attitudes as much as Muir's.

Stephen Fox in John Muir and His Legacy (1981) saw

Muir's religious ideology as the pattern which future

environmentalists would follow. According to Fox, Muir

was a pantheist, like many conservationists today. "God

was not a person to Muir, especially not an anthropoid

person with narrow interest in human welfare." Again,

"In referring to the divine force, he typically called

it Beauty or Nature or (compromising) Nature-God rather

than God or the Lord," Fox asserted contending that

Muir's "faith resided in the vast impersonal power of

natural order and harmony rather than in a particular

deity preoccupied with human intentions."'

Fox also enlightened the reader with information on

what "orthodox" Christians believed as opposed to the

beliefs of Muir. He wrote: "The world did not spin at

7 'Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The

American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981), ix, 79-80.

10

man's whim—despite the teachings of orthodox

Christians. Creation belonged not to a manlike Chris­

tian God, but to the impartial force of Nature.

Christianity rested on a self-serving, man-made arti­

fice." Fox echoed Lynn White's decade-old, now almost

classic assertion that Western orthodox Christianity

made man lord of nature and credited God with enthroning

him. Fox asserted that Christianity has had little

positive impact on the struggle to develop a viable

conservation ethic. He stated as evidence that no

Christian minister has, as yet, been a strong influence

on the American conservation movement, and that

ecological thought developed during the 1960s while

"inseparably" associated with "incense, marijuana, and

the I Ching." If Fox was right, it is easy to see why

environmental philosophers emerging from this era have

tended to see only those aspects of Muir's world view

which mesh with Asian philosophies. Yet the evidence

for a real connection between Taoism, Zen Buddhism, or

o

other oriental ideologies and Muir appears weak.°

To find such a connection is the purpose of Bill

Devall, who claimed, in his article "John Muir as Deep

Ecologist," that a combination of Taoism and Zen

Buddhism informed Muir's environmental philosophy.

According to Devall, Muir's phrase, "Every day is

^Fox, Muir and His Legacy, 53, 371, 322.

11

another glorious Sierra day" echoes the Taoist reality:

"the extraordinary in the ordinary." Devall asserted

that by entering the Sierras Muir was being actualized

by the mountains. He wrote.

The space between any two pine trees indeed opens to the Tao. Muir's walking in the mountains is best understood as the western equivalent of Zen masters or Taoist sages who were becoming in the mountains, who knew that the mountains walking was their own walking.^

According to Devall, Muir broke his ties with the

values of western culture and the epistemology of

science to seek after "other gods" and found in the

Sierra "the gods of the mountains and rivers without

end, the Tao in ten thousand Taos, the Tao without name,

the mystical ecology of person-extending-in-

environment."

If Devall was right, Muir was guilty of what Fox

said other conservationists were: "They . . . called

themselves Christians. But their ideas came from

elsewhere." Muir, for the good of his readers, lied

about or at least misrepresented his real reasons for

appreciating nature. According to Devall,

Muir used Christian symbols and rhetoric brilliantly to clothe his pantheistic concep­tion of nature. This Christian rhetoric helped Americans attach to natural objects the same religious feeling that Christians

^Bill Devall, "John Muir as Deep Ecologist," Environmental Review 6 (Spring 1982): 63-86, 68, 69.

10 Devall, "John Muir as Deep Ecologist," 78.

12

reserved for the transcendental. Muir thus cleverly provided a bridge between other­worldly Christianity through Transcendentalism to pantheism—the 'hidden religion' of America.

If the implications of Devall's arguments are too strong

for the revered saint of American environmentalism,

Devall provided Muir an escape. He noted that Muir was

oppressed, of course, by the intellectual baggage of the late nineteenth century, by the Christian religion, the scientism of the universities, the industrial capitalism and the pride-filled individualism that dominated (and still dominates) American society. -

If the parallels Devall used to prove Muir was a

pantheist of an Asian stripe, such as comparing Muir's

practice of using the imagery of flowing and spiralling

with similar Taoist metaphors of harmony, cycles, and

flowing, were not convincing enough, he quoted Muir as

saying:

'The pines spiraling around me higher, higher to the star-flowered sky, are plainly full of God. God in them. They are God . . .oh. The infinite abundance and universiality [sic] of Beauty. Beauty is God. What shall we say of God, that we cannot say of Beauty.'

When Devall quoted, or actually misquoted, Muir saying

that the pines are God, he left little doubt that Muir

must be a pantheist.-^

Fox, John Muir and his Legacy, 368. Devall, "John Muir as Deep Ecologist," 75, 78.

- Devall, "John Muir as Deep Ecologist," 67, 66.

13

In the first monograph totally devoted to Muir's

spirituality. The Pathless Way (1984), Michael Cohen

recognized the religious contradictions in Muir's

writing and wrestles with his Biblical allusions, but

still accepted the modern consensus view that Muir was a

pantheist. Cohen believed that Muir rejected Chris­

tianity, but resorted to a softened form of Devall's

argument that Muir used Biblical terminology to enable

Christians to understand his pantheism. Cohen wrote:

Muir found it necessary to argue in terms that Christian people might understand. His text was Nature, but he could use a Biblical text if it would strengthen his argument . . . It is characteristic that he would turn the gospel marshaled against nature toward an affirmation of her own supremacy.

Cohen found himself plagued by the abundance of Biblical

allusions found in Muir's private journals, not origi­

nally intended for publication. These journals, as

Cohen noted, are important pieces of evidence for

determining Muir's world view since, in them, he was not

trying to hide his true beliefs from the reading

public.•'••^

Cohen, in arguing for an Oriental connection, was

faced with Christians who found God apparent in nature,

such as St. Francis of Assisi and Jonathan Edwards.

Cohen alludes to Francis's biocentric attitude in

• - Michael Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness (Madison: The University of Wiscon­sin Press, 1984), 25, 126.

14

approaching nature with humility, not with airs of

lordship, but passes it off as a little-regarded

Christian heresy. As Cohen acknowledged, Jonathan

Edward's mysticism also brought him to an appreciation

of nature. He did not believe that man was the ultimate

reason for creation, but saw God as a creative being,

who created everything simply because he wanted to

emanate "his own infinite fullness." Edwards "'felt

God's presence, so to speak at the first appearance of a

thunderstorm. ' "•'-

Cohen quickly turned from these problematic

examples of Christian mystics and painted Muir as an

animist who "ascribed consciousness to the rocks

themselves." Cohen noted that George Sessions, a noted

environmental philosopher, "badger[ed]" him to call Muir

"the Taoist of the West," and Cohen agreed that Muir was

an American embodiment of oriental philosophy. He

asserted that Muir's personal view was like that of

Dogen, the 11th century philosopher, and modern environ­

mental poet Gary Snyder: "the mountains and rivers of

the present are the actualization of the word of the

ancient Buddhas." Cohen asserted that Muir saw the Yin

and the Yang in nature. "There is another way to see

the world:" wrote Cohen, "all flow and cycle, all para­

doxical, and yet whole." Muir's mysticism, for Cohen,

" Cohen, Pathless Way, 24, 53-55, 149.

15

was best interpreted through the later writings of

Fritjof Capra, Dogen, Jack Kerouac, D. T. Suzuki, and

Gary Snyder.- ^

Cohen speculated, somewhat ahistorically, on what

Muir might have said had he the resources that modern

spiritual ecologists have. However, since Muir's

spiritual resources were found in Christian texts, he

used what he had to communicate his beliefs. Thus Muir

is seen as unable to escape what Devall called "the

intellectual baggage" of Christianity even though he

allegedly rejected both reasoning from authority and the

avowed authority of Christian scripture. •'•

Ronald Limbaugh, in his revisionist "The Nature of

John Muir's Religion" (1985) attempted to refute the

pantheistic interpretations of Fox and Cohen by casting

Muir in a the mold of a more traditional Christian

humanist. He asserted that "Muir shed his denomina­

tional garments and became a Christian independent."

This explained, in part, Muir's distaste for the extreme

sectarianism of his day. In regard to claims of an

oriental connection, he wrote:

Muir is not a good candidate for posthumous ordination in the brotherhood of Gurus. His distinctive and unadulterated Occidental mentality is reflected in both his published

^^Cohen, Pathless Way, 156, 120, 96, 120.

- Cohen, Pathless Way, 109. Devall, "John Muir as Deep Ecologist," 78.

16

and unpublished writings as well as in the margin notes of the books he read on the orient. He was both critical and highly selective, condoning only those Eastern ideas he found compatible and condemning the rest. Remarking on "Prayer in Tibet" for example, he wrote: ' . . . No thoughts of Gods or mon[a]-ster[ie]s such as fill the Himalaya for the only God all Father so visible precludes the ignorance of mystery in whi[ch] they dwell . . . . 'i'

Limbaugh defines "pantheism" as meaning either

"that God is the sum total of all things, or that all

things are divine in themselves." He could not apply

either definition to Muir whom he saw as a Christian

humanist whose life was dedicated to serving God by

protecting nature and by enlightening society as to the

doctrines of a "purer Christianity," a man for whom

nature was "the material expression of Divine Love."-^^

Richard Cartwright Austin, a Presbyterian minister,

in his Baptized Into Wilderness; A Christian Perspective

on John Muir (1987), offered a unique argument for

seeing John Muir as a Christian. Austin argued "that

Muir found Christ in Yosemite, in the glacier and the

Sequoia." He did not see Muir as a "loyal player on the

'Ronald Limbaugh, "The Nature of John Muir's Religion," The Pacific Historian 29 (1985): 16-29, 19, 23.

-'• Limbaugh, "Nature of John Muir's Religion", 27. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingston, rev. ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1027-28, defines pantheism thus: The belief or theory that God and the Universe are identical. For clarity, I will use this definition of "pantheism" anytime I use the term in this work.

17

team, who identified with the church" because the

churches of his day did not approach the spiritual depth

he had discovered in nature. Austin denied that Muir

possessed a faith in Jesus Christ as saviour but

advocated that Nature "[functioned] as Muir's 'Christ'—

the mediator who led him to God." Austin believed Muir

was a Christian because "John Muir was a prophet of the

Lord." God chose him, used him for Godly purposes, and

spoke through him both to the Gilded and Progressive

ages and to the present age.- ^

Austin noted that while Muir was in Yosemite he

developed a religious perspective that grew out of

regard for the earth. Muir "saw in nature attributes

which Christians see in Christ. . . . " Austin contended

that Muir did not follow in the steps of Eastern mystics

but instead "continued to a truly biblical vision of the

Lord who delights in creating other lives—lives with

distinctiveness, individuality and vitality of their

own."20

Based on his assumption that Muir believed nature

to be an adequate Christ, Austin saw Muir as a radical

prophet advocating the protection of nature for the

inherent spiritual value of its beauty. Austin noted

-"• Richard Cartwright Austin, Baptized Into Wilder­ness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), 3, 85, 17.

20 Austin, Baptized Into Wilderness, 12, 17, 26.

18

that Muir recognized that people were trapped by the

economic and spiritual consequences of alienation from

nature caused by industrialization. This caused people

to fear nature and to seek to conquer it. Austin's

prophet "wished to lead men and women to a natural

environment they might appreciate without fear and then

immerse them in it so they might emerge new

creatures."^^

Austin disputed Fox's idea that the environmental

movement was a direct out-flow of John Muir's environ­

mental philosophy. He noted: "The Sierra Club had

adopted a motto from Henry David Thoreau: 'In wilder­

ness [sic] is the preservation of the world.'" Muir

believed, according to Austin, that wilderness had the

sacramental effect of helping man meet God. Thus,

wilderness was not the preservation of the world but the

"hope of world" because it could serve as the Christ of

the industrial and post-industrial world for ages to

come. It could mediate between mankind and God. He did

not see this as the principle underlying the arguments

for preservation made by environmentalists of the 1970s

and 1980s, but believed that it should become the basis

22 of arguments for environmental preservation.

-'•Austin, Baptized Into Wilderness, 66, 49, 48.

^^Austin, Baptized Into Wilderness, 90.

19

The common denominator found among all the above

mentioned authors is the assertion that Muir was a

religious man. Cohen, Devall, and Fox asserted that

Muir adhered to a mystical oriental philosophy. Wolfe

contended that Muir's philosophy contained animistic

elements. Limbaugh and Austin believed that he posses­

sed a Christian philosophy though not necessarily a

mystical one. They would agree, however, that Muir's

religious belief system possessed some mystical looking

components. Mysticism may be the key to an inter­

pretation of Muir, but without some clarification, the

term "mysticism" is as meaningless as saying Muir was a

religious man. If John Muir was a mystic, of what

variety was he?

CHAPTER II

CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM

The complexity of the Christian faith, the relative

ignorance of its adherents through history, and the

seeming paradox of the beliefs held by various Christian

theologians complicate the matter of proving or dis­

proving Muir's alleged heterodoxy. The interpretations

ascribed to Muir by scholars like Cohen and Fox are

valuable but, as I will attempt to prove in this study,

inaccurate. Muir's attitude toward nature did seem to

contradict certain attitudes held by many laymen and

clergy in his day. His attitude certainly contradicts

those of the Christians on whom Lynn White, Jr., based

his famous essay. Underlying Muir's rhetoric is a

mystical theology founded on the basic tenets of

Christianity.

As indicted in chapter I, most Muir scholars, for

the sake of argument, adopted rather simplistic and

narrow definitions of Christian philosophy. The result

is that they use terms like "mysticism" and "Christi­

anity" to suit narrow purposes. This has led to sloppy

scholarship and arguments that, like houses built on

sand, collapse when rigorously tested.

The one aspect of Muir's faith on which almost all

scholars agreed is that Muir was a mystic, or at least

that he had mystical experiences. Some scholars pointed

20

21

out his apparently telepathic experiences, such as

feeling that his old friend professor Joseph Butler was

in the Yosemite valley as Muir sat atop Half-dome one

day, or the apparent foreknowledge of his parents'

deaths. Other, more complex, examinations saw the whole

Yosemite experience as one long mystical union with

Nature, Muir's supposed goddess. Even the contention of

Muir's mysticism, on which nearly everyone agreed, grows

complicated when someone raises the question of what

kind of mystic Muir represents. To make such a decis­

ion, a definition of terms is in order.

If Muir is accepted as a mystic, then we must

define mysticism. In brief, a mystic is one who

experiences union or communion with "ultimate reality,"

or one who receives spiritual truth through subjective

experience or intuition. Mysticism, the experience in

which the mystic participates, is found in all the great

religions, and according to Margaret Smith, "is not to

be regarded as a religion in itself, but rather as the

most vital element in all true religions, rising up in

revolt against cold formality and religious torpor."

Thus, to say that John Muir was a mystic or that he

participated in a mystical experience is not enough to

define his faith.^^

• Margaret Smith, An Introduction to Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 3.

22

Was he a Hindu mystic, a Taoist mystic, a Buddhist

mystic, a Nature mystic, or a Christian mystic? The new

environmentalists, accepting the consensus interpre­

tation, implied that Muir was something of a Taoist or

Buddhist mystic, but to prove this a full comparison of

Muir's philosophy with these Eastern philosophies would

be needed, along with an explanation of how any similar­

ities might be explained. Muir's religious background

makes Christian mysticism a more reasonable place to

start. In order to assert that Muir was a Christian

mystic, a basic philosophy of Christian mysticism must

be defined, and Muir must be examined in this light.

First, a distinction must be drawn between the

varieties of mysticism which exist in the world's great

religions. There are, according to the religious

scholar R. C. Zaehner, who long held the chair of

Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University, three

basic types of mysticism. The first is "pan-en-henism"

or nature mysticism. This is a form of mysticism that

anyone might experience, regardless of religious belief.

Those who have this experience tend to describe it in

similar terms. The individual believes that he has

transcended time and space. He identifies himself with,

or encompasses, everything around him and "in his

exalted moments sees himself as being one with nature

and as having passed beyond good and evil. . . . "

23

Nature mystics tend not to mention God unless they are

describing their "expanded selves." Identifying

themselves as God is largely due, according to Zaehner,

to the fact that transcendence of time and space is

usually reserved for God. To the nature mystic "all

creaturely existence is experienced as one and one as

all. . . ."24

William James recorded two such experiences in his

discussion of mysticism. First, James referred to a

passage in Amiel's Journal Intime:

Shall I ever again have any of those prodi­gious reveries which sometimes came to me in former days? One day, in youth, at sunrise, sitting in the ruins of the castle of Fauc-igny; and again in the mountains, under the noonday sun, above Lavey, lying at the foot of a tree and visited by three butterflies; once more at night upon the shingly shore of the Northern ocean, ray back upon the sand and my vision ranging through the milky way;—such grand and spacious, immortal, cosmogonic reveries, when one reaches to the stars, when one owns the infinite! Moments divine, ecstatic hours; in which our thought flies from world to world, pierces the great enigma, breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless as the blue firmament; . . . instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels one's self great as the universe, and calm as a god. . . .

This passage expresses, as best words can, a "pan-en-

henic" mystical experience occurring in a natural

setting where the author was contemplating nature. The

O A

R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism: Sacred and Profane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 100, 109, 133, 168-169.

24

"self" transcends space and time and encompasses all

things, "when one reaches to the stars, when one owns

the infinite! Moments divine, ecstatic hours. . . . "

The "self" seems to grow as "great as the universe" and

is identified with the surrounding elements. The

perception of respiration in, so called, "inert" matter

is another indication of the expansion of the "self."

The relaxed respirations of the individual are projected

into the environment which the self encompasses.2^

In a footnote, James recorded another exemplary

experience which he found in the manuscript collection

of E. D. Starbuck.

In that time the consciousness of God's nearness came to me sometimes. I say God, to describe what is indescribable. A presence, I might say, yet that is too suggestive of personality, and the moments of which I speak did not hold the consciousness of a personal­ity, but something in myself made me feel myself a part of something bigger than I, that was controlling. I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in Nature. I exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all—the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree trunks, and so on. In the years follow­ing, such moments continued to come, but I wanted them constantly. I knew so well the satisfaction of losing self in the perception of supreme power and love, that I was unhappy because that perception was not constant. °

2^William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1961), 310.

2^James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 310

25

In this example, the "mystic" enters into a state

of consciousness in which he feels what seems to him to

be a presence, but not as personal as the term "pres­

ence" connotes. The term "sensation" might be a more

impersonal way to describe what overtook the observer.

He was enraptured by his perception of intimacy with

nature. His "self" expanded to the world around him and

whetted his desire for the further expansion of his

being. He longed to feel the power, the rush, he

experienced when his self became part and parcel with

the natural world.

Muir may have had similar experiences in his

wanderings, but he never identified himself as God or

described himself as all-encompassing. He made it clear

when recording experiences of ecstatic joy that he

remained a finite entity within his environment and God

maintained a separate transcendent status. One such

event occurred in Bonaventure graveyard in Savannah,

Georgia, and it will be discussed in chapter III below.

Another similar event occurred in Yosemite, Muir wrote

Jeanne Carr,

Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mtns. I feel strong to leap yosemite walls at a bound Hotels and human impurity will be far below. I will fuse in spirit skies. I will touch naked God.

One should note that Muir appears to have felt as if he

could transcend space but that he neither experienced a

26

transcendence of time, encompassed the totality of the

natural world, or identified himself with God. He would

"fuse in spirit skies," or become an invisible part of

the spirit realm, but he still experienced a tangible

distinction between himself and transcendent God.27

From the "pan-en-henic" expansion of "self," we

turn to the second variety of mysticism: monism or

isolation of self. The monist seeks to isolate his soul

from everything other than itself. This means that to

experience ultimate reality the soul must be detached

from all matter, not only nature but from the body as

well. This differs from the "pan-en-henic" experience

of reality in that the nature mystic describes himself

as encompassing everything, whereas the monist isolates

himself from all things so that he experiences an

existence devoid of matter and any other spirit than

himself. There is no God or supreme being other than

"self." "Self" alone is ultimate reality when it has

been disrobed of all that distracts it from itself,

including all conscious or analytical thought.

27jM to Jeanne Carr, 28 August 1872, Muir Manu­script Collection, Microform edition, edited by Ronald H. Limbaugh and Kristen E. Lewis (London: Chadwyck-Healey Inc., 1986), Reel 2, Frame 01148, (hereafter cited as MMCM giving reel number first and frame number following colon, e.g., MMCM, 2:01148).

27

Everything apart from the individual soul is illusory,

non-existent, imagined.2^

Monistic mysticism, according to Zaehner, is

represented in the East by Theravada Buddhism and Hindu

principle of moksa. For the Buddhist, ultimate reality

is Nirvana. Existence in Nirvana, the status one

achieves by enlightenment, is explained in Questions of

King Menander;

'Reverend Nagasena,' said the King, 'does the Buddha still exist?'

'Yes, your Majesty, he does.' 'Then is it possible to point out the

Buddha as being here or there?' _'The Lord has passed completely away in

Nirvana, so that nothing is left which could lead to the formation of another being. And so he cannot be pointed out as being here or there.'

'Give me an illustration' •What would your Majesty say—if a great

fire were blazing, would it be possible to point to a flame which had gone out and say that it was here or there?'

'No, your Reverence, the flame is extinguished, it can't be detected.'

'In the same way, your Majesty, the Lord has passed in Nirvana. . . . He can only be pointed out in the body of his doctrine, for it was he who taught it.' _

'Very good. Reverend Nagasena!'^

Moksa, a Hindu term meaning release, is a principle

implying that enlightenment is attained by ridding

oneself of or destroying the phenomenal or material

2°Zaehner, Mysticism, 155.

2^Milindapanha (Trenckner, ed.), 73, quoted in Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 1, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary (1958; reprint. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 111.

28

world, which is really nothing more than a dream. Thus,

a mystical experience for the Buddhist or the Hindu, to

the western observer, is nothing more than detaching the

soul from everything and entering into the blissful

state of being united to nothingness.-^^

William James again provided a good, though

western, example of what appears to be a man on the

verge of a Hindu monist's moksa in the example of J.A.

Symonds. Symonds wrote:

It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progres­sive obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But Self persisted, formidable in its keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then? The apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of the conscious Self, the sense that I had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal Maya or illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again.• •'•

Mr. Symonds' introspective awareness intensified until

nothing else existed except himself. His "ego" did not

^^Zaehner, Mysticism, 155.

• H. F. Brown, J. A. Symonds; A Biography (London, 1895), 29-31 abridged, quoted in James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 303-304.

29

expand to transcend space and time but turned in on

itself so that space and time were obliterated from his

awareness. Had Symonds continued his inward journey he

would have found detachment from even discursive thought

and entered into the monist's ultimate reality, exclu­

sively self-conscious or unconscious existence. Fearing

the ramifications of such a state, Symonds roused

himself to a consciousness of the world around him,

however illusory he might have believed it to be.

Symonds described the ultimate in the pessimistic terms

of total detachment of "self" from all things, like

entering into an eternal void.

As far as Muir is concerned, there is no evidence

that he had any such experience or even knew of the

potential of such an experience during his life in the

Sierras between 1868 and 1873. His cursory study of

Buddhism did not begin until long after he built his

environmental ethic and even then, as is indicated by a

quote found in Ron Limbaugh's article above, he did not

believe monistic Buddhist mysticism had much validity.

The evidence found in his writings portrays Muir as

clearly seeing himself as a theist and, even more than

that, a monotheist in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The theistic mystic, as distinct from the monist,

has something to unite with: God. Theistic mysticism,

a form of mysticism that includes Christian mysticism.

30

is characterized, according to Zaehner, by loss of the

"purely human personality, the 'ego', and absorption of

the uncreate spirit, the 'self, into the essence of

God. . . . " Theistic mysticism assumes several things.

First it assumes that there is a God and concomitantly

that the individual's spirit is somewhat divine or

contains an image of divinity within it. Since some

part of the spirit partakes in divinity, it is capable

of perceiving spiritual reality. Sin, however, keeps

the spirit from uniting with God and thus the mystic,

much like the monists, must escape the impurities that

cause separation. Finally, love for the deity guides

the mystic into attaching himself to the deity. While

these general assumptions are characteristic of all

theistic mysticism, from the Moslem Sufis to Jewish

mystics like Elijah and Leo Baeck, a narrower definition

is needed for Christian mysticism.-^2

The fundamental mystical premise of Christianity

occurs in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: "The

Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We

have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who

came from the Father, full of grace and truth." The

" ''Zaehner, Mysticism, 168-169. Smith, An Introduc­tion to Mysticism, 4ff. R. C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religions Delivered at St. Andrews in 1967-1969 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 156.

31

spirit of God incarnated himself in the person of Jesus

Christ. This is one of the most important concepts of

the Christian's world view. By becoming a man,

sacrificially bearing the sins of man in death, and

conquering the power of sin in creation through his

resurrection, Christ enabled man to enter into communion

with the Godhead. To a Christian mystic, who communes

intimately with God, this is even more important, for

without the atonement and its resulting purification the

mystic's experience would be impossible. ""

R. C. Zaehner correctly emphasized the place of

Love in the life of a Christian mystic. He writes: "In

Christian mysticism love is all important, and it must

be so, since God is defined as Love." The Christian

definition "God is love" is derived from both the

perceived purpose of the incarnation of God in Christ

and the Christian's experience of God indwelling

(incarnating Himself in) man through the Holy Spirit.

Love, symbolizing attachment and commitment of one

personality to another, acts as the driving force behind O A

the actions of a Christian mystic.- ^

Love was the idea behind God incarnating himself in

human form. John quoted Jesus as saying "For God so

loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that

^^John 1.14.

• " Zaehner, Mysticism, 172. I John 4.16.

32

whoever believes in him shall not perish but have

eternal life." He was born into the temporal realm in

order to redeem man, the fallen creature. He sought to

reestablish a state of paradise, that is to reestablish

righteousness on the earth. The implication of man

being made righteous is that his relationship with the

rest of creation will be guided by divine love. When

man acts out of perfect love, he acts with regard to the

divine perspective that all creation exists necessarily

and is valuable because it is God's creation. Man would

know, as a legacy of his rebellion, right from wrong,

but would live righteously in communion with God of his

own free will. So that this could be accomplished, the

God who transcends time and space, for love of his

creation, made himself intensely immanent in his

35 creation.^^

According to Christian theology, the work of God

does not stop with a historical occurrence, no matter

how significant. For God's incarnation in Christ made

it possible for man to be able to receive God incarnate.

The work of Christ was to purify man's spirit so that

man might again commune with God. This act of God in a

Christian's life is experienced as undeserved favor

shown to a creature who has acknowledged its rebellion

against the ways of its creator. The creature is

^^John 3.16.

33

humbled in the presence of its creator and freely

renounces its self-sufficiency. The result of this

experience for a Christian mystic is an intense love for

God, a desire to know God in his fullness, to see God.

Thus, the mystic begins to cultivate a relationship with

God's immanent manifestation, the Holy Spirit.

Through this relationship, a Christian mystic

experiences an "enlightenment" or an illumination of his

being with divine love. This illumination shines forth

as evidence of the union that has occurred between the

mystic and God. Love manifests itself in the outworking

of the Sermon on the Mount, a definition of Christian

righteousness, in the believers life.- ^

The incarnation of Christ and the incarnation, or

illumination, of the believer changes the Christians

view of the natural, material world. As Zaehner put it,

"Man had been made in the image of God: he dropped the

mirror and smashed the image. His links with Nature

were broken. . . . " Man was the only being that fell

from created perfection, but his fall slowly corrupted

the entire creation like, to use a versatile analogy, a

bit of yeast does a lump of dough. He marched forward

in time and space exploiting and defiling the

environment as he went.^'

• °The most complete Sermon on the Mount is found in Matt. 5-7.

^'Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 355-356.

34

The incarnation of Christ, where "the Word became

flesh," introduced the perfection of Spirit into matter

for the second time. The writer of John's gospel opened

with a definition of Christ's work in the world. He

said, "Through him all things were made; without him

nothing was made that has been made. In him was life,

and the life was the light of men." God's creation was,

in the beginning, perfect. When it became flawed,

Christ, the creator and lover of it all, desired to fix

it. Two options existed, scrap everything and start

over, or recreate the broken part and let the ongoing

creation purify itself. The broken part, man, is

"fixed" when it gives up its selfishness and communes

with the creator, who, resurrected, resides in the

hearts of man and in all creation as the Holy Spirit.' °

A Christian mystic, an individual whose recreated

spirit intimately abides with God, sees things as they

were created, and as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin pointed

out, has a "respect for the spiritual powers still

latent in matter. . . . " Teilhard explained that

To the Christian's sensitised vision, it is true, the Creator and, more specifically, the Redeemer . . . have steeped themselves in all things and penetrated all things to such a degree that, as Blessed Angela of Foligno said, 'the world is full of God.'

^^John 1.3-4.

35

A Christian mystic, in light of God's work to redeem His

creation and the mystic's unity with God through the

immanence of the Holy Spirit, sees the material world,

nature, spiritualized and sanctified. A Christian

mystic does not, as the nature worshipper, see God as a

rock and worship it, but sees the rock as an expression

of God's creativity, an expression of His Word, an

expression of God's omnipresence in all realms of

existence. Past Christian mystics, as Jurgen Moltmann

noted in his Experiences of God, preferred "the expres­

sions 'pouring' and 'flowing', 'source' and 'fountain',

'sun' and 'shining'" for their vision of the world as

emanating from God and used "expressions such as

'homecoming', 'entering in', 'sinking' and 'dissolving'"

when describing the "world in God." Thus, through their

perception of nature, mystics were directed to an all

•3 Q

pervasive God.

There is something more to Christian mysticism than

just passively or emotionally loving everything in

response to God's loving gift. As Zaehner pointed out,

[the] difference of emphasis between what is most Christian in Christian mysticism and the main Indian tradition: 'By their fruits ye know them.' If the mystic forgets this . . . he is still not a Christian unless his

^^Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc, 1960),96, 94. Jurgen Moltmann, Experi­ences of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 77.

36

ecstasies, raptures, and transports bear fruit. . . .

Likewise, Moltmann contended that "the mystical

sapientia experimentalis is always ethical and mystical

at the same time." Thus a Christian mystic not only

loves nature and sees the divine presence of God's

spirit in it, but acts to purify creation, to point out

its reality as a manifestation of God's love. He

participates in the total redemption process by working

to undo the works of man's sin against God, his selfish

rebellion, a sin partly manifest in greedy exploitation

of God's creation.^0

If John Muir was a Christian mystic, then his

record and his life must embody the attributes of a

Christian mystic. He would have had to renounce those

desires which he knew were contrary to the will of God.

He must have desired to know God more, and thus have

seen God omnipresent in all that was pure around him.

He must have lived a pure life, not only of renunciation

but of purity of divine love in action. Finally, he

must have, out of his love for God and his love for

others, worked to bring man to repentance for his sins

and undo, as much as possible, the evil resulting from

man's sins.

"^^Zaehner, Concordant Discord, 321. Moltmann, Experiences, 56.

37

The writer of Isaiah wrote that if "there is no

faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the

land," then "the land mourns, and all who live in it

waste away; the beast of the field and the birds of the

air and the fish of the sea are dying." This scenario,

attributed to the unrighteousness of man, was the

reality seen by a mystic from within what would become

the Judeo-Christian tradition. A mystic who understood,

as the prophet Hosea pointed out, that when God is

acknowledged and his people seek to know him in truth,

then

All the lands are at rest and at peace; they break into singing. Even the pine trees and the cedars of Lebanon exult over [Babylon, the oppressor] and say, 'Now that you have been laid low, no woodsmen come to cut us down.'

This is the hope of a Christian mystic, who, like Saint

Francis, seen by Lynn White as the patron saint of

ecology, or Saint Benedict, whom Rene Dubos saw as the

best candidate for that role, actively participates in a

redemptive process extending beyond the bounds of his

own epidermis. John Muir was a Christian mystic for

whom the love of God was the driving force behind and

the tempering agent of his efforts to protect the

environment. His method acknowledged the results of

man's sin, as described in the passage from Isaiah

above, and he, like an evangelist, strove to point out

man's sin and lead him to repentance and to

38

reconciliation with God. Such a task was difficult in a

religious society. In a secularized society, like the

America of the Gilded and Progressive ages, it would

have taken a revolution. Muir, as a Christian mystic,

realized that, if he was to succeed, he had to turn the

blatant heresies of his fellow men upside down in order

to show them the truth. •'•

-'•Isaiah 14.7-8. Hosea 4.1-3. Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis" and Ren* Dubos, "A Theology of the Earth" both found in Ian Barbour's Western Man and Environmental Ethics, 18-30 and 43-54, respectively.

CHAPTER III

A THOUSAND-MILE WALK TO MYSTICISM

On a mild September day in 1867, twenty-nine-year-

old John Muir spread his pocket map out on the ground in

order to "rough hew" the route he would take for the

next three months of his life. He wrote in his trip log

that his trail would follow the line "of any direction

wheresoever the Spirit attracts which evidently is

southward through Georgia and Florida to some point on

the Gulf of Mexico." The young man set off to follow

what he believed to be his life's calling: to be a

naturalist like Baron Freidrich Heinrich Alexander von

Humbolt. He consulted not only his map for direction

but the Spirit of God for he knew, as he had written to

his brother Dan earlier, that he needed to commit his

"ways to God do all as in his sight to his glory and all

shall be everlastingly well." Muir would have time to

pursue his botanical studies and observe southern

society at one of its most depraved times. He would

also begin postulating a Christian alternative to the

"long ugly regiment" of materialistic, work oriented and

"musty orthodox arguments" that had become standard in

Christian society since the mid-century co-option of the

faith by industrial capitalism. On this journey, he

would begin to experience deep fellowship with God and

see the real condition of man in the world. Though not

39

40

consciously aware of it, John Muir started a new life on

the path to Christian mysticism.^2

Muir had left his family seven years earlier to

exhibit his ingeniously-whittled machinery at the

Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair in Madison. His

exhibits were a popular success and his early dreams of

working as an inventor seemed to be on their way to

fulfillment. He had taken a job with an inventor named

Williard (or Wiard) who had also been an exhibitor at

the fair. Williard owned a small machine shop in

Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and was working, at the

time, on refining the invention that had caught not only

the fancy of young John Muir but that of prominent

Eastern scientists, as well. Williard had built an ice

boat that was supposed to skim the surface of the frozen

Mississippi river, carrying passengers and goods during

the winter months. Muir would get no wages in return

for working in Williard's shop readying the boat for its

winter trials, but did get free lessons in drafting,

engineering, and training in the shop's foundry. While

in Madison, however, he was introduced to Jeanne Carr,

wife of University of Wisconsin professor Ezra Carr, and

'*2MMCM, 23:00022. John Muir to Daniel Muir, 19 November 1860, 1:00465-70. MMCM, 23:00019.

41

Professor James D. Butler, both of whom would later

befriend and encourage Muir in his future studies."*^

When the ice boat scheme failed in December of

1860, Muir enrolled in the University of Wisconsin at

Madison and began a self-made course of study which

included large doses of both sciences and humanities.

He was a product of the emerging industrial pragmatism

and the fading Romantic rebellion. It was in this

context that he learned not only to appreciate the

beauty of nature but to see the deeper beauty brought

out by scientific analysis. He learned to enjoy the

study of geology and botany at Madison, and developed an

objective appreciation of creation. He took long

rambles along the streams and in the woods of the region

to practice his new hobbies.

While studying in Madison, Muir became known not

only for his eccentricities, like climbing into a piano

during a dinner party to see how it worked, but as a

leader among his peers. He was elected judge in one of

the debating societies and president of the Young Men's

Christian Association. The theological discussions

between Muir and his lay minister father during Muir's

youth had molded him into a good debater and instilled

him with a strong character. Daniel Muir's enthusiasm

" JM to Sarah [Muir Galloway], [October 1860], MMCM, 1:00063.

42

for preaching his non-sectarian theology with its

emphasis on piety and purity, informed by his asso­

ciation with Alexander Campbell's Disciples of Christ,

coupled with his insistence that his children be

Biblically literate and living confidently within the

bounds of saving grace molded young Muir into an

individual with a good understanding of and belief in

the Christian gospel. It also ingrained an extreme

dislike for sectarianism in the young man. There is no

indication that Muir ever debated the validity of the

Christian faith with his father but he often argued for

a clearer understanding of it. His dedication to his

faith is evident in that he could be found among the

young Wisconsin soldiers destined for the front lines of

the Civil War, lecturing them on the virtues of living a

holy life in fellowship with God, an especially poignant

subject since they were potentially so close to meeting

u • 44 him.^^

Muir was particularly sensitive to what he consid­

ered the inappropriately joyful attitude these young men

had toward meeting the secessionists in combat. "Don't

you think Mrs. Pelton," he wrote,

that if all this be indeed necessary the slaughter should be conducted solemnly, should not the secessionist who maybe is a Christian and who if we were acquainted with him would

^^JM to Sarah and David [Galloway], 1 June 1863, MMCM, 1:00291.

43

be a bosom friend through life, should he not be shot solemnly. . . . How strangely it seems to me I should feel if in heaven one praising with the white robe should for a little cease his praises and tell me that I had beheaded him that sunshiny day at Bulls [sic] Run. May peace's blessings soon be ours again. May the time be near when the Spirit of the Prince of Peace shall be in all hearts.^^

The war also had a profound impact on Muir's life

plans. Knowing that, among other things, Jesus had

commanded his disciples to feed the hungry, clothe the

naked, and heal the sick, Muir felt that he should enter

medical school where he could use his scientific

interests for the good of his fellow men, like the ones

being torn asunder at Manassas and Bull Run, and those

dying of communicable diseases just down the hill in

Madison. The war would not even allow this. He stayed

home and waited through the draft call of 1863 planning

to go back to Scotland if he was not drafted. °

His brother Dan had moved to Canada and Muir, in

the interest of botany, his brother, and escaping the

war, followed. He and Dan worked for William Trout and

Charles Jay in their rake and broom factory. Muir's

mechanical genius served to modify the equipment for

increased production. Unfortunately, the mill burned to

^^JM to [Frances N.] Pelton, [1861?], MMCM, 1:00169-70.

" JM to Mr. and Mrs. [Ambrose] Newton, 2 August 1863, MMCM, 1:00308. JM to [Daniel Muir], 20 December 1863, MMCM, 1:00328.

44

the ground in 1866, destroying the fruit of his labor,

and Muir's notebooks on this period of his life.^^

In 1866-67, acting on a long-held dream of ex­

ploring South America, Muir slowly began working his way

south. He first found a job in a carriage plant in

Indianapolis. Here he put his mechanical talent and

penchant for efficiency to work. He remodeled the shop

on the basis of his own time and motion studies, and

worked many late hours readying the machinery for the

next day's work. On one of those late afternoons, while

tightening a leather belt, the file he was using slipped

from underneath the lacing and punctured his eye.

Shocked by the blow, he staggered to a window and

watched, horrified, as the fluid drained from his eye

into his hand.^^

In that one terrifying moment, Muir realized that

the wage of life as a cog in the machinery of the

industrial capitalist state was a slow, useless death.

Never again, he lamented as he stood there, would he be

able to see the beauty of God's fields. The trauma left

""JM to Mary [Muir], 23 October [1864], MMCM, 1:00361. JM to Emily [0. Pelton], 12 November 1865, MMCM, 1:00389. JM to [Jeanne C ] Carr, 21 January 1866, MMCM, 1:004009. JM to Henry [S. Butler], 22 April 1866, MMCM, 1:00426-7.

" JM to Dav[id Gilrye Muir], 9 June 1866, MMCM, 1:00446. [JM] to Friends [Merrills and Moores], [c. 4 March 1867], 1:00492.

45

him so weak that he could not rise from the bed in which

he was laid.^^

His eyesight and strength would return and he

certainly would not waste any more time in the smokey

shops. His mind was made up. He would head out into

the beauty of the world while there was still time. He

would study God's "flower people," the inventions of

God, and, almost inadvertently, God's human people

too.50

After consulting the spirit of God about which

route to follow, Muir set out through Kentucky reveling

in his freedom and dreams but not without some loneli­

ness. He noted in his journal that the Kentucky oaks

were very luxuriant, seemingly "blessed with a double

portion of strong exulting life," befriending the lonely

traveler he had become. On the first day of his

journey, he began articulating one of the fundamentals

of his environmental ethic: the reality of a spiritually

alive creation. The oaks exemplified, at this stage,

the attributes of an individual in communion with God.

They possessed life filled with joy and compassion. -

49

17-

50

'jM to [Jeanne C ] Carr, 6 April [1867], MMCM, 1:00517-18.

'JM to Dan[iel H. Muir], 1 September 1867, MMCM, 1:00589-90.

c 1

-'• John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, ed. , William Frederic Bade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916), 2 (hereafter cited as TMW). MMCM, 23:00023.

46

Muir found the plants and animals along the way

filled with life and therefore personality. He could

relate to them because they were his fellow creatures in

a world created and owned by God. In Muir's world view,

since what humans call the natural world had not fallen,

it remained pure and good. Its purity and personality

gave it direct communion with its creator and thus joy.

Not everything in Kentucky was as pure and blessed

as the oaks, however. Upon arriving in Munfordville, he

met one of creation's disgraces. Mr. Munford, a

surveyor and the village founder, whom Muir found

particularly distasteful, was a self-appointed know-it-

all. After questioning Muir, he set about proving that

he knew everything there was to know about the natural

history of the region and explaining that he was an

important man because "all scientific men applied to him

for information." He regaled Muir with long lessons on

the botany of the region and generally made a fool of

himself in Muir's eyes. Muir wrote in his original

journal concerning Mr. Munford's character that

every seeker of roads in applying to him for information adds a tier to his interesting rustic tower of conceit until in architecture it resembles the winter dwelling of a muskrat.

Munford was not meek and he was not blessed. He was a

good example of the difference between the fallen

creature and the unfallen. The oaks never said a word

but in their joyful existence with arms upraised in a

47

position of praise, they were friendly. The conceited

man spoke at length of his own glory and was so

repulsive that Muir had to "escape" back into the humble

purity of the plant kingdom where his God-loving

brethren lived.^2

Muir's original trip log indicates that he saw

God's hand in everything. His later revisions indicate,

however, that Muir either changed his definition of God

from the Judeo-Christian personality ever-present and

ever-working in the world to a personified abstraction

called Nature or revised God to Nature to overcome the

initial discomfort that both his secularized, upper-

middle class readers and his conservative Christian

readers who emphasized the ultra-transcendency of God

might have felt when confronted by Muir's mystical

conception of God. On this ramble, he began to concep­

tualize the prophetic, sacral role Creation could play

for those whose spiritual perceptions had been dulled by

the drudgery of industrial wage labor, the misconcep­

tions of God taught by ministers coopted by both

ignorance and industrialists, or the scientific agnosti­

cism informed by the metaphysical implications of

Darwinism. Muir's personal correspondence, even in the

last year of his life, indicates that he still believed

in a rather traditional, Judeo-Christian interpretation

52TMW, 8. MMCM, 23:00025.

48

of God informed by truths he gleaned from the undepraved

wilderness. Muir believed God to be a personality

working on behalf of His creation because He loved it.^^

On September 10, as Muir began his ascent of the

Cumberland Mountains, he was struck by the way the

vegetation seemed to be fitted to the topography. In

his journal he wrote,

the glorious forest robe of Kentucky is grandly seen stretching over hill and valley adjusted to every slope and curve by the hands of God—the most sublime and comprehensive picture that ever passed my eyes.

(In revising A Thousand Mile Walk for publication in his

last years, Muir substituted "Nature" for "God" in this

passage.) Likewise, Muir observed that individual vines

along the roadside were tougher than those protected by

the woods. Muir observed that sensitive individuals,

both plant and human, seemed especially graced by God

who planted them in a "quiet home" away from tormentors,

who tortured the vines "because they give evidence of

feeling." Again Muir emphasized that he believed plants

to be as conscious and full of personality as humans.

He did so inoffensively, by phrasing the idea in terms

of an afterthought. In his later revision, to help both

misguided Christians and non-Christians who might have

• For an example of such changes compare TMW, 16, with MMCM, 23:00029. Muir assures his sick daughter Helen Muir Funk in a letter dated 7 July 1914 that he prays for her every day; see JM to Helen Muir Funk, 22:12827.

49

trouble perceiving a plant as a brother creature made by

a- Creator who personally interacts with all his cre­

ation, he rewrote this passage to read, "How little we

know as yet of the life of plants—their hopes and

fears, pains and enjoyments." His observation of his

fellow creatures enlightened Muir with what he perceived

as a divine truth: God takes care of his children and

gives each one the right character to cope with its

1- 54 environment. -'^

The walk to the Gulf took Muir from one truth to

another. After learning what he believed to be a lesson

about God's grace from the vines, he found an example

that would later become the focus of his missionary

work. Having passed the repulsive village of Jamestown,

which Muir described as a "rickety, filthy, thrice dead

village," he found lodging with a farmer/blacksmith, a

spiritual casualty of the war. This man described the

horrors of the war and was astonished that Muir could

justify "wasting" his time rambling through the woods

picking flowers when there was a need for every able-

minded man to help rebuild the war ravaged society.

Muir noted that he opposed him "for fun" and after his

opponent had "marshalled a long ugly regiment of musty

orthodox arguments against wasting time etc" Muir cut

them apart using the Biblical example of Solomon and the

' MMCM, 23:00029, 00030. TMW, 19.

50

words of Jesus. Solomon, the great Hebrew king who was

said to be the wisest man on earth, himself botanized,

and certainly a man recorded in scripture as being so

wise and strong minded could not be faulted. Further­

more, Jesus commanded his people to examine the lily of

the field. In conclusion, Muir asked, "Now whose advice

am I to take, yours or Christ's?" Muir later pitied the

work-weary blacksmith, an example of the misguided

slaves of "musty orthodox" work-oriented doctrines

propounded by faithless men. Such people never realized

the gifts of God to be found in enjoying a right

relationship with God and fellow creature.^^

Muir's choices of Biblical examples are good

indicators of what he perceived to be his relationship

with the world around him. Solomon, besides being a

collector of proverbs, is held by tradition to be the

author of Ecclesiastes. This book of scripture is

filled with the lament of a man who had tried everything

and found everything meaningless. To toil one's way

through life trying to arrive to a position of power and

riches is meaningless, according to the passages in this

scripture. That is what Muir found to be the lot of the

blacksmith, he worked from sunup to sundown and his lot

in life did not change; he found less satisfaction in

life than did Muir, who wandered the hills rejoicing in

^^MMCM, 23:00031.

51

God's creation. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is

portrayed as saying: "Consider how the lilies grow.

They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even

Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of

these." He goes on to say.

Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

Muir saw in such a philosophy the key to life. It was

not to be found in a life of drudgery, enduring till

death and expecting a reward in the hereafter for being

the best endurer of misery. The key to life, he seems

to have believed, was to live like the lily, an example

of a pure life seeking only to glorify God and know his

provision. These were the eternal lessons in Christian

mysticism that Muir was learning on his journey. He

learned them from the unpretentious plants that lived in

an unfallen state, mystically communing with God as they

had since their beginning.-*"

After the debate, Muir's host warned him of the

guerrillas who still roamed the Cumberlands, robbing and

killing. Muir believed himself an unlikely target. He,

like his plant brothers, had nothing to steal that he

would not give up anyway and he believed in God's

5^Luke 12.27, 29-31.

52

provision in any circumstance. He had learned that

lesson from his vine friends earlier in the day. His

plant friends had taught him correctly, for the next day

he met a band of guerrillas. He faced them armed only

with a smile and a "howdy," and continued on his way

unmolested.5^

The day after his brief encounter with the guerril­

las he crossed the Emory river and lay on its cool banks

admiring the flowers and trees. There Muir found

brotherhood with the river. Like himself, the river

felt the presence of God in that place. Muir notes that

he "lingered in this sanctuary a long time thanking the

Lord with all my heart for his goodness in allowing me

to enter and enjoy it." Muir felt blessed that he had

been allowed to enjoy such a untrammeled, spirit-filled

place. It was not marked by man's sinfulness. It was a

place like the Garden of Eden, where God visited with

his creation. Muir was like Adam, communing with God

along with his fellows in a pristine Eden on the Emory.

Muir knew that it was only by the Lord's provision that

he had come so far and learned so much.5°

Muir's reaction to Philadelphia, Tennessee, was

similar to that of Jamestown, and indeed almost every

human settlement on his journey. He wrote that

' TMW, 25-26, 27.

5^TMW, 30.

53

"Philadelphia is a very filthy village in a beautiful

situation." Not only were the settlements filthy but

the people he met tended to be filthy, as well. Muir

noted, tongue in cheek, that a man's life history could

be determined by examining the strata of dirt that cakes

his body. Muir saw filth in everything related to

civilized man. Later, in Florida, he wrote:

Man and other civilized animals are the only creatures diseased with dirt. No such compounds as those termed dirt are ever found [within] the provinces of Nature. Absolute unmistakable purity is over all creations of the Lord.5^

The basis of Muir's mystical relationship with God

and his surroundings was purity. As discussed in

chapter two, purity is a tenet of Christian mysticism.

Muir saw the world in terms of the clean and the

unclean. Spiritual purity, to Muir, was manifest

physically. The plants in their unfallen condition were

still spiritually pure. Creation in direct relationship

to God was clean; creation marred by sin, that is man

and his minions, was outside this relationship and thus

plagued with filth and egregious attitudes concerning

the will of God.^°

5^MMCM, 23:00088.

^^The participation of creation in the fall of man has never been clearly and authoritatively defined by Christian theologians. Those who follow a strict Calvinistic view emphasize the separation between God and his creation and imply that creation participated in man's sin and is therefore fallen. Many Wesleyans,

54

While still in the Cumberlands, Muir met a

mountaineer who showed him the great developments of the

region. Muir found the grist mills and other machinery

far less advanced than the most backwoods machinery of

the North. This was not all he found to be primitive,

however. Though it was not confined to the South, Muir

noted that a primitive frontier philosophy was manifest

here. The noble mountain philosopher enlightened Muir

Quakers, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and members of other Christian denominations, emphasizing the immanence of God in the world, reject the idea that creation is utterly depraved. They hold among other things that creation was originally deemed "good" by its creator and only that part which rebelled, man, suffers the spiri­tual consequences of that rebellion. It should be emphasized that even among these groups theological interpretation varies between individuals. Even some Calvinists refuse to accept the implication of their founder's theology. A notable example is Jonathan Edwards who saw nature as pure and capable of reflecting moral truth. Man and Nature, ed. Hugh Montefiore (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co Ltd., 1975), 14-61, provides a good overview of theological views of nature especially of the different interpretations held by Lutherans and Calvinists in the post-Reformation period. A good discussion of Edwards' concept of nature can be found in Conrad Cherry's Nature and Religious Imagina­tion; From Edwards to Bushnell (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 14-64. While a complete historical study is needed to delineate the various Christian interpreta­tions of nature and its status, modern theologians, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Elmer Martens, Claus Westermann, and Jurgen Moltmann, state or imply in their works that nature remained undepraved after the fall of man from his original state of moral perfection and was affected by the fall only in regard to man's actions upon it. See Teilhard's The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960), Martens' God's Design (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 84ff; Moltmann's Experiences of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 77-80; and Westermann's What Does the Old Testament Say About God (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979), 40ff.

55

as to the design of providence for these Tennessee

mountain families, saying:

Our fathers came into these valleys, got the richest of them and skimmed off the cream of the soil. The worn-out ground won't yield no more roastin' ears now. But the Lord foresaw this state of affairs, and prepared something else for us. And what is it? Why, He meant us to bust open these copper mines, so that we may have money to buy the corn that we cannot raise.

In a note of disgust, Muir wrote, "A most profound

observation. " -

For Muir, God had quite a different will for the

mountains. They were not to be the grist for some

depraved man's mill. The mountains and woods were made

architecturally perfect by God, to be the dwelling place

of his "happy creatures." Man's "help" only scarred,

polluted, and destroyed their perfection. If man would

observe them carefully, they could also act as his

instructors. Their lesson for him: live in joyful

ft 9

fellowship with God like the rest of creation."^

As Muir continued south, his experiences outside

the depravity of civilization became increasingly

spiritual. On the banks of the Hiawasse river in

Tennessee, Muir not only proclaimed that "the Lord

bestows his most perfect creations" along the banks of

singing streams but noted that "the grandeur of a

^^TMW, 38.

^2TMW, 39.

56

mountain stream . . . with the overwhelming eloquence of

its cataracts and rapids" evoked divine thoughts found

deep within the soul. "Such a river is the Hiawasse,"

he wrote, "with a surface broken to a thousand gems

bright as the sky—with a pathway fit for the angels of

heaven—and walls of forest vinedraped and flowery as

Eden. . . ."^^ in such places of beauty Muir perceived

God and believed himself led to them by God.

On a hot, late September day, "while fainting with

thirst" in the sandy lowlands below Athens, Georgia,

Muir found "a beautiful spring overhung with shady

bushes and vines, where [he] enjoyed to the utmost the

blessing of pure cold water." Muir attested to the

uniqueness of the site, saying, "It is not often

hereabouts that the joys of cool water, cool shade, and

rare plants are so delightfully combined." Here in this

oasis, he meditated on the goodness of God and rejoiced

in the beauty around him which included the pure water

64 and the pure light of the sunset."

From Athens, Muir wound his way through the Cyprus

swamps and plantations to Savannah. On arrival he found

that his expected money packet had not arrived. At

first he stayed in a filthy tavern, but as the days

passed and the package still did not arrive, he was

^^MMCM, 23:00038.

" TMW, 59.

57

forced to sleep among the stately oaks of Bonaventure

graveyard. He would not regret the decision to stay

there. The beauty and fellowship of the pure and happy

inhabitants of the graveyard taught him a valuable

lesson concerning life and death.^^

In this sun-drenched, well watered garden, the

intensity of life awed him. He found everything filled

with life, joy, and peace; all attributes of a life in

communion with God. Bonaventure struck Muir as "one of

the Lord's most favored abodes of life and light." The

intensity of pure life, which from the point of view of

Muir's mystical Christianity was an attribute of God and

a manifestation of his presence, sensitized Muir's

spiritual awareness and opened his eyes to pure spiri­

tual truth.^^

Muir pondered the mystery of death among the graves

of Bonaventure; sleeping in the graveyard was naturally

conducive to such thoughts. As he meditated on the

radiant life around him and rummaged through the

orthodox notions on death thought up by spiritually-

alienated creatures, he stumbled upon an inconsistency.

Based on the creation myth found in Genesis, Judeo-

Christian fundamentalists taught that death existed

because Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit.

^^TMW, 65.

^^TMW, 69.

58

From the Edenic expulsion, men had increasingly

emphasized the connection between physical death and sin

until death became a fearful enemy; "the Archenemy of

life." However, this idea did not fit Muir's experi­

ence. In the rest of creation, that with which man had

not tampered, death was not a roving beast feared by

plants and animals alike. Death was a natural part of

life, part of the divine sacrament and harmonious with

God's natural revelation. Muir believed that plants and

animals, partakers like man in the divine gift of life,

did not fear death but were peaceful participants in

God's creation which included the complete life cycle.^^

Muir recognized that children, especially those who

lived in town, had a terrible misconception of death.

Furthermore, they were not given the opportunity see the

truth. The deaths they saw were unnatural. They

witnessed "the proper slaughter of flies for domestic

comfort" or birds killed for "the purpose of economy."

The child, Muir penned in his original journal, "hears

the gurgling of the useless ones of a family of kittens

or puppies tied up in a sack" or learns of "the death of

animals amid the filth and blood of a slaughter house."

Death among men, Muir wrote, even the "happy deaths" of

those ready to die, "becomes fearful [and] abhorrent."

Muir also noted that "the most notable and incredible

" MMCM, 23:00057-59.

59

thing that a wild fanatic can say is 'I fear not to

die.'" The theology of death possessed by the alleged

Christian society of the late 19th century had devolved

hideously since Christianity's founder and his disciples

gladly laid down their lives for the sake of truth. The

lay theology of death, as Muir perceived it, did not

even acknowledge the corrections of popular truth

seeking theologians like John Wesley, founder of

Methodism and advocate of Christian mysticism, who said

"My old enemy (the fear of death) is now my friend."

Yet, such as these, as Muir remarked, were perceived as

fanatics in their time.^^

The lesson of Bonaventure was that plants and

animals in the wild, living in right relationship with

God, died just as they lived, in harmony with the

Creator's plan. Muir wrote.

But let a child walk with nature, let him behold the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity as taught in all the woods and meadows, plains and mountains, and streams and seas of our lovely star. And he will learn that death is stingless indeed and beautiful as purest life.

This was a divine truth that Muir knew men needed. To

live in communion with God was to live a joyful, natural

life and die a joyful, natural death. Those who claimed

^^MMCM, 23:00057-59. Wesley quoted in Robert G. Tuttle, Jr., John Wesley: His Life and Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Corporation, 1978), 327.

60

to be preaching the gospel had perverted its original

intent; man did not have to rely only on man's interpre­

tations of scripture to discern the mind of God.

Unblemished nature could provide an unadulterated text,

a text written by the hand of the Creator, with which

mystical souls "with open eyes" could check the validity

of orthodox doctrines. Pure, unfallen nature revealed

the truth about life. Muir believed that divine truth

had consistently to apply to real experience. If a

doctrine failed the test of experience, it was not

divine truth. People had to "test the spirits," and one

way they could was to observe unfallen creation. It

portrayed perfectly the requirements for communion with

God and exemplified the results of such communion.°^

After experiencing such divine insight, Muir

decided that Bonaventure would be an

ideal place for a penniless wanderer. There no superstitious prowling mischief maker dares venture for fear of haunting ghosts, while for me there will be God's rest and peace.

Muir recorded the somewhat mystical experiences of the

night in his original journal but failed to include them

in the published account. "In the silent hour of

gloaming," Muir recounted in his trip log,

I wandered aimlessly [among the graves], forgetful of all my cares and fears, over­whelmed with the novel grandeur of the scene. . . . all hushed and soothed to a spirit calm.

69 MMCM, 23:00059. I Thess. 5.21.

61

. . . I did not go anywhere neither sat down, time did nothing to me. I only know that there was the most impressive portion of my existence in . . .

In what? Only Muir knew, since he ended the sentence

without completing the prepositional phrase he began.

This experience appears similar to the experiences of

the pan-en-henic discussed in chapter II. Muir seems to

have transcended time and may have even experienced an

expansion of his self, as "most impressive portion of my

existence" seems to indicate. Yet, it was only a

portion of himself. He does not identify himself with

God and appears to have remained conscious of his finite

existence in the cosmos.^^

The next sentence of the description of that

evening suggests a more Christian mystical experience.

He writes: "Sometime before the coming of the sun I lay

down among some bushes conscious [sic] only of the

Lord's terrestrial loveliness." Muir maintained his own

identity in the experience and remained conscious of his

separateness from the rest of creation. This experience

concentrated his thoughts on God manifest in nature.

For Muir, all things pure and beautiful were partakers

in divinity. His spiritual awareness, sensitized

throughout that day, perceived the essence of God, or

sensed aspects of God's personality in the life and

70 TMW, 75. MMCM, 23:00061.

62

beauty surrounding him. Life and beauty, to secular

man, are abstractions, but, to Muir, because of the

mysticism which provided him spiritual insight and what

today would be termed supernatural perceptions, life

and beauty were spiritual realities. He saw the

loveliness of God in terrestrial form.^^

Muir's money packet did not arrive for a week.

During the wait, he built himself a brush tabernacle in

"so dense a tangle of underbrush" that he had to rely on

compass bearings to find it. In such seclusion he was

befriended by the birds and dwelt in an environment

filled with what he perceived as spiritual manifesta­

tions of God. He physically fasted, eating only a

little toasted rice or grain gleaned from nearby fields

until the package came, but even though uncomfortable

with hunger, he "feasted on things spiritual." When the

money arrived, he proved his identity to the postal

clerk, not without some difficulty, and feasted in the

local market. He remarked happily that his "'marching

through Georgia' terminated handsomely in a jubilee of

bread. ""72

From Savannah, Georgia, Muir took a steamer along

the Atlantic coast to Fernandina, Florida, and then

picked his way through the swamps and forests to Cedar

" MMCM, 23:00061.

'72MMCM, 23:00064. TMW, 82.

63

Keys on the Gulf side of the isthmus. His journey

across Florida is notable for the pronounced development

of his spiritual ecology. His mystical experience(s) at

Bonaventure coupled with the density of life and beauty

in this tropical garden intensified his spiritual

awareness of the world around him.

Here, as before, his plant brothers spoke their

spiritual truths. A lone palmetto enhanced his percep­

tion of divinity so much that he questioned the belief

that plants lacked immortal souls. How could a plant,

so alive, so impressive, so communicative of what he

recognized as divine truths, be denied immortality by

man? His scientific understanding did not address such

spiritual questions, but his Disciples of Christ

upbringing helped him at least escape the issue pub­

licly. The Campbellite Disciples adhered to a doctrine

which made the Bible the ultimate authority on all

issues. This implied that if an issue was not addressed

in scripture it was of little value and did not merit

the expenditure of precious time on debate or practice.

For example, the Church of Christ, a more fundamentalist

splinter group of the Disciples which took this doctrine

even more literally, prohibited the use of musical

instruments in worship since scripture did not advocate

their use. Thus, Muir remained uncommitted on the

status of plants in eternity, he recognized that at best

64

scriptures only vaguely addressed the issue and may have

even contradicted themselves. Hence on this idea he

ventured: "this, I think, is something that we know

very nearly nothing about." He was aware, however, that

the palmetto communicated greater spiritual truths to

him than any human preacher he had heard.^^

Muir experienced new spiritual vistas in Florida.

He noted that everything in this land of life and beauty

seemed new and strange both physically and spiritually.

He proclaimed, "I thank the Lord with all my heart for

his goodness in granting me admission to this magnifi­

cent realm."7^

What did Muir's intense perception of God in

Florida reveal to him? He saw a truer vision of man's

spiritual place in the world. Man was depraved,

selfish, and thus blinded to spiritual truth. He was

not the "lord of creation" he fancied himself to be.

That man could conceive of himself as Creation's master,

Muir discovered, was heretical. The facts did not

attest to the validity of such an assertion. He found

that even those creatures thought to be evil, like

alligators and snakes, were "beautiful in the eyes of

• TMW, 92. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, vol. 1 (Garden City, New York: Image Books, Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975), 541-550.

" TMW, 93.

65

God" and "part of God's family, unfallen, undepraved,

and cared for with the same species of tenderness and

love as is bestowed on angels in heaven or saints on

earth." Nature was untouched by the "diabolical

consequences of Eve and the apple."^^

Muir saw the foundation of civilization to be

prideful self-worship and a consequence of man's sin.

Civilization concentrated men in towns and villages,

distracting men so that they temporarily forgot their

own mortality, and hardened them against the immortal

truths manifest in both creation and the spirit of

scripture. Muir believed that God rebuked man's pride

with the very existence of the unfallen natural world.

When nature contradicted man's assertion of his power or

his prideful proclamation that it was all made for his

pleasure, man had invented excuses for why lions,

tigers, alligators, certain fish, noxious insects, and

diseases devoured him, or why so many plants and

minerals poisoned him. He blames it, said Muir, on

"unresolvable difficulties of Eden's apples."^^

Man's own depravity, encouraged by civilization,

led him to invent idols to replace the true Lord of

creation. Civilized man's god, says Muir,

" TMW, 98. MMCM, 23:00078.

" MMCM, 23:00078.

66

is a civilized and law abiding gentleman, in favor of a Republican form of government or a limited monarchy, believes in a the literature and language of England and is a warm support­er of the English constitution. And of all wellgotten sabbath schools and missionary societies, and in all respects is so purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a half­penny theatre.

Muir declared that: "It is not more possible to be

guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God than of

the idol institutions of the Hindous [sic]."^^

Muir's mysticism, enabling him to experience real

communion with God, gave him much clearer insight as to

what God intended of creation. He wrote:

The Lord's primary object in constructing all his creatures was . . . the happiness of each one. . . . The Universe would be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes.

Man may have once been at the top, but he had lost that

position. His conceit had greased the slide into

eternal darkness. He had misinterpreted God and, said

Muir, "With such views of the Creator it is, of course,

not surprising that erroneous views should be held of

the creation."^^

Muir had written Bradley Brown years earlier that

God had come in the form of man to reestablish relation­

ship with him. Muir now saw how man's depravity had

" MMCM, 23:00110.

" MMCM, 23:00110.

67

darkened even that revelation. Muir was clearly aware

of man's condition when he wrote:

'Dismal swamps'—no such place [!] Swamps are peopled by plants of purest beauty and grow in darkest chambers with the presence of God. Dismal swamps can be found only in the wide desolate wastes of human hearts.'^

The undepraved, created world, filled with the

presence of God, offered to illuminate spiritual truths

that spiritually insensitive man could not see. Nature

yet communed with God. To Muir, nature yet exemplified

reality. He saw God working joyfully in his giant

garden, creating to his heart's content. "The glory of

God is everywhere," he said and went on to ask: "How

could Moses make the request 'show me thy glory.'" Muir

realized that mystics like himself could see the glory

plainly, but civilization's deluded slaves had only a

shadowy, impure concept of God and little or no commu­

nion with him.°0

If man could only see what he was missing. If he

could only see what "immortal truths" nature held, no

doubt he could relearn who God really was and reenter

communion with Him. Wild creation, undefiled by man's

destructive activities, had to be protected if there was

to be any hope for man someday to discover the spiritual

world he was unconsciously destroying. These ideas.

" MMCM, l:00020ff. MMCM, 23:00148.

^OMMCM, 23:00148.

68

fully developed in Muir's later publications, were only

beginning to influence his thoughts in Florida. He was

still learning, still discovering the beauty, joy, and

peace found in the intimate contact with God that one

could have by living with him in "wild" nature. The

Sierras, so wild, so pristine, yet so endangered by a

rapidly industrializing nation, would be the mold in

which these ideas would solidify. From these mountains

John Muir would emerge crying, like John the Baptist,

ft 1 "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!"°-^

81 Matt. 3.2.

CHAPTER IV

WILDERNESS VALUES

From Florida, Muir traveled to Cuba and then made

the passage across Panama to California. Upon arrival,

he sought the shortest way out of town so he could see

the flower gardens of California. As Muir rambled

through the Sierra Nevadas from 1868 to 1873, he

continued to build his environmental philosophy around

the core of his religious beliefs. He had begun to test

society's presuppositions concerning nature against the

litmus of experience as he walked from Wisconsin to

Florida. Between late 1868, the year he began his

pilgrimage in the Sierras, and 1873, the year he came

down from the Sierras to begin his writing career, he

ordered the basic tenets of his environmental philosophy

within the framework of Christian mysticism. Interest­

ingly, frequent passages which indicate his acceptance

of Christian monotheism are often overlooked by many

scholars. Muir's letters and journals, taken in

context, can hardly be construed to support anything but

a Christian philosophical system. The evidence

indicates that Muir did rebel against doctrines he

considered heresy, misinterpretations of the evidence,

and fabrications, but Christian thinkers have

traditionally advocated the reformation or destruction

of sometimes popular doctrines that they recognized as

69

70

either irrelevant or inconsistent with the entire corpus

of revelation. Muir's writings, especially in their

unrevised form, evince his acceptance of the Christian

faith. In the Sierras, observing the specific physical

evidence and extrapolating into the metaphysical, he

fleshed out and matured his mystical faith and the

tenets upon which he based it.

Until he started into the mountains with Pat

Delaney's sheep, Muir had only a brief introduction to

the Sierras and Yosemite. He and Joseph Chilwell, an

Englishman he met on the passage to California, traveled

over Pacheco Pass to Yosemite to see the famous valley.

But though having seen the Sierras and Yosemite briefly,

Muir recognized their spiritual value. In a letter

welcoming his old friend Jeanne Carr to California

during the winter of 1868-1869, Muir wrote:

I am glad indeed that your are here to heed for yourself these glorious lessons of sky and plain and mountain. . . . I thought when in the YoSemite [sic] valley last spring that the Lord had written things there that you would be allowed to read sometime.°2

The spiritual value of nature was not a new idea to

Muir, as seen in chapter III; he had formed some

seemingly radical beliefs concerning the natural world

in light of his experience with it. We should briefly

review what Muir believed about God, nature, and man

^2jM to Jeanne Carr, 24 February [1869], MMCM, 2:00694-5.

71

prior to his Yosemite years so that the continuities of

his evolving world view will be more readily apparent.

Muir had an abiding faith that the earth and all

its contents belonged to God and that God resided among

his creatures. God had created everything from man to

invisible protozoa, breathed life and personality into

all living things, and protected his creation by in­

stilling in it a certain order which, if undisturbed,

would result in happy, harmonious lives for all created

things. Muir affirmed that nature praised its creator

through its pure, unfallen, and undepraved existence.

On the other hand, Muir saw that man had fallen

from his created perfection as a result of his rebellion

against God and stood outside the special relationship

the rest of creation enjoyed with its Creator. Man, in

his depravity, created doctrines that turned this

situation upside down, believing, as most mainstream

Christians did, that he alone enjoyed the special

relationship with God and that nature was only an inani­

mate supplier of resources. This was an anthropomorphic

supposition Muir had come to doubt strongly when in

Florida.

Muir asserted that man was created as a part of

creation like everything else and was originally

intended to glorify God through his existence, just as

the oaks of Kentucky did with their outspread arms. Man

72

was to enjoy living at peace with the rest of creation,

joyfully participating in the God-ordained life cycle in

which the natural world operated.

Christian scriptures revealed these truths, as

Muir's father reminded him in 1874, saying, "All that

you are attempting to show the Holy Spirit of God gives

the believer to see at one glance of the eye . . . [the

believer] can see God's love, power, and glory in

everything. . . . " John Muir knew this, his father had

taught him well, and he further recognized that self-

centered man readily misinterpreted the real message of

the Christian gospel. Man possessed a false conception

of God and created a scriptural interpretation to fit

the assertion that he was lord of the earth. Muir

asserted, in regard to the "properly trimmed people" who

believed that sheep were "predestined" to provide man

with wool, horses for man's transportation, whales for

"storehouses of oil," iron for plows, and lead for

bullets, "It is not more possible to be guilty of

irreverence in speaking of their God than of the idol

institutions of the Hinduos [sic]."^^

Muir rejected these ideas of mainstream Christian

culture, seeking rather to find a clear and accurate

^^Daniel Muir to JM, 19 March 1874, quoted in The Life and Letters of John Muir, vol. 1, ed. William Frederic Bad* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923), 20-22. MMCM, 23:00110ff.

73

revelation of both creation as a whole and its Creator.

He believed, as did many scientists and artists of the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as had many

theologians since the emergence of the Christian church,

that divine truth could be discovered by observing

nature. Muir saw nature as a reflection of God's law

and as an instructor of God's original intention for his

creation. Muir believed that God still communed with

the rest of creation as he had in the Garden of Eden and

that if man would humbly enter "wilderness," a term

which had come to mean pristine nature, he could learn

to re-establish a relationship with his creator. Once

man humbled himself and sought to discover the truth,

God would reveal himself.

Muir verified these ideas using evidence gleaned

from his observation and experience. He had enjoyed

nature as a child, but not until he humbly entered into

the "wild" country between Wisconsin and the Gulf of

Mexico did he see the reality of God's love for his

creation. He was enamored by what he observed to be the

pure and harmonious existence of the rest of creation

and postulated that by observing nature the corruption

encrusting Christian doctrine could be removed, the

reality of life relearned, and the authentic relation­

ship between man and God could be re-established.

74

Muir had already developed a thoughtful philosophy

concerning man's depravity prior to his arrival in

California but, once in California, he found more

evidence to back his assertions. He also expanded and

clarified his philosophical position.

He began by extending man's depravity to domesti­

cated livestock. He took a job with John Connel, a

sheep raiser, tending a flock of sheep in the San

Joaquin valley over the winter of 1868-9. Smokey Jack,

as Connel was known, provided Muir with a shepherd's

wage, that is a small salary, shelter, and supplies.

From his experiences herding Smokey Jack's band, Muir

learned that the idyllic life of a shepherd, while

possibly a reality in Palestine or Scotland, was not

idyllic at all in the Western United States. In a New

Year's letter to his brother-in-law and sister, John and

Margaret Reid, he wrote, "[I] rise, eat, and drive my

sheep from the corral to the plains in the morning,

drive them to a corral at night, eat and lie down, and

so wags my life, uneventful as the journeys of a

pendulum in its box." Later, to Jeanne Carr, he defined

the place sheep have in regard to other creatures,

" . . . I give [the first flowers] more attention than I

give the dirty mongrel creatures of my flock that are

about half made by God, and half by man." Sheep, though

originally God-created, had been so "refined" by man's

75

selective breeding techniques that they no longer

enjoyed their original purity. Some modern environ­

mentalists and wildlife ecologists see domesticated and

exotic animals as detriments to proper ecosystem

management. To Muir, they were stupid, filthy animals

with all the bad attributes of man, including a

disregard for nature and lack of spiritual virtue.^"^

Muir's reputation for hard work and honesty

preceded him and as the winter snows lifted from the

mountains he was hired by another sheepman, Pat Delaney,

to oversee a band of sheep and shepherds on their summer

grazing route through the mountains. Muir reluctantly

accepted the job with the assurance that he would be

allowed the freedom to collect specimens and explore as

the sheep moved into the high mountain pastures. As the

troop moved into the mountains, Muir found nature full

of beauty and spiritual energy but was shocked to find

that no one else seemed to notice.°5

The first indication of his companions' "depravity"

struck him as they passed through a fern thicket. Muir

admired the graceful form of the fern fronds, sat

beneath them peacefully contemplating the spiritual

° John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 30-32. JM to John and Margaret Muir Reid, 13 January 1869, MMCM 2:00692. JM to Jeanne Carr, 24 Feb [1869], MMCM 2:00694-5.

^^John Muir, My First Summer, 4-5.

76

beauty of the place, and asserted that "It would seem

impossible that anybody however stiffly encrusted with

carnal cares could escape the novel beauty of these

sacred nooks." Responding to Muir's enthusiastic

questions concerning the place, shepherd Billy, as Muir

called one of his companions, replied that "they were

only d d big brakes. . . ."^^

In light of Muir's spiritual mountain discoveries

and his belief that one's actions reflected the contents

of one's soul (and vice-versa), his companions' life­

styles and attitudes became increasingly repulsive and

unbelievable. Of the wild creation in the Sierras, Muir

observed that "all is Godful clean beauty only." Of one

of his fellow shepherds however, Muir writes the

following description in My First Summer in the Sierra:

Our shepherd is a queer character and hard to place in this wilderness. . . . he lies with his wonderful everlasting clothing on, wrapped in a red blanket, breathing not only the dust of the decaying wood but also that of the corral, as if determined to take ammoniacal snuff all night after chewing tobacco all day. Following the sheep he carries a heavy six-shooter swung from his belt on one side and his luncheon on the other. The ancient cloth in which the meat, fresh from the frying-pan, is tied serves as a filter through which the clear fat and gravy juices drip down on his right hip and leg. . . . His trousers, in particular, have become so adhesive with the mixed fat and resin that pine needles, thin flakes and fibres of bark, hair, mica scales and minute grains of quartz, hornblende, etc., feathers, seed wings, moth and butterfly

^^MMCM 31:160.

77

wings, legs and antennae of innumerable insects, or even whole insects such as the small beetles, moths and mosquitoes, with flower petals, pollen dust and indeed bits of all plants, animals, minerals of the region adhere to them and are safely imbedded. . . .

Muir concludes, after finding that his companion did not

share his spiritual visions, that "such souls I suppose

are simply asleep, covered and smoothered [sic] into

insensibility beneath a non-conducting incrustation of

dirty sin. " "7

While working for Delaney, Muir also became

disgusted with the destruction wrought by the hungry

mouths and sharp hooves of the "hoofed locusts," as he

called them. They destroyed too many "lily gardens,"

converting the flowers of the meadows to flowers of the

rocks. Muir also disliked the shepherd's practice of

setting fires to discourage woody growth in order to

maintain as much sheep pasturage as possible in the

ftft mountain meadows.°°

Concentrating on the negatives Muir found in

association with man, however, does not do justice to

his vision of the Sierras and Yosemite. Muir found the

Sierras to be the temple of the living God, where God's

immanence could be felt, where God enthusiastically

" MMCM, 31:00170. John Muir, My First Summer, 171-173. MMCM, 31:00362-3.

^^John Muir, The Mountains of California, rev. ed. (New York: The Century Company, 1911), 349, 355-356.

78

continued creating the world, and where nature's purity

exemplified God's original intention for his creation.

In further witness to his Christian mysticism, Muir

identified Divine Love as the thread unifying all

creation.

As he traveled with Delaney's sheep, he grew

increasingly excited about the beauty around him.

Everything became spiritual and Muir found messages of

God in everything he saw. As Muir climbed higher into

the Sierras he found God even more perceptible. Muir

explained the reason for this amplification of God at

higher elevations in a passage from his journal from the

summer of 1869. Beyond Yosemite valley, probably

exploring above 8000 feet, Muir wrote in a manuscript

journal passage, " . . . all the world is one, but some

of it is thickly veiled to our eyes. Here we may see

God in very truth on account of the simplicity of the

manifestations and the calm thought causing solitude."

Muir sought out the high places of solitude for the

spiritual peace and joy he found in them. He wrote to

Jeanne Carr in the summer of 1870:

I am very, very blessed. The valley is full of people, but they do not annoy me. I revolve in pathless places and in higher rocks than the world [Muir's emphasis] and his ribbony wife can reach . . . I have spent every Sabbath for the last two months in the spirit world, screaming among the peaks and outside meadows like a negro Methodist preacher in revival time, and every interven­ing clump of week days in trying to fix down

79

and assimilate my shapeless harvests of revealed glory into the spirit and into the common earth of my existence, and I am rich. . . .

As on his walk to the Gulf, he found places of beauty

and solitude conducive to experiencing God's presence.

In them, he "screamed" with the same spiritual enthu­

siasm that incited evangelical Christians to "shout" as

they worshipped their Creator.^^

In the Sierras he found many such places. His

journals during this period are filled with references

to God and his presence in the world. Yet, as is true

of those who mystically commune with the great mystery

of the universe, Muir was dissatisfied with his attempts

to describe the thoughts and emotions he had while

experiencing the pure, spiritual reality manifest around

him. On a note of joyous frustration he wrote, "The

most extravagant description that I might give of this

view would never so much as hint its grandeur and

spiritual glow that pervaded and covered it. . . ."

Instead, every time he endeavored to describe the beauty

around him, everything in earth and heaven seemed to cry

out, "'Keep silent all ye son's of men. Do not at any

rate try to patronize Nature with poor word play—'

rejoice and admire and reverence and be thankful." He

knew that it was vain to even "hope to describe God's

^^MMCM, 31,00329f. JM to Jeanne Carr, 29 July [1870] , MMCM, 2:00861.

80

days and doings even to those who have seen it for

themselves elsewhere." He understood that most men and

women could not be fully convinced of God's presence in

nature without somehow being shown how to experience it

themselves.^0

As in his walk south, while walking in the moun­

tains Muir recognized man's need for a spiritual vision

of creation. He witnessed the degradation of man caused

by society and culture. Shepherds, mountaineers, and

even the best teachers in society were all afflicted by

spiritual apathy and blindness. Muir witnessed first­

hand the sort of blindness possessed by someone like

Billy the shepherd. He pitied the "squaw" companion of

the whiskey bleared, "twice dead" mountaineer, who was

probably a leftover gold seeker unwilling to return the

bounds of society, and unwilling to be released from its

worst bonds. For such, Muir lamented, "all the influ­

ences of the mountains . . . even the mountain baptism

is of no avail." Even the great philosophers and minis­

ters, he wrote, are "so ground and pressed by the mills

of culture that God cannot play a single tune upon

them." He lamented to J.B. McChesney in 1871, "Man as

he came from the hand of his Maker was poetic in both

mind and body, but the gross heathenism of civilization

^OMMCM, 31:00331, 00364, 00178.

81

has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that

is spiritual."^^

Muir doubted that even those who journeyed to see

the sublime sights of Yosemite would actually see them.

He commented, using Biblical allusions, on a brightly

clad tourist band: "They were going to one of God's

sublimest temples, but few I fear will find God there.

A game of blindman's bluff mostly. Eyes have they but

they see not." As he himself became more familiar with

the mountains, observing and experiencing more of their

spiritual composure, he became more and more convinced

that anyone could see God there if he only knew how to

look. Muir experienced God in the mountains and worked

out the philosophy that would later emerge in his

articles and books. Like a missionary, he based his

later literary career on changing peoples' attitudes and

teaching them how to experience God in His "mountain

temples."^2

Muir's awareness of God's mystical presence in the

Sierra range became more and more pronounced as time

went on. His first view of Cathedral peak, while

herding sheep there in the summer of 1869, confirmed

that not only he but even such a desensitized person as

^^MMCM, 31:00315f. JM to Charles Warren Stoddard, 2 February 1872, MMCM, 2:01013. JM to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871, MMCM, 2:00967.

^2MMCM, 31:310f.

82

Billy perceived a certain peculiarity concerning the

peak. "Even Billy," he wrote, "has noticed this temple

not made of hands." Billy noticed it but did not feel

the "invisible influence" Muir felt. "Were I to put a

snowball in the fire and find that it would not melt

however long exposed to heat," Muir recorded in his

summer journal, "I would not be more surprised than I am

at this unmelting condition of soul in exposure to the

rays of God's beauty."^^

Later Muir amplified on this difference between

"dirtiness" (cultural insensitivity) and "cleanliness"

(a spiritual vision): "All that is required [to

experience 'God's best gifts'] is to expose oneself in a

clean condition and they pour into us as sunshine into

the pores of a tree." He wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson

in 1872, "One days exposure will do more than carloads

of books. No photographers plate is so sensitive as

those of the human soul provided only that they are

pure." In Yosemite, the streams and waterfalls chanted

and sang the psalms and "God himself [was] preaching."

Muir believed, from both his experiences on his Gulf

journey and in the high Sierras, that God's creative

^^MMCM, 31:361-363.

83

work was ongoing and that man could and should see and

experience it.^^

To Muir the Sierras were a great stage on which God

acted. He wrote: "One seems to be in a majestically

domed pavilion in which a grand play is being acted and

the scenery is so fine. . . . " Muir was exhilarated at

the thought that he was viewing the divine creation play

and thought he would be in heaven if he were eternally

staked out in a meadow in order to watch the seasonal

creative acts pass before his eyes. "God is the actor,"

he wrote, "and the speeches and the music and the acting

are 'first class in every particular.'"^^

Muir saw the whole Sierra experience as heaven. He

witnessed in a letter to Jeanne Carr, "You speak of

dying and going to the woods, I am dead and gone to

heaven." While this might not appear to be a very

orthodox statement to some, Muir's vision of heaven cut

through Christian metaphors to the mystical experience

they described. Heaven to Muir, as it had been to John,

the apocalyptic writer on the isle of Patmos, was to

live in the presence of God. Muir believed that now he

truly lived in God's mountain temple, where God's

presence was evident. He listened to "the winter songs

" MMCM, 31:371. JM to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 18 March 1872, MMCM, 2:01068-71. MMCM, 31:486.

^^MMCM, 31:00178, 00499.

84

and sermons preached and sung only there." He confessed

to his brother David,

I have not been at church a single time since leaving home. Yet this glorious valley might well be called a church for every lover of the great Creator who comes within the broad overwhelming influences of the place fail not to worship as they never did before.^°

He believed everything to be made by a personal

creator who delighted in his creation. In July of 1869,

he wrote that creation "is all one outpour emanation

from God," a statement reflects the Christian doctrine

that everything was spoken into existence, created ex

nihilOf by God. In August of the same year, writing

that "Everything seems consciously peaceful, thought­

fully [a]waiting God's will," he observed that nature,

like himself, trusted in a loving creator. At the end

of his first Sierra summer, further reflecting his

desire to enter into a deeper mystical communion with

God in a sentence reminiscent of Christ's command to

seek first the kingdom of God, he wrote that his

perceived life goal was not to be a great man but, "only

to learn and enjoy God's thoughts." By 1871, after

wandering in the wilderness like John the Baptist,

communing along with the rest of his created brethren

with his creator, and studying the valleys for the

^^JM to Jeanne Carr, 6 December 1869, MMCM, 2:00778. JM to Jeanne and Ezra Carr, 15 November 1869, MMCM, 2:00767. JM to David Muir, 20 March [1870?], MMCM, 2:00793.

85

evidence of the glacial activity that he believed God

used to create the Sierra topography, he reported of his

spiritual progress in a journal passage that must have

been overlooked by the scholars who claim that Muir's

"God" was a great impersonal force: "How human is God

when we come to know Him by Himself." Muir thus

indicated that he believed that he had communed with God

in solitude and come to know Him for who He was.^^

To Muir, God, was the great "Master Builder" who

continuously worked with the enthusiasm of a man,

carving out valleys with glaciers, watering the world

with rain and snow showers, cleaning the forest with

storms of wind, water, and ice, and, creating perfect

creatures fully adapted to their environment. Muir's

ideology matched his experience. Muir was impressed by

God's invention of the pine seed which was to Muir, "a

one winged bird with one feather and which in all its

life takes but one flight." He envisioned "the creator

smiling when he happened to hit upon this invention and

first gave it a trial."^°

Wild and tame animals possessed characteristics by

which Muir's experience with them enabled him to make

judgments concerning their real value. On one hand, he

was disgusted with tame, manufactured creatures, like

" MMCM, 31:00184, 00511, 00524, 00676.

^^MMCM, 34: 01989, 31:00179.

86

sheep, of whom he said: "A sheep can hardly be called

an animal; an entire flock is required to make one

foolish individual." On the other hand, his experience

with wild creatures, still in their pristine, unfallen

state, evoked praise and admiration for their maker.

His well known praise of the virtues of wild sheep over

their domesticated counterparts exemplifies both his

attitude toward wild and tame animals and his preserva­

tionist stance. Both were based on his belief that

God's creation is perfect while man's is debased.^^

His praise for "God's sheep," as he called Rocky

Mountain Bighorns, probably emerged from his observation

of them after his "sure-footed" mule Browny tumbled down

a steep slope. Muir wrote in his Yosemite journal.

When [the mountaineer] comes upon God's sheep, the climber that never falls, and fears no precipice, his admiration is boundless. The Divine Inventor stands revealed as a fellow workman. . . .

To Muir, God was also the loving Father of all the

created family who cared for his "wild" children. Of

bears, he wrote.

They are beautiful in the eyes of their Heavenly Father who homes them in his most sacred mountains and watches over them and guides them day and night with the same species of tenderness and love that he rays upon angels in heaven or saints on earth.

^^John Muir, My First Summer, 152.

lOO^MCM, 34:02107.

87

Muir likewise wrote to his young nephew, George

Galloway, praising him for his fascination with wild

cats and dogs, "God takes care of everything that is

wild but he only half takes care of tame things." God

only "half took care" of tame things because, after all,

they were half manufactured by man, who had to pay with

the sweat of his brow for his meddling.•'•Oi

As should be clear from the above discussion, Muir

could not accept the deistic conception of an ultra-

transcendent God. Of the agnosticism found among both

scientists and churchmen of his day, Muir wrote, "The

notion seems to be all but universal that God has

finished the world and harnessed it with laws and sent

it rolling through space all perfect and complete and

moreover that we can know God only by tradition. . . . "

His observations, he believed, disproved the validity of

their "closet studies" of both God and nature. From his

observations he believed the truth to be a middle ground

between ultra-transcendency and ultra-immanence, that

is, he neither advocated that God was totally outside

the created realm nor that God was totally encompassed

by the created realm. He believed, rather, that "God is

living and working, working like a human being, by human

methods and though always unsearchable and infinite

^O^JM to George Galloway, 25 April 1872, MMCM, 2:01101.

88

. . . always, whether in calm or storm, working out a

higher and yet higher beauty."^02

His conception of God as a creative, loving,

masculine Father figure was balanced by a conception of

nature as loving mother figure. He had good motherly

role models. His own mother blunted the harsh piety of

his father with her understanding and love. Jeanne Carr

became his confidante and mother-figure who encouraged

him both during his university years and his Yosemite

years. Surprisingly, much has been read into this

relationship by contemporary historians who suggest a

sexual relationship between Muir and Jeanne Carr.

Although many scholars have commented on Muir's associa­

tion with the women in his life, the main woman in

Muir's life up to the time he married was "mother

nature."^03

Nature, in Muir's cosmology, was the great Mother

of all. He witnessed the humanity of wilderness and the

talkative, sympathetic rocks and explained these

attributes by saying, "No wonder when we consider that

we all have the same Father and Mother." Muir wrote

that Nature "cheers us like a mother with tender prattle

words of love ministering to all our friendlessness and

^02MMCM, 34:01989.

• "- Frederick Turner, Rediscovering America: John Muir In His Time and Ours (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1985), 204.

89

weariness." He recognized that if he was to assert that

God was the great father of all creation, then there had

to be a mother of created things. Since all were formed

from the earth, the earth and its processes, cumulative­

ly defined as nature, became the great mother.^04

Muir implies nature's status in his cosmology when,

commenting on Ruskin to his friend J.B. McChesney, he

writes, "This my friend is the true infidelity—a

disbelief in the constancy and sufficiency and everlast-

ingness of God's Love as written in Nature." To Muir,

though God was not equivalent to nature. His express­

ions. His created things, were found in it. It is

important to note that within the hierarchy of Muir's

cosmology nature was not equal to God. Muir's own

manuscripts refute the assertion that Muir was a pan­

theist/heretic in the stripe of Spinoza's more radical

precursor Giordano Bruno. Like many Christian mystics

before him, at times he did verge on pantheism by

heavily emphasizing the immanence of God in creation,

especially when compared to the Calvinist proclivity to

emphasize the transcendence of God. However, like most

Christian mystics before him, Muir defined God as a

^04f^CM, 31:00512ff, 00652.

90

separate personality and refused to equate God with his

creation.-^05

Nature, in Muir's philosophy, followed the

supreme law which he believed God set forth in the

beginning to rule the behavior of all creation. All of

undepraved creation, pens Muir, "proclaim[s] with one

accord the doctrine of love as the law of the rocky

realms." The robins say, "'fear not, only joy and love

is here.'" On seeing a water ouzel playing in a

waterfall, Muir wrote that "We may miss the meaning of

the loud resounding torrent but the still small voice—

only Love is in it." Ultimately, he told his sister

Margaret Reid, in 1873,

Yet whatever we can read in all the world is contained in that sentence of boundless meaning, 'God is Love.' This is the sum and substance of all that the sunshine utters, and all that is spoken by calms and storms of the mountains, and by what we call terrible earthquakes and furious torrents, and wild beating tone of the ocean.

All these manifestations are but forms of that one utterance, 'God is love.' ^^^

He did not believe, as popular culture interpreted

Darwin, that the natural world was ordered by laws of

sometimes violent struggle between species. Species

adapted to their environment because God was continually

^^^JM to J.B. McChesney, 9 January 1873, MMCM, 2:01233.

^O^MMCM, 31:00678, 00477, 00321f, 34:02018, JM to Maggie Lauder [Margaret Muir Reid], 1 March 1873, 2:01248

91

creating and tending His creation. Muir was aware of

Darwin's arguments, but was unwilling to accept their

implications in light of his view that nature operated

harmoniously and non-violently under the law of love.

Commenting on the hunting of robins for San Francisco

markets, Muir found it irreconcilable for Christians,

though only animals like any other species in the

Darwinian view, to participate in the wild robin trade.

He wrote, "'Tis but race living on race to be sure, but

Christians full of Love, and 'higher planes', and

'culture' etc., need hardly to be pushed to such straits

while wheat and apples grow. "- 07

In line with many Christian philosophers and scien­

tists before him, Muir believed that God had arranged

harmoniously the affinities within nature. "There is no

mystery but the mystery of harmony," he wrote, " . . .

all causes . . . are only proximate and lead on indefin­

itely into the impenetrable mystery of infinity." In

other words, scientific observation of nature revealed

the mysterious harmonies that provide for the survival

of species. Scientists seeking the cause of these

harmonious interrelationships would eventually conclude

that only an infinite, unbounded creator beyond man's

total comprehension could be responsible for it all.

While all the intricacies of natural affinities and

^07MMCM, 31:00167f.

92

repulsions could not be fully explained, the overarching

interpretation of the natural order was love. In recon­

ciling death and destruction within nature with his

spiritual vision of nature, Muir wrote:

God scatters 'firebrands, arrows and death' among the fairest of his terrestrial creations but they are scattered as the stars are scattered through the heavens in glorious harmony, all in joyful subordination to the law of Love.-'-"°

Muir's holistic vision of the world revolved around

the relationship between the Creator and the creation.

"All that is God-made," he wrote, "is related and oned

by forces inescapable as all comprehending gravity."

Muir saw God as immanently working in his creation

because he loved to create beautiful things and he loved

what he created. Of God's love, Muir wrote, "All the

world floats safe and warm in the Love of God. . . . All

storms of sky above us, of earth beneath us are only the

various expressions of God's enduring love." All the

processes of nature worked together within the all

pervasive unifying force of divine love to further

perfect the beauty of creation.-^"^

Muir believed that creation enjoyed existing when

it operated within the law of love. "God's spirit is

felt brooding," he wrote, invoking the Genesis account

^08MMCM, 31: 00696, 32:00784.

^09MMCM, 34:02116, 311:00657.

93

depicting God at work creating the world, "with

boundless eternal love over all making every lifecell

rejoice." Since man lacked the true vision of the

relationship the rest of creation enjoyed with God and

failed to submit to the law of love, his existence

lacked peace and joy. Thus, nature's role in the

redemption of man, in Muir's world view, was to

evangelize or woo man into a right relationship with his

creator .-'-•O

Nature accomplished this through example. "Never

before had I seen beauty like this," wrote Muir as he

traveled up into the Sierras, " . . . every dome and peak

with their forests and sculpture proclaiming God's glory

in tones of human love none could fail to understand."

Observing the spiritual attraction of Cathedral peak and

its surrounding forests during his first summer of

mountain life, Muir commented on the efficacy of

nature's evangelism, "no dead dry box buildings however

grandly spired and colored will ever bring us into the

true and healthy relations with the creator as will

these holy wilderness groves." To misunderstand this as

advocacy of druidism, as some scholars have done, would

be taking Muir's entire philosophy out of context. He

believed, as he wrote to his Canadian employers, the

Trouts and Jays, that if people would only listen to

^^O^^CM, 31:00340.

94

creation's message and see what God wrote in his

creation, "you would be far happier and you would love

each other and the world and your bible far better."^^^

He worked within a Christian context and only

sought to purify his human brethren's vision of God and

to expand it to include all of God's revelation of

himself and his intentions. In the increasingly

sectarian climate of Christianity during the Gilded age,

Muir sought true God, of whom he wrote Catherine

Merrill, "He flows in grand undivided currents, shore­

less boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of

civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and

fountainizing all. "••2

Muir's faith in God was only increased by his

immersion in "wilderness." He wrote in December of 1872

of his life since the carriage factory accident which

almost cost him his sight, "I died to light, I lived

again, and God who is Light has led me tenderly from

light to light to the shoreless ocean of rayless

beamless Spirit Light that bathes these holy mountains."

God had led him into the wilderness to teach him great

spiritual lessons, much like God did the Israelites,

Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus in Christian

l^^MMCM, 31:00340, 00332. JM to Trouts and Jays, 28 November 1871, MMCM, 2:01000.

^^2jM to Catherine Merrill, 9 June 1872, MMCM, 2:01123.

95

scripture, Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, and Gautama

Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.^^^

Interestingly, Muir often portrayed himself and

nature as modern John the Baptists. John the Baptist,

as portrayed in the Bible, was charged with calling the

Jews, who had turned away from truly worshipping God in

the name of religion, to repentance and to prepare the

way for the messiah. Of mountain flowers growing in the

alpine tundra above tree line Muir writes, "They are

gentle John Baptists proclaiming the gospel of harmon­

ious love in the cold realms of ice." He described

himself as John the Baptist, anxious to "have all

nations and tongues baptized in this glorious

terrestrial mountain beauty." He knew that if he could

get men into the wilderness and point them to God's

natural revelation, then nature could do the rest.

"Everybody in the least natural," he wrote concerning

God's prevenient grace and the role wilderness plays in

redemption, "is guided more than he is aware of and all

the wilderness is full of tricks and plans to get us

into God's light." "We seem to imagine," he wrote,

that since Herod beheaded John the Baptist there is no longer any voice crying in the Wilderness. But no one in the wilderness can possibly make such a mistake. No wilderness in the world is so desolate as to be without God's ministers. The love of God covers all the earth as the sky covers it and fills in

^^^JM to Kate N. Daggett, 30 December 1872, 2:01230

96

every pore. And this love has voices heard by all who have ears to hear. Everything breaks into songs of Divine Love just as banks of snow, cold and silent, burst forth in songful cascading water. Yosemite creek is at once one of the most sublime and sweetest voiced evangels of the Wilderness of the Sierra.- ^

For the rest of his life, Muir preached the

efficacy of wilderness to those who would listen. As a

"servant of servants," a phrase reminiscent of Christ's

admonition to his disciples that the greatest among them

would be the most humble servant, he tried to save the

sick of spirit by pointing them to the purity of

wilderness so wilderness could do its job. When "lord

man," servant of lord technology, desired to destroy the

wilderness, Muir strove to save it so that, in turn, it

might point man to God.

Muir, the Christian progressive, had "one big,

well-defined faith for humanity as a workman," as he put

it, with Christian idealism reminiscent of Isaiah's

vision of the new creation, "that the time is coming

when every 'article of manufacture' will be as purely a

work of God as are these mountains and pine trees and

bonnie loving flowers." He believed that man needed to

remember that "the world is one word of God and his

angels his men and his beasts together form one pure

globe of primary fountain life." As both a Christian

^ " MMCM, 34:02131, JM to Emily Pelton, 15 May 1870, 2:00822, JM to Trouts and Jays, 28 November 1871, 2:01000, 31:00519, 32:00775.

97

mystic, who knew God and his message, and a progressive,

who desired to bring about a new era where love and

compassion reigned in place of hatred and greed, Muir's

message remained intact: Go to the mountains, for

blessed is the man who may summer on these heights absorbing their inspiring beauty, learning and loving their varied life, drinking their songful waters, breathing their azure skies, and above all bathing in their pure fountain Light.•'•• ^

^^5jM to Kate N. Daggett, 30 December 1872, MMCM, 2:01230. MMCM, 32:02018, 31:00701.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

Muir's mystical relationship with God and spiritual

vision of nature deeply influenced his overall

philosophy of life. His affirmation of the Biblical

injunctions that man and nature were both created by

God, imbued by Him with life, and that man had fallen

from his state of perfection, the state which led to

Western society's prideful, anthropocentric assertion

that it controlled the rest of creation, inspired Muir's

protectionist philosophy. He believed that Christians

living a pure, spiritual life possessed the capability

to see truth: that man and nature co-existed as objects

of God's love. He found a fraternity between man and

nature when he examined the world from the enlightened

perspective he acquired from his mystical relationship

with God, one opposed to the sinful, anthropocentric

perspective of the dominant, secular culture of the

Western world. In 1871, Muir wrote J.B. McChesney, "But

not all [Christians] have bowed the knee to the earthly

gold of Baal. The Lord has a natural Elect, people

whose affinities unite them with the rest of nature, and

I think you are one of them. "-'••'•

^^^JM to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871, MMCM, 2:00967

98

99

Steven Fox is correct in pointing out the role that

Muir's philosophy has played in influencing those

individuals who have been prominent in the cause of

protecting nature from the degradation that a materi­

alist and capitalist world view inflicted. However, his

delineation of Muir's legacy is only partial. As Muir

believed, there are others whose affinities make them as

much a part of the Muir legacy as those who call

themselves environmentalists. Christian mystics past

and present, while not as visible as the large environ­

mental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the

Wilderness Society, Earth First!, and Greenpeace, have

advocated the protection of nature because they have

recognized the environmental implications of such

Christian doctrines as the creation, the incarnation,

and Pentecost. -^

The central message of Christ, as Muir points out,

was the gospel of love. "The sermon of Jesus on the

mount," wrote Muir, "is on every mount and every valley.

. . . " Jesus is portrayed in the gospel of Matthew as

saying: "But I tell you this: Love your enemies and

pray for your persecutors; only so can you be children

of your heavenly Father. . . . " In both Muir's day and

^^7jM to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871, MMCM, 2:00967. Christian mystics such as Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, Albert Schweitzer, C.S. Lewis, and Anthony Campollo have all had an affinity with nature which emerged from their religious views.

100

our own, nature was and is fast becoming powerless in

light of man's technological advances. In Muir's view,

non-human creation, excluding most domesticated animals,

was spiritually whole. Thus, nature chose to direct its

persecutors lovingly to their creator through its

glorification of God and obedience to the law of love.

Muir saw health and vitality in wild nature and, because

he saw the difference between nature and civilization in

spiritual terms, believed that the only hope for both

society and the individual was to adopt the spiritual

admonitions of nature. As I have shown, these admoni­

tions, in Muir's eyes, were founded on the basic tenets

of Christianity and achievable through mystical contem-

1 1 f t plation and action.- - ^

Muir's vision did not emerge because he was

influenced by Hinduism or the other Eastern religions

coming into vogue at the time. In fact, by 1873, he had

very little exposure to them, having read Emerson's "On

Nature" and a few of his poems while in Wisconsin but

very little else written by the Hindu influenced Tran-

scendentalists until 1872, when he requested Abba

Woolson to send him a copy of Thoreau's Walden and

received the collection Emerson had promised him when

they met briefly in May of 1871. Muir recognized the

love message of nature because he was influenced by

l^^MMCM, 34:02131. Matt. 5.44-45a.

101

ideals of Christianity. He also recognized that the

so-called Christian society of his day did not live up

to the ideals upon which it was allegedly based.^^^

It is obvious by the sheer bulk of literature

attempting to refute the implications of Lynn White,

Jr.,'s "Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" that there are

individuals who call themselves Christians who are

shocked by the assertion that the faith they so strongly

believe in is, in part, responsible for environmental

degradation, when in fact they are lovers of nature and

work to protect nature because of the philosophy they

have accepted as a part of their religious world view.

Lynn White, however, was correct. "Christians-so-

called," as Muir described those who advocated doctrines

inconsistent with the core of Christianity, have been

responsible for aiding the development of an environ­

mentally destructive world view that, in part, is

responsible for the long-term environmental problems we

face today. Immediately preceding the sentences written

to J.B. McChesney above, Muir wrote, "I am tempted at

times to adopt the Calvinic [sic] doctrine of total

depravity and in my opinion no partitioned body of men

more clearly and emphatically prove the leading doc­

trines of their own sect in their own lives." This is

^^^See Abba G. Woolson to JM, 21 March 1872, MMCM, 2:01072-3, and JM to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3 April 1872, MMCM, 2:010887.

102

not, as some attempt to make it, Muir the pagan saying

"I am tempted to accept some of those Christian doc­

trines," but Muir the Christian lamenting that those who

represent themselves as Christians are not acting as

such in light of God's will as revealed in both nature

and scripture. •'•20

Muir recognized that there was truth to be found in

other religions, like those in the East, for God

revealed his truth through nature to all men everywhere,

but he did not espouse these faiths. He did not espouse

them because he inherited and consciously believed in

the strong western and Christian heritage he possessed

as a Scotchman. As many biographers have noted, he

carried a great deal of the "cultural baggage" of his

day, which included Christianity. The term "cultural

baggage" erroneously suggests that, like a suitcase, one

can easily set aside a culturally inherited belief

system. The forms of Christianity are part of American

culture just as the forms of Shinto or Buddhism are

still a part of Japanese culture. English-speaking

missionaries evidenced either a conscious or sub­

conscious understanding of this concept as they worked

to wholly displace native African and Polynesian

120ggg Lynn White, Jr.'s "The Historical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis" and selected, representative articles of the debate begun by White's essay in Ian Barbour's Western Man and Environmental Ethics; Atti­tudes Toward Nature and Technology.

103

cultures with that of the Europeans. They discovered

that it was much more beneficial to their cause to

overpower and destroy the entirety of native culture

with the force of arms or re-orient it with economic

promises than to adapt Christianity, as the Jesuits had

tried to do in China during the Middle Ages, to the

culture. Muir himself was proud of his Western heritage

and proud to be a Scotchman. He believed in ecumenical

Christianity, which was growing less and less possible

during the Gilded age, but he was a Christian. More

importantly, Christianity, which it should be noted

emerged out of the Eastern religious milieu, possessed

everything Muir needed to support his philosophical

position. Furthermore, the Americans who needed to hear

his message would be much more likely to adopt a purer

interpretation of Christianity than they would a new,

foreign religion.

It is doubtful that Western culture, so ingrained

in the United States which itself is a dedicated

exporter of Western ideology, will be displaced in the

near future by an Oriental culture. The Orient may come

to dominate the West economically, but it will do so

with an industrial machine and mind-set imported from

the West. It appears that the more economically tied

the East becomes to the West, the more Westernized it

becomes. Therefore, if Americans are to adopt a

104

religious basis for environmental protection, as

environmental philosophers believe is necessary,

something with the familiar look and sound of Chris­

tianity is required.

Muir believed his Christian mysticism would answer

this need. By pointing out misinterpretations of the

truths found in Christian scripture, using scientific

methods of observation, Muir believed he could enlighten

both the Christian and the emerging agnostic society of

his day to the spiritual truth revealed in both nature

and scripture. If man would get into nature with a pure

heart, he would, as Christ's beatitude promised, see

God. By seeing God, Muir believed, man would realize

that nature was equal to man in terms of receiving God's

love and care. This realization would inspire man to

live righteously with both God and nature, which

included both his fellow man and fellow creatures,

making American society and the world a much better

place to live.

Muir's philosophy was that of a Christian reformer

interested in reforming the doctrines of a religion that

he believed contained much truth about the relationship

between God and man. He recognized that the lies which

had crept into and corrupted what he believed to be real

Christianity could be exposed when they were held up to

the light of proof in nature's spiritual purity. It was

105

important for Muir to cast light on those false

doctrines because they only served to alienate people

from what he believed to be the true God, the maker of

heaven and earth.

Muir certainly had a legacy, but he was part of a

legacy himself. He may fit into the St. Francis legacy,

who as Edward Armstrong points out in Saint Francis:

Nature Mystic (1973), was really part of the St.

Columbine legacy. St. Columbine could probably be

placed in the environmental legacy of the Desert Fathers

as defined by Susan Bratton, for there is evidence that

the Christian hermits of the Near East influenced Celtic

hermits. Furthermore, the Desert Fathers saw themselves

as part of the legacy of a carpenter's son from Naza­

reth.^21

Environmentalists today, especially those who see

wilderness in terms of its spiritual value, do fall,

though sometimes indirectly, into the legacy of which

Muir is a part. They describe the destructive influence

man often has on wild areas in much the same way Muir

did. They see unenlightened man and his domesticated

minions as inherently evil, similar to Muir. Some

advocate that animate and inanimate creatures have the

^2lEdward Allworthy Armstrong, St. Francis: Nature Mystic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). Susan Bratton, "The Original Desert Solitaire: Early Christian Monasticism and Wilderness," Environmental Ethics, 10 (Summer 1988): 31-53.

106

right to life or natural existence. The underlying

rationale for these assertions is moral and often

religious, like Muir's. Yet, the philosophical

structure on which these assertions are based is often

non-Christian and sometimes self-assertedly anti-

Christian. Most aesthetic environmentalists argue,

whatever their philosophical position, that nature has a

spiritual, recreative value. Thus they fit indirectly

into the Muir legacy. Christian environmentalists, in

line with Muir's own world view, fit more directly into

that legacy.

Fox, Cohen, and Devall saw the obvious religiosity

in Muir's philosophy and life, but they misinterpreted

its origin and therefore misinterpreted Muir. Ronald

Limbaugh correctly identified the origins of Muir's

philosophy but failed to provide an adequate indication

of the depth of Muir's spiritual experience. Richard

Cartwright Austin concluded that Muir's religious

experience was somewhat Christian but, since he relied

on secondary compilations of Muir's works which, due to

the inevitable destruction of context, tend to emphasize

a more Transcendental Muir, his reasoning for placing

Muir in the ranks of Christianity is somewhat question­

able. As the name implies. Christians are followers of

Christ and Austin's contention that Muir's Christ was

nature strays far from a Christian interpretation of

107

Christ and would have been incompatible with the Muir

who, in 1856, wrote his friend Bradley Brown, "But Jesus

is the son of God. 'By him the world [was] made.' 'By

him all things consist' He it is who seeks you and

suffers for you to save you."^22 while some might think

that the letter from which this passage came fails to

represent the mature philosophy of Muir because of its

extreme orthodoxy, it is notable that he inscribed the

letter into one of his notebooks in the 1880s with no

revisions. Furthermore, Christ's message, that man need

not be bound by sinfulness but was free to live in happy

communion with God and the rest of the created order

under the law of selfless love, became Muir's message

and became the message Muir saw communicated in nature,

which was, he believed, a much better evangel than

himself. Arthur Ewart correctly contended that the

driving force behind John Muir's leadership in

developing a preservationist ethic and popularizing

conservation during the Gilded Age/Progressive Era was

his spirituality, but incorrectly defined that spiritu­

ality as Transcendentalism. The spiritual value of

nature, upon which Muir based his preservationist ethic,

was its message of hope, purity, and love, an evangel­

ical message which Muir discovered as a result of his

spirituality: Christian mysticism.

122jM to Bradley Brown, 1856, 1:00022-25.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED

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Armstrong, Edward Allworthy. St. Francis: Nature Mvstic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Austin, Richard Cartwright. Baptized Into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987.

Barbour, Ian G., ed. Western Man and Environmental Ethics; Attitudes Toward Nature and Technology. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1973. ^ t^ J'

Bary, Wm. Theodore de, ed. Sources of Indian Tradition. 2 vols. 1958. Reprint. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.

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