Other editions of book A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf

I had long been looking from the wildwoods and gardens of the Northern States to those of the warm South, and at last, all draw-backs overcome, I set forth [from Indianapolis] on the first day of September, 1867, joyful and free, on a thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico. Crossing the Ohio at Louisville, I steered through the big city by compass without speaking a word to any one. Beyond the city I found a road running southward, and after passing a scatterment of suburban cabins and cottages I reached the green woods and spread out my pocket map to rough-hew a plan for my journey. My plan was simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest.

Scottish-born naturalist and writer John Muir undertook a daring adventure in 1867, just a few years after the Civil War. After recovering from an injury at a saw mill, Muir decided that he wanted to explore the world. He left his life in Indiana and walked one thousand miles to Florida. Without any real direction or purpose other than to study the flora and fauna, Muir trekked south through Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida with little more than a map, a compass, a brush, soap, and a change of underclothes. He slept under the open stars when he couldn't find a family to take him in, and sometimes Muir walked for forty miles without having food. Though Muir had planned to sail to South America at the end of his journey, he contracted malaria and instead headed to California, where he would ultimately spend the majority of his life. "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf" is a classic naturalist text set against the backdrop of the post civil war south.

Here is the adventure that started John Muir on a lifetime of discovery. Taken from his earliest journals, this book records Muir's walk in 1867 from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf Coast. In his distinct and wonderful style, Muir shows us the wilderness, as well as the towns and people, of the South immediately after the Civil War.

Here is the adventure that started John Muir on a lifetime of discovery. Taken from his earliest journals, this book records Muir's walk in 1867 from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf Coast. In his distinct and wonderful style, Muir shows us the wilderness, as well as the towns and people, of the South immediately after the Civil War. John Muir ( April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) also known as "John of the Mountains", was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada of California and Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile (340 km) John Muir Trail, a hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor. Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, Camp Muir and Muir Glacier. In Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130-mile-long route, was named in honor of him. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.He is today referred to as the "Father of the National Parks"[4] and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life. John Muir has been considered "an inspiration to both Scots and Americans".Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are commonly discussed in books and journals, and he is often quoted by nature photographers such as Ansel Adams. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world," writes Holmes. Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "...saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism."On April 21, 2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist. William Frederic Bade (January 22, 1871 – March 4, 1936), perhaps best known as the literary executor and biographer of John Muir, was a versatile scholar of wide interests. As an archaeologist, he led the excavation of Tell en-Nasbeh in Palestine, now believed on the basis of his work to be the biblical city of Mizpah in Benjamin. He was also an ordained Moravian minister, a professor of ancient languages, a theologian and bible scholar, a mountaineer, a conservationist and a naturalist. Born and raised in Minnesota, he studied at Moravian College and its seminary as well as other universities. He served on the faculties of Moravian Theological Seminary and then the Pacific School of Religion. He also served as interim president and subsequently as dean of the Pacific School of Religion and was founding director of the school's Palestine Institute. He was president of the Sierra Club 1919-1922 and edited the Sierra Club Bulletin for 12 years.

A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf is a classic travelogue by John Muir, charting his journeys through Kentucky, Tennessee, the Deep South, the Florida Keys and Cuba.Taking place in the late nineteenth century, we hear exquisite detail of the countryside in each of the locales. The hanging mosses of Georgia, towering pines and vast marshes of Florida's Everglades region; the rugged foothills of the Cumberland Mountains; and the leisurely scene of Havana harbour are but a few of the destinations Muir tours and vividly describes.This book contains the original early photographs of the locales described, with specimens of tree and the landscapes depicted together with rivers and settlements. All chapters are presented complete with Muir's original notes, and it is through the author's concise observations that this travelogue retains a unique identity of its own.A superb historical record, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf acts as a valuable reference for those who wish to learn about the countryside and topography of the southeastern United States and Cuba. Much of this information remains useful and relevant, while Muir's accounts of human society shines a light on society as it stood at the time.Cover image by Miguel V.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V THROUGH FLORIDA SWAMPS AND FORESTS F the people of the States that I have now passed, I best like the Georgians. They have charming manners, and their dwellings are mostly larger and better than those of adjacent States. However costly or ornamental their homes or their manners, they do not, like those of the New Englander, appear as the fruits of intense and painful sacrifice and training, but are entirely divested of artificial weights and measures, and seem to pervade and twine about their characters as spontaneous growths with the durability and charm of living nature. In particular, Georgians, even the commonest, have a most charmingly cordial way of saying to strangers, as they proceed on their journey, "I wish you well, sir." The negroes of Georgia, too, are extremely mannerly and polite, and appear always to be delighted to find opportunity for obliging anybody. Athens contains many beautiful residences. I never before saw so much about a home that was so evidently done for beauty only, although this is by no means a universal characteristic of Georgian homes. Nearly all well-to-do farmers' families in Georgia and Tennessee spin and weave their own cloth. This work is almost all done by the mothers and daughters and consumes much of their time. The traces of war are not only apparent on the broken fields, burnt fences, mills, and woods ruthlessly slaughtered, but also on the countenances of the people. A few years after a forest has been burned another generation of bright and happy trees arises, in purest, freshest vigor; only the old trees, wholly or half dead, bear marks of the calamity. So with the people of this war-field. Happy, unscarred, and unclouded youth is growing up around the aged, halfconsumed, and fallen...

A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf is a classic travelogue by John Muir, charting his journeys through Kentucky, Tennessee, the Deep South, the Florida Keys and Cuba. Muir's journey took place in the late nineteenth century: we hear exquisite detail of the untouched countryside in each of the locales. The hanging mosses of Georgia, towering pines and vast marshes of Florida's Everglades region; the rugged foothills of the Cumberland Mountains; and the leisurely scene of Havana harbor are but a few of the destinations Muir tours and vividly describes. This book contains the original early photographs of the locales described, with specimens of tree and the landscapes depicted together with rivers and settlements. All chapters are presented complete with Muir's original notes, and it is through the author's concise observations that this travelogue retains a unique identity of its own.

A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf is a classic nature hiking classic by John Muir. JOHN MUIR, Earth-planet, Universe.”—These words are written on the inside cover of the notebook from which the contents of this volume have been taken. They reflect the mood in which the late author and explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago. No less does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, which might have startled any finder of the book, reveal the temper and the comprehensiveness of Mr. Muir’s mind. He never was and never could be a parochial student of nature beauty.

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