Our National Parks

For every person who has experienced the beauty of the mountains and felt humbled by comparison. John Muir’s Our National Parks—reissued to encourage, and inspire travelers, campers, and contemporary naturalists—is as profound

Characters

John Muir (11)

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed—chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much tow…

— John Muir, amazon.com

Trees Forests Sierra Drought disease

I had built a little cabin in Yosemite, and for convenience in getting water, and for the sake of music and society, I led a small stream from Yosemite Creek into it. Running along the side of the wall it was not in the way, and it had just fall enough to ripple and sing in low, sweet tones, making…

— John Muir, amazon.com

Yosemite Yosemite Creek Cabin Stream Frogs

How many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Woods Hearts Beating Animals

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Nature Landscapes ugly Wild

To the sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever they chance to be.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Sane Free Wild Beauty

This is Nature's own reservation, and every lover of wildness will rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Nature Wilderness

In the beauty and grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests surpass all others.

— John Muir, amazon.com

beauty Grandeur Trees Sierra

The finest of the glacier meadow gardens lie...imbedded in the upper pine forests like lakes of light.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Glacier Lakes of Light Nature

It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the sunset.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Ralph Waldo Emerson Mountains Aging

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Earthquakes Dead Earnest

Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

— John Muir, amazon.com

Nature beauty Energy Winds Fresh

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