John Muir Research Paper

John Muir, conservationist, and writer, was born in Dunbar, Scotland on April 21st, 1838. Muir joins Dunbar Grammar School at 7 years old, learning Latin, French, English, mathematics, and geography. When he was 11 years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States. They bought a farm in Wisconsin which Muir would always love to explore, which was where his love for nature came from. He worked on the farm until he was 21, while teaching himself math, geometry, literature, and philosophy. As a child, his father, was very strict and sometimes abusive, would force him to memorize parts of the Bible. Muir was creative and curious. He made a horse feeder, a table saw, and an alarm clock with his basic mechanical skills. His father discouraged

This job as a manufacturer ends up changing his life forever. While working, he injured his eye which caused him to be blind for some time. When he recovered, he realized that he had to embrace nature as much as possible. That was when he left his job as a manufacturer and began to travel. He walked from Indiana to Florida, traveled to Cuba, and traveled by boat from New York City to Panama. Muir journeyed across the isthmus by train and arrived in San Francisco, California. He arrived in California in 1868, he took a job as a shepherd for James Mason Hutchings in the Yosemite Valley, where his conservative ideas began. John Muir was able to meet one of his heroes in California. When he was in Yosemite Valley, he created his theories on how the valley was created by slow-moving glaciers. At the time, the public believed the other theory that the valley was made by earthquakes. He personally introduced his theory to his idol, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson and David Henry Thoreau were a philosophers whose writing greatly influenced Muir while he was in the University of Wisconsin studying philosophy. Their writing styles, along with the Bible’s ideals, could be seen his articles and books. When Emerson was in Yosemite in 1871, Muir had the chance to show him around. He showed him the mountains and Sequoias and taught him about botany and introduced the glacial theory. Emerson and Muir kept in contact ever since then. After that, Muir wrote Studies in Sierra which told stories of his experiences in the wild, mostly in the Sierra