John Muir

Since 1980 California's University of the Pacific has hosted the John Muir Institute dedicated to promoting the legacy of the famed environmentalist. These essays are papers presented at the institute in 2001. Ruth Sutter explores the friendship between John Muir and his neighbour, John Swett, the innovative California educator. Daryl Morrison considers the role Muir played in the lives of children and they in his. Ron Limbaugh provides two essays: one describes the dispute about the publication of some of Muir's most personal correspondence, while the other presents the friendship of Muir and landscape painter William Keith. Ron Eber focuses on Muir as the national spokesman for American wilderness and forests. Char Miller highlights the interplay between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot in America's nineteenth-century environmental movement. Daniel Philippon examines how Muir's later domestic life changed his rhetoric and how he promoted the preservation of wilderness. Barbara Mossberg presents an overview of Muir's vision of the value of wilderness necessary for America's physical, spiritual, economic, and cultural survival. Jim Warren describes how a shared experience on the Alaska Expedition could bring naturalists Muir and John Burroughs closer in their approach. Bonnie Johanna Gisel provides an account of an 1873 trip through the Tuolumne Canyon by John Muir and his friend and mentor, Jeanne C. Carr. Corey Lewis studies Muir's methodology to understand and experience his fieldwork approach. Michael Branch focuses on Muir's final journey to explore South America and Africa. Each of these essays will bring new ideas for future study of John Muir.