John Muir Centenary

The great conservationiost, wilderness lover and mountaineer John Muir died on December 24th, 1914. At the beginning of this centenary year I wrote the following appreciation of him for The Great Outdoors.

This year is the centenary of the death of John Muir, arguably the most influential defender of wild places ever and whose legacy is still relevant and important today. Born in Dunbar in Scotland, Muir emigrated to the USA when he was eleven and lived there the rest of his life. He's still not that well-known in Britain, unlike the USA, where he is regarded as the 'father of National Parks'. In Martinez in California where he settled there are John Muir roads and businesses and the house where he lived is now the John Muir National Historic Site. The Sierra Club, which Muir founded in 1892, is one of the USA's leading conservation organisations and does much to keep Muir's memory alive. Scotland is slowly catching up with John Muir'sBirthplace, a statue of the young Muir and the John Muir Country Park in Dunbar plus the 73 kilometre John Muir Way along the East Lothian coast. And of course there is the John Muir Trust, founded in 1983 to campaign for wild land.

I discovered Muir many years ago, not with a sudden revelation but slowly as I came across the name again and again and he seeped into my consciousness. I didn't really pay him much attention though until I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, which in the High Sierra in California runs through the John Muir Wilderness and follows the John Muir Trail (which must be one of the most beautiful backpacking routes in the world). Just who was this John Muir who was so clearly important I wondered.  From signs and leaflets and talking to other hikers I began to learn a little about the man. A few years later I came across a second-hand copy of The Mountains of California (books by Muir were hard to find in the 1980s) and began to read Muir's own words. Immediately I was taken with his passion and devotion to nature and wild places. I went on to read his other works, some several times. The language can be flowery for modern tastes in places but his eye for detail and his love of everything natural shine through. (I'd recommend My First Summer In The Sierra as a first book to read - all of them are available on the Sierra Club website). I also read books about Muir, wanting to know more about this iconic figure. I think the best of these is Michael P. Cohen's The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness, which goes more deeply into Muir's dilemmas and contradictions than other biographies.

Muir is to be admired not just as a conservationist, not just for his love of nature, key though these are to his greatness, but also for his outdoor adventures and experiences. Long before any of the equipment we take for granted, or the guidebooks, maps and paths, Muir would head off into the wilderness on long solo treks and climbs. From a boy scrambling on the cliffs and castle walls of Dunbar to the adult mountaineer making a daring first ascent of Mount Ritter deep in the High Sierra (a climb described superbly in The Mountains of California) Muir revelled in exploring wild places. He didn't just look at them or study them he went into them - climbing trees in a storm, edging out on narrow ledges to look down a waterfall, climbing rock faces, crossing glaciers, sleeping out wrapped in a coat (his minimal equipment makes today's ultralight backpackers look burdened down). He walked long distances as well - A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf describes his journey from Indianpolis to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867. And when he arrived in California a year later he walked from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley. There followed many trips into the then still little-known Sierra Nevada mountains and in later years further afield, especially Alaska (as told in Travels in Alaska).

Muir was not just concerned for the conservation of wilderness for its own sake and the sake of the animals and plants that lived there. He was also concerned for its conservation for the sake of humanity. He was not a conservationist who wanted to exclude people but one who wanted to share his joy in nature with everyone. He led trips for the Sierra Club and his writing was aimed at encouraging people to visit wild places as well as persuading them they needed protection. He wrote in The Yosemite 'Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike' and in Our National Parks, a book intended to encourage visitors to the parks, 'Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.'

Much has been and will be written and said about John Muir. What should be remembered is that his vision of the necessity of wildness and nature is as valid now as it was 100 years ago.

Perceptions of Wilderness: John Muir Trust Journal

The latest issue of the excellent John Muir Trust Journal has a piece by me about the development of how I see wilderness. For those of you not in the JMT (please join!) here's a pdf of the feature.

Here's the link for a download.

The Year of John Muir

The coast at Dunbar where John Muir first explored the outdoors

With the official opening of the John Muir Way last weekend as part of the John Muir Festival and much attention being paid to John Muir in the media (even an editorial in The Guardian) here's my contribution - a piece I wrote for The Great Outdoors earlier this year. The John Muir Way was opened by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. Hopefully he will heed the words of Muir and protect Scotland's remaining wild land. Otherwise this gesture is meaningless. 

This year is the centenary of the death of John Muir, arguably the most influential defender of wild places ever and whose legacy is still relevant and important today. Born in Dunbar in Scotland, Muir emigrated to the USA when he was eleven and lived there the rest of his life. He's still not that well-known in Britain, unlike the USA, where he is regarded as the 'father of National Parks'. In Martinez in California where he settled there are John Muir roads and businesses and the house where he lived is now the John Muir National Historic Site. The Sierra Club, which Muir founded in 1892, is one of the USA's leading conservation organisations and does much to keep Muir's memory alive. Scotland is slowly catching up with John Muir's Birthplace, a statue of the young Muir and the John Muir Country Park in Dunbar plus now the John Muir Way. And of course there is the John Muir Trust, founded in 1983 to campaign for wild land.

I discovered Muir many years ago, not with a sudden revelation but slowly as I came across the name again and again and he seeped into my consciousness. I didn't really pay him much attention though until I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, which in the High Sierra in California runs through the John Muir Wilderness and follows the John Muir Trail (which must be one of the most beautiful backpacking routes in the world). Just who was this John Muir who was so clearly important I wondered.  From signs and leaflets and talking to other hikers I began to learn a little about the man. A few years later I came across a second-hand copy of The Mountains of California (books by Muir were hard to find in the 1980s) and began to read Muir's own words. Immediately I was taken with his passion and devotion to nature and wild places. I went on to read his other works, some several times. The language can be flowery for modern tastes in places but his eye for detail and his love of everything natural shine through. (I'd recommend My First Summer In The Sierra as a first book to read - all of them are available on the Sierra Club website). I also read books about Muir, wanting to know more about this iconic figure. I think the best of these is Michael P. Cohen's The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness, which goes more deeply into Muir's dilemmas and contradictions than other biographies.

Muir is to be admired not just as a conservationist, not just for his love of nature, key though these are to his greatness, but also for his outdoor adventures and experiences. Long before any of the equipment we take for granted, or the guidebooks, maps and paths, Muir would head off into the wilderness on long solo treks and climbs. From a boy scrambling on the cliffs and castle walls of Dunbar to the adult mountaineer making a daring first ascent of Mount Ritter deep in the High Sierra (a climb described superbly in The Mountains of California) Muir revelled in exploring wild places. He didn't just look at them or study them he went into them - climbing trees in a storm, edging out on narrow ledges to look down a waterfall, climbing rock faces, crossing glaciers, sleeping out wrapped in a coat (his minimal equipment makes today's ultralight backpackers look burdened down). He walked long distances as well - A Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf describes his journey from Indianpolis to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867. And when he arrived in California a year later he walked from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley. There followed many trips into the then still little-known Sierra Nevada mountains and in later years further afield, especially Alaska (as told in Travels in Alaska).

Muir was not just concerned for the conservation of wilderness for its own sake and the sake of the animals and plants that lived there. He was also concerned for its conservation for the sake of humanity. He was not a conservationist who wanted to exclude people but one who wanted to share his joy in nature with everyone. He led trips for the Sierra Club and his writing was aimed at encouraging people to visit wild places as well as persuading them they needed protection. He wrote in The Yosemite 'Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike' and in Our National Parks, a book intended to encourage visitors to the parks, 'Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.'

Much will be written and said about John Muir this year. What should be remembered is that his vision of the necessity of wildness and nature is as valid now as it was 100 years ago.

Backpacking & Wilderness

Pasayten Wilderness in the North Cascades

With the publication of Scottish Natural Heritage's Wild Land Map the question of what constitutes wild land or wilderness has come to the fore again. I understand that for the purpose of deciding which areas are worthy of conservation and protection lines on maps are needed but overall I think such designations are too limiting. Wilderness is more than just place. With this in mind here's another piece from the archives, written several years ago for TGO magazine, in which I look at the nature of wilderness.

Backpacking and wilderness go together. Backpacking is all about venturing deep into wilderness and experiencing nature at its most pristine and perfect. But what exactly is wilderness and how do you know when you are there? The answers may seem obvious but legislators and conservationists who have tried to define wilderness have found this surprisingly hard. Generally the conclusion is that wilderness is land without human habitations and little sign of human activity. In the USA there are designated wilderness areas, deemed to fit the definition of the Wilderness Act: “An area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain”. As there is little land “untrammelled by man” (and what a lovely word untrammelled is) in the UK we prefer to talk about wild land rather than wilderness though the distinction is unclear. According to the John Muir Trust wild land is “Uninhabited land containing minimal evidence of human activity” while the National Trust for Scotland is rather more expansive, saying "Wild Land in Scotland is relatively remote and inaccessible, not noticeably affected by contemporary human activity, and offers high-quality opportunities to escape from the pressures of everyday living and to find physical and spiritual refreshment".

Designated wilderness sign in the North Cascades

There is a problem with these definitions. They leave out large areas of the UK beloved by backpackers, including much of the Lake District, Snowdonia, Peak District and Yorkshire Dales, not to mention many coastal areas. Popular long distance paths like the Pennine Way, West Highland Way, Offa’s Dyke and Cleveland Way don’t run through much wild land by these criteria either. Yet surely they do. The land in these national parks and along these trails doesn’t feel tame, which it must be if not wild. But feelings don’t come into official designations. Camp high on Cross Fell on the Pennine Way on a night of storm and wind, with the clouds racing across the moon and heavy showers hammering on the tent, as I have, and tell me this is not a wild place.

Many years ago I came up with my own explanation of wilderness: “If there is enough land to walk into, enough room to set up a camp and then walk on with that freedom that comes when you escape the constraints of modern living, then it is wilderness, in spirit if not by definition”. For backpackers I think this still holds. Trying to classify wilderness precisely doesn’t work, as it shouldn’t. The wild cannot be contained, defined and corralled into a neat box. If it could it wouldn’t be wild. As well as having a physical reality wilderness is also an idea, a feeling, a set of concepts that come together to shout “this is wild”. This idea is especially important in the UK and Western Europe where we do not have the huge areas of pristine land found in the Americas. Yet we do have many pockets of wildness that fit my description, places where you can feel you are far from civilisation even if it lies only a few miles away.

Camped deep in a wood with the only sounds those of wild life and the wind in the trees and you are in the wilds despite the nearby roads and villages. Climb into the Lakeland fells to camp by a high tarn and you are in a wild place though you could be back down in the pub in a few hours. The distance doesn’t matter; it’s the situation that says where you are. Strolling country lanes to camp on a crowded roadside campsite only touches the edge of the wild. Walk just a few miles on and camp in solitude beside a hill stream and you are part of it. In distance and time you are almost in the same place. In feeling and experience you are in a different world. I realised this when I camped in the Grand Canyon on the Arizona Trail. I was crossing the Canyon on the popular trails, which are spectacular but crowded and with strict regulations about where you can camp. I had planned on camping at the Bright Angel Campground at the bottom of the Canyon, a lovely but organised, safe, and tame campground with picnic tables, neatly laid out tent sites, toilets and fees. However the site was full so I followed a ranger’s suggestion and walked a few miles away from the campground along the Clear Creek Trail to an area where I could camp wild. Leaving the somewhat tempting lights of the campground and nearby Phantom Ranch with its bar and restaurant I followed the narrow winding trail below great cliffs as darkness fell. The instant the lights of Phantom Ranch vanished I felt back in wild country. Camp was on a flat stony platform just off the trail, where I simply threw down my foam pad and sleeping bag. The walls of the canyon rose above me, a hard blackness darker than the soft black of the sky, in which a myriad stars sparkled. There no lights, no sounds, no sign of people. Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground were just a few hours away but no longer existed in my mind. For this night the Grand Canyon felt it belonged to me. At dawn I woke to the sun slowly lighting the colourful cliffs as the Canyon came back to life. I lay and watched the light and the glory return and felt incredibly grateful to be there rather than at Phantom Ranch. It was the finest camp site of the whole walk. Similar feelings of excitement, wonder and wildness can be found all over Britain by walking that little bit further away from bright lights and warm indoor cosiness.

Wilderness? Camp near home after a heavy snowfall

Once wilderness is seen as a feeling and a concept, an ideal perhaps, then various factors can change how wild a place seems. The weather and the time of year are significant here. A storm adds wildness to any place, as I found on Cross Fell, while winter changes the nature of the land. Under snow tame domesticated land can become like the Arctic. Last February, after exceptionally heavy snow, I set out from my front door and camped not far away on a rounded undistinguished hill, exploited for grouse shooting with heather burning and shooting butts. I could almost see my house from the summit. But all around spread a white wilderness, almost every sign of humanity hidden by the snow. It looked wild, it felt wild, it was wild. There are many such places that are transformed by storm or winter into wilder places that echo with what they once were. And many more that feel wild under blue skies and warm sun. Seeking them out is a large part of the joy of backpacking.

Woods, Waterfalls and Dizzying Depths

Glen Feshie glowered under a leaden sky. The light was flat and dull with colours muted and distant views indistinct. In conditions like this woods and waterfalls often offer more inspiration and beauty than open hillsides and summits so I wandered the short distance down the glen to the Allt Fhearnagan and the first trees. Here I turned up beside the gurgling stream and followed it through dark green alders and then upwards through birches and pines. Ahead the gentle murmur of the stream was changing to a complex mix of roaring and rushing and the first flecks of white water could be seen through the trees. Soon the lowermost of the Falls of Badan Mosach came into view. These falls are a series of little cascades and waterslides tumbling down a series of granite steps and slabs. On this day they were in full voice after all the recent rain and looked magnificent. The bottom the falls are wide, the stream splitting round a small wooded islet. Above this is a steeper single waterfall, a mass of water curving gracefully over the rocks. Climb higher, past a wide waterslide with the water spread thinly over the brown slabs, and a series of little falls appears, crashing down water-worn channels over a broken rock step into a wide pool. The falls are all attractive and the complex patterns of the water and its interaction with the rocks demands attention. The situation is delightful too, a sylvan paradise with natural pine and birch forest rising from either bank. At every step the scene changes and time is needed to take in the intricate nature of this splendid mix of wood and water.


Eventually I left the forest and the falls for the main path up the Allt Fhearganan corrie, which I left in turn to traverse the featureless rounded top of Carn Ban Mor and climb the slopes to the tiny pointed summit of Sgor Gaoith. Touches of sunshine briefly lit up patches of ground but mostly the sky remained overcast. To the east the clouds brushed the higher summits of Braeriach and Cairn Toul. A cold southerly wind had me thrusting my hands in my pockets and thinking I should start carrying gloves again. Visibility was good in that far hills were in view – Ben Alder, Creag Meagaidh, even Ben Nevis – but the dull light meant there were no details, just different shades of grey silhouettes. The precipitous view from Sgorr Gaoith down broken cliffs to Loch Einich some 600 metres below was as spectacular as ever though and the main reason I had continued to the summit.