by Ja
mes B. Hunt
Mercer University Press, Macon, Ga. 240 pages
John Muir may be best known as the founder and first president of the Sierra Club. But who was this man? What influenced, molded and shaped him? These are the questions that James Hunt helps us gain an understanding of as he articulates Muir’s life from his leaving Scotland through the 1,000-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico in 1868. This is not a rose-colored look at the formative years of one of America’s great environmentalists. Rather, as Hunt states, this is a story “of healing, re-formulation, and transformation.”
Drawing on Muir’s journals, Hunt draws the reader into Muir’s journey, developing both an intellectual and emotional appreciation of events that shaped the man’s life.
Opening the book on the eve of the Muir’s voyage to America, Hunt draws a strong image of the Scotland the family will be leaving and the grand adventure that lies ahead. He draws the reader into Muir’s family of origin, highlighting the differences between his parents’ views on life, nature and religion. His father, a conservative and pietistic Christian, forced the young Muir to memorize the New Testament and much of the Old. While Muir distanced himself from his father’s religion, the parent’s influence continued to shape the son’s life and view of the world.
The reader will meet the creative inventor that Muir was and how this led him to the University of Wisconsin, where he found his love for botany and the significant connection he would make there with the Carr family. Muir’s aptitude for engineering and mechanics would see him working in that field until he suffered an eye injury that represented the turning point in his life. He decided to embark on the 1,000-mile walk, of which Muir notes, “for many a year I have been impelled toward the Lord’s tropic gardens of the South.”
Recounting Muir’s trek and how it changed his life, Hunt notes, “In Georgia, John Muir had become more than a collector of plants; he had become an observer of the human condition and one who thought deeply about nature.” The compelling interconnectivity between the human condition and the natural world holds the reader’s attention throughout the book and makes it hard to put down.
As Muir travels through the South, Hunt introduces the reader to a myriad of people whose lives would touch and speak to Muir. In a region that had been turned upside down by the Civil War, Muir met and resided with people from many walks of life, all of whom influenced and shaped his view of the world.
Hunt accurately states, “Through understanding the significance of John Muir’s walk, engaging his thought and reflections, and joining in his discovery, wonder and gratitude, we too may find our own thinking and behavior changing.”
NEIL CRAIGAN is the pastor of First Church in White Bear Lake, Minn.
