Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
As a young boy growing up in Wisconsin, John Muir faithfully recorded in his journal that the pasque-flower was a hopeful multitude of large, hairy, silky buds about as thick as one s thumb and that lady s slipper orchid in nearby meadows caught the eye of all the European settlers and made them gaze and wonder like children. Muir was blessed early on with a love and aptitude for botany, a field of study that helped him become one of the most influential environmentalists in the world. One realizes, in reading Nature s Beloved Son, how much Muir s successes as adventurer, writer, and environmental advocate were driven by his belief in nature s irresistible, divine beauty. Surprisingly, however, little has been written about John Muir the botanist. Environmental historian Bonnie J. Gisel takes us through Muir s evolving relationship with the natural world, touching on his childhood in Scotland and Wisconsin, his sojourn in Canada, his thousand-mile walk from Louisville, Kentucky, to the Gulf of Mexico, his ecstatic travels in California s Sierra Nevada, and his thrilling exploration of Alaska. Photographer Stephen J. Joseph s breathtaking prints of Muir s botanical specimens and related correspondence are artfully presented in this book and provide the backdrop for the story of Muir s inordinate fondness for plants. With the help of major foundations and generous individuals, Heyday has produced a book of superlative beauty with the highest of printing and design standards, a book worthy of Muir s great spirit and the ineffable beauty of the plant world.
About the Author
Bonnie Johanna Gisel is an environmental historian and the curator at the Sierra Club s LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite National Park. She is the editor of Kindred and Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (University of Utah Press, 2001), and Nature Journaling with John Muir (Poetic Matrix Press, 2006), and she has lectured extensively and published articles on John Muir as well as issues of environmental literacy. Stephen J. Joseph has been a photographer more than forty years. His work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum, the San Francisco Legion of Honor, the Ansel Adams Gallery, and elsewhere, and he was selected as the Centennial Photographer for the Muir Woods National Monument and as an artist in residence for Yosemite s LeConte Memorial Lodge.