Celebrating John Muir - a true mountain man

JOHN Muir, the “father of the National Parks” who “saved the American soul from total surrender to materialism”, died a century ago this year. 2014 will be marked by Muir celebrations in the US and his native Scotland. April 21 has been designated John Muir day.

Muir, whose name may derive from the Gaelic word for the sea, was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, in 1838. His autocratic father believed that all leisure activities other than bible-study were frivolous. John, it is claimed, was beaten into learning the entire New Testament, and much of the Old, by heart. In 1849, disillusioned with the laxity of Scottish religious observance, the family emigrated to Wisconsin.

Young John was something of a dreamer. Emulating his namesake John the Baptist, this ‘wildness prophet’ spent long periods alone in the mountains.