Being John Muir

Imagine seeing the world through the eyes of another - living and interacting with your consciousness, personality and awareness but "seeing" and feeling with the vision of someone or something else. In part, this is the bizarre story line for the movie "Being John Malkovich." Through a series of very strange events that lead to many more strange events, several people discover an entry - a portal - into the brain of actor John Malkovich. After having the experience themselves, the main characters then begin to sell opportunities, opportunities for being John Malkovich. Initially, all goes well but then it leads to dysfunction, breakdown, unhappiness that's brought to a neat but improbable ending (but no more improbable an ending as is the premise of the movie!).

Seeing the world through the eyes of another - its been a theme used quite often, by many, for all kinds of purposes. Next Saturday, May the 22^nd, is the 30^th Anniversary of Earth Day, which has always had as part of its purpose seeing our Earth through the eyes of others: If we could just see, feel, sense, appreciate our environment from the perspectives of other living things, from a future time, from those with less abundance, then we might be motivated to take better care of what we have and then create a more sustainable future for all.

This was the message of John Muir, or it would be more accurate to say that Muir created an awareness, vision and attitude that finally emerged as the American ecology movement. Indeed, I don't think it would be unfair or overblown to suggest that without John Muir we would not have the environmental gifts that so many take for granted.

Two years ago, when I became the last member of my family to visit Muir Woods National Monument (just north of San Francisco), established in 1908, it was like walking into a cathedral - it really was a moving experience, I had all the same sensations of sight, smell, sound, emotion and spirit that I hear some describe upon returning to childhood houses of worship. I now know that John Muir would have been pleased in a Scottish kind of way. He might have said something like: "Of course, all of Nature is a cathedral. What did you expect? And what took you so long?! And why aren't you staying the week, or a month?"

Muir wanted nothing more than for people to see the world he saw, to look through his eyes and share his vision of not just what is but what could be. He wanted people to be graced by Nature and then transformed - as he had been. In other words, he wanted us to be challenged by being John Muir.

Born on April 21, 1838 in Dunbar, Scotland, John Muir was the oldest boy of seven children. His father, Daniel, was a stern man whose borderline abusive discipline was rooted in his version of fundamentalist Christianity. John's Dunbar life was spent performing household chores, completing homework (he could speak four languages by college - Latin, Greek, French and English) and memorizing the Bible (he could recite 3/4 of the Old Testament and he knew the New Testament by heart). Every opportunity he could find, usually when his father was away, he would run off with a friend or his brother to play in the woods or simply to get into mischief either of which meant a thrashing if his father returned before he did. Life was too short for play and watching Nature, John's father would remind him: there was a special place in hell for children who wasted their time with such idleness.

It looked like much of this would change when one night at dinner in February 1848 Daniel told John that he need not bother with his studies since they would be going to America in the morning. John had heard about the U.S., it was a time when others from Dunbar were migrating. At 11 years old, he was thrilled with the prospect of the adventure - the trip there, a new home, new friends. He had no idea of the work that would be required.

Daniel took the older children and left his wife and the twin girls at home - they would join them later, after they found land and built a house. Entering through New York, they made their way north and then west, settling in Portage, Wisconsin. In so many ways, John's youth would be one of extremes. The farm that his family lived on was filled with fantastic sights and opportunities - he could see and do things that he had only dream about when in Dunbar, and now it was all right there for him. If he could ever find the time. With little else to do but clear the land, build a home and prepare for the family's arrival, John's father became obsessed with the daily tasks and John was his principal point of focus. It was common for John to put in 14 hours of hard labor (the most sensational was when he hand dug a 90 foot well and nearly died doing it) - and if he dared to ask for a break or a favor, he father would quote scripture and beat him, reminding him that his purpose was to make like Saint Paul. All of this would eventually help to shape John's understanding of work and religion.

For ten years John was a good son, he stayed at home, did what his father and family asked of him. During that time he read a lot and he had turned to inventing a pretty spectacular array of household things (gauges, an automated study desk, a bed that woke you at your desired time). In other words, by 21 years old, the family and farm could no longer hold him down. After a tearful farewell with his mother and siblings, and after being told by his father that he was wasting his time, he went off to the State Fair to show his inventions, and eventually take classes at Madison. He never finished college, but out of fear of being drafted into the Union effort (he was adamantly opposed to the Civil War), he fled to Canada where he got a job working in a broom factory. He did very well, was even offered a partnership in the business. But this was not for him. And when the factory burned he knew it was time to go on.

By now, the draft had ended and the war was in its final stages. He returned home, but only to say goodbye again. He was going on to Indianapolis where the woods were thick and factory work was plentiful. He returned home briefly also in hopes of making amends with his father. But that came to a crashing halt when his father saw him off by asking "John, didn't you forget something? You forgot to pay your room and board." He didn't see his father again until Daniel's death.

John had the creativity and ability to be a industrial giant. In Indianapolis, he quickly found work and advanced rapidly, until a freak accident left him temporarily blinded in one eye. Fearing permanent damage, he promised himself that if he recovered, he would not spend his time indoors - there was too much to do with living than invent and work for others.

He did recover and in 1867 he began a walk that would change his life. Perhaps his change in attitude was revealed by the title he had written on the journal he carried: "John Muir, Planet-Earth, Universe." Not his father's son, not beholden to university, boss or customer, John Muir was about to be a child of Nature, a citizen of the world, a member of the Cosmos. Or as he put it: "I might have been a millionaire, but I chose to become a tramp!" From Indiana he walked south to Louisville and eventually through Tennessee, western North Carolina and onto Savannah. Then into northern Florida where he crossed to the Gulf of Mexico. He'd walked a 1000 miles in all. His destination was South America where he had dreamed, since childhood, of travelling the Amazon. He got as far as Cuba, but sickness forced him back to the States, back to New York - his point of entry in 1848 which now, 20 years later in 1868, would again become a point of entry into another new world called California, what would become home. By ship he traveled down the coast toward Panama and eventually up the west coast to San Francisco. He wasted no time getting into the woods. One of his first jobs was taking a herd of sheep through the Sierras. He fell in love with the woods of northern California, it became his home.

The period of 1868 - 1892 was a glorious one for Muir. His name became synonymous with the woods: he became the recognized expert on trees, mountains and glaciers. If you wanted to know anything about Nature, your path would eventually cross that of John Muir: not bad for a self-educated man! He lectured and rubbed shoulders with Presidents, scholars, scientists, industrialists and far too many politicians for his liking because you see, John Muir was actually a very private man - being on-stage, whatever form that took, made him extremely uncomfortable: only with Nature did he feel at ease.

Consequently, it was with a small degree of irony that he gave his backing and leadership to the 1892 founding of the Sierra Club. He was not much of an organizer, he really didn't belong to anything - if you wanted to be with Nature, you simply went out and did it! But the times were changing. Cities were becoming more popular, people's time and knowledge with Nature was not what it was, and all of these contributed to demands on the environment that Muir knew would eventually destroy it. The Sierra Club would provide leadership in terms of recreation, education and conservation - Muir understood that these were now becoming critical to the life of a growing and demanding nation.

And so, from 1892 until the end of his life on Christmas Eve 1914, John Muir devoted his life not as he'd wanted - to spending it with Nature - but to protecting and conserving Nature from those whom he thought might ruin in. While he enjoyed many wonderful preservation victories, the last conversation project - opposition to the damn at Hetch-Hetchy - was one that ended in bitter defeat and disillusionment.

Near the end of his days, someone asked John Muir if he could name the greatest moments of his life. He named two and they say so much more than the actual events -they give us insight into who Muir was and what shaped his life and views.

First, during his time in Canada, while on an early spring hike, swashing about an Ontario swamp, he found the rare orchid Calypso borealis. He was so overcome with its simple beauty that he knelt next to it and wept for joy! He immediately wrote his friends wishing to share his good news. - he described in detail not only the plant but the entire event! One of them sent his description to a local paper resulting in his first published work. (Wilkins, 40) You could say, and you'd be right, that Muir had so few expectations of Nature, that he merely wanted to enjoy its simplicity - its giveness - that he presumed nothing but took it at face value. So when he discovered something that was so intricate and beautiful as that Canadian orchid, he was overwhelmed. And yet, his expectations of Nature were high: I know he wouldn't use these words, but it was as though he expected to be entertained, he expected to lose himself in its Beauty and wildness. Clearly this happened (in the piece I shared earlier) when he climbed a 100 foot Douglas Fur in order to feel the full effect of a mountain wind storm - he describes the event as though it was an amusement park ride! This was not unusual for Muir - he took the kind of risks that today we would expect from no one. But every time his adventures with Nature affirmed his bedrock belief that nothing could outdo it: he believed that Nature was the cure for emotional, spiritual, physical and social disease - just give Nature a chance and it will work wonders! He thought of himself as living proof: he had been raised in an oppressive, punitive, stifling and rigid home, which for anyone else could have led to a miserable existence. But here he was, having the time of life, liberated and loving every minute of it.

The other "greatest moment" in his life came in 1871 when he spent several days with the Concord Sage, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Muir had been introduced to the works of Emerson (and Thoreau) when in Madison - ever since his University days Emerson had been high on Muir's list. He had read everything by him, his favorites being the essays "Self-Reliance," "Nature," and "The American Scholar." Some have even tried to argue that Muir was in fact an Emerson transcendentalist. And at first this is what I thought (I would have even gone so far as to say that had Muir been a churchgoer, the only place he would have felt at ease was in a Unitarian or Universalist Church). But he went farther than Emerson was willing to go (and farther than most UUs) - Muir thought that Emerson was still too human focused and this was a mistake. As is very clear from Muir's thoughts about western religion's belief that humankind is at the center of the cosmos, he thought Emerson made a good start but it was merely a start. John Muir was a pantheist - God is Nature, Nature is Beauty (he capitalized all those in order to leave no doubt). He and his wife agreed that he would do his children's religious education and he taught them by taking them to the woods and mountains to experience religion first hand. His Natured-centered theology remained his cutting edge and led him to conclude, as had indigenous peoples worldwide, that there is a unity to all living things so that "when we try to pick out anything in Nature, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." 116 years later Unitarian Universalists embraced this theology and called it the interdependent web of all living things. Emerson loved this about him - Muir was everything he'd hope for. In fact at one point, he suggested that Muir move to Boston so as to become the editor of Thoreau's works. Emerson kept a list he called "My Men," and unbeknownst to Muir, Emerson had added Muir's name to the list soon before he (Emerson) died.

Emerson saw in John Muir what has only more recently come to light for us - that Muir was the quintessential American hero. First, beginning with his trip to Canada and then his 1000 mile walk to the Gulf, he chose to reinvent himself, he transformed himself from what he had been toward what he would become. And the context within which he accomplished his rebirth was Nature: he saw himself as one with the cosmos: "John Muir, Planet-Earth, Universe." He was a child of Nature and took great offense when others chose to bruise his voiceless loved one. And so he gave his voice to Nature - in speaking, writing, in all his actions, he gave Nature standing. Up until the end, he slew most of the monsters he met along the way, being reborn with every victory. But his last battle he lost, he could not beat the city of San Francisco's determination to damn and flood a Yosemite valley. Yet, it was in this defeat that, like all mythic heroes, he was able to be transformed yet again, even in death.

And like the role of every great mythic hero, their story is a rhetorical one, asking us what we have done with life. Frederick Turner writes in a Preface to one of Muir's books: "Every person is enlightened, but wishes they weren't. Every person knows they must love their enemies and sell all they have and give to the poor, but they don't wish to know it - so we ask questions. John Muir is a hero because in the sudden silence of the valley he so loved he knew that for him the time had come to cease asking the questions and to answer the call, bearing witness to his truth. Potential heroes as all of us are and facing our own individual decisions, it is this heroism of his that we seek contact with. Poised on the sword's edge with an obscure safety on one side and the certainty of defeat on the other, he chose defeat and in doing that continues to remind us of our own best possibilities." (MFS, xvii)

In this way, on his birthday this Friday, on Saturday's 30^th anniversary of Earth Day, we each might wish to consider how it is that we are "Being John Muir."

Sources used for this sermon:

John Muir, Stickeen

________., My First Summer in the Sierra.

________., The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.

________., Travels in Alaska.

Edwin Way Teal, ed., The Wilderness World of John Muir.

Thurman Wilkins., John Muir: Apostle of Nature.

Linnie Marsh Wolfe., Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir.