Discoveries: Arts and Culture

What motivated John Muir to protect America's wild places one has to return to "that glorious Wisconsin wilderness" of the Sierra Club founder's boyhood, in the years of Muir's arrival in rural Marquette County, from Scotland, at age 11, and his departure for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, my alma mater, --50 miles from his home -- at age 22.   I used to retreat to the lookout on the UW Madison campus overlooking the lake, which is named for John Muir, to read and meditate when a student in the mid-60s and early 70's.   In Muir's words, " This sudden splash into pure wilderness- baptism in Nature's warm heart -- how utterly happy it made us!"  Muir wrote this entry in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.   "Here without knowing it we were still at school; every wild lesson a love lesson not whipped but charmed us into us ." This month's Sierra reported this observation about Muir, who is more honored and remembered in Wi...

MCConnell (who is a kind of celebrity due to his tv show on Nature for many years) introducing John Muir speaker  Harold W. Wood, Jr. Chair Sierra Club  John Muir Education Team.  Webmaster, Sierra Club John Muir Exhibition  on the web: www. johnmuir.info  Biography of John Muir  Harold Wood took us to Dunbar, Scotland , where John Muir is regarded as a "native son", and one of their most famous citizens, with the exception of Robert Burns, who was a favorite poet of John Muir. They have created a John Muir history hiking and cycling trail in Scotland, as well as a John Muir Way, in Dunbar, and have preserved his birthplace as a house museum, and have added an extensive education museum which since 2012 has had 100,000 visitors,  along with creation of curricula in the schools to educate children to see him as a model who preserves the environment.  This includes a graphic novel used in the high schools, and teachers research avail...