Nature's Temple

By Chris Highland

Meditations from John Muir Book Cover

Meditations of John Muir:
Nature's Temple
By Chris Highland

Publisher: Wilderness Press
1200 Fifth St.
Berkeley, CA 97710
(800) 443-7227
Price: $11.95
Status: First printing, August, 2001;
Second printing, January, 2002.
Third Printing, July 2002.
ISBN: 0-89997-285-3
4 1/2 x 7, 72 Pages

Publisher's Press Release

"Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature."

John Muir's words sing exuberantly about the natural world. Here is a collection of thoughts from a man who has inspired generations of seekers. Read these meditations on the trail, from your campsite, by a swirling river, or in a peaceful Sequoia grove. A carry-along size allows you to take it with you as you journey into the open-air temple of Nature.

It's hard to imagine John Muir sitting quietly, writing at his desk overlooking his orchards in Martinez, California, far away from his heart's home in the highlands of the mountains. Yet he wrote and his pen gave us a new scent of the sacred, a fresh poetry of our home in the natural world. From his desk he could gaze out over his plantings and recall countless journeys to the fields of the Lord. Until his death on Christmas Eve 1914, Muir sauntered the planet and scribbled of his sauntering, handing over to us a harvest of experiences that call out to us with a voice not unlike a prophet or mystic. In his wisdom we rediscover something hidden or lost in the Nature nearby.

No one could follow in Muir's bounding footsteps. As he once said, we merely inhabit a spinning globe that leaves no track through the universe. Yet in a greater sense, each of us can bound along with Muir. We can explore the wilderness near and far and fill our lungs with the electric air that energized Muir. We can drink from the same singing streams and be sheltered by the same living temples. We are bound to Muir as we spring our steps into the boundless sanctuary of Nature - even into ourselves. This small book contains but a handful of seeds from the hand and mind of this man who has inspired generations of soul-travelers. Carry it in your pocket; read by starlight; look to the fields, the orchards, the forests, the mountains. Find your temple. Climb!

Meditations of John Muir is available at Muir Woods National Monument, the John Muir Historic Site bookstore in Martinez, Yosemite National Park, online from Barnes and Noble, Amazon or Wilderness Press or ask for it at your favorite bookstore.

Chris Highland is a chaplain, a former minister, a spiritual scootcher who has led expeditions into wisdom traditions, along mystic trails and heretic paths, for many a year. A graduate of Seattle Pacific University with a degree in Religion and Philosophy, Chris came to Marin County, California to earn his Masters at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo. His long journey as a counselor has taken him from schools to jails to the streets, and his adventure of the heart has led him from the Cascades to the Sierras to the Rockies, and to the Highlands of Scotland.

Inspirational excerpts from Chris Highland, John Muir and others, are available on Chris's Natures Temple website.

To contact the author please send light-mail to naturetemple@earthlink.net

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