the john muir exhibit - people - john burroughs

John Burroughs

1837-1921

John Muir (left) with John Burroughs  

• Literary naturalist and essayist from the Catskills of New York.

• John Burroughs was one of America's foremost nature writers. He was a biographer of Walt Whitman and is famous for his love of birds.

• Burroughs accompanied Muir on the Alaska Harriman Expedition and other trips, including visits to Grand Canyon and Yosemite.

• Burroughs wrote of Muir after their second meeting: "He is a poet and almost a Seer. Something ancient and far-away in the look of his eyes. He could not sit down in the corner of the landscape, as Thoreau did, he must have a continent for his playground..... Probably the truest lover of Nature.... we have yet had... [But here is] a little prolix... Ask him to tell you his famous dog story and you will get the whole theory of glaciation thrown in."
  

• After Muir's death, Burroughs made this comment: "A unique character - greater as a talker than as a writer - he loved personal combat and shone in it. He hated writing and composed with difficulty, though his books have charm of style; but his talk came easily and showed him at his best. I shall greatly miss him."
  

Travels with Muir and Burroughs as told by Clara Barrus:

• Camping with Burroughs and Muir by Clara Barrus (1914)
• With John o' the Birds and John o' the Mountains by Clara Barrus (1910)
• In the Yosemite with John Muir by Clara Barrus (1912)

• Visit the John Burroughs Website.

Photograph courtesy of John Muir National Historic Site Museum Collections, U. S. National Park Service.

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