What's New

2026 January 4

In Children's Books, Biographies:

  • Lucke, Abraham, John Muir The Father of National Parks Biography, 2025.

2025 June 15

In Influential People in John Muir's Life, John Muir Genealogy:

2025 April 26

In Copyright Status of the Writings of John Muir:

  • Updated public domain references and relevant dates.

In Favorite Quotations:

  • Added variation for the quote "In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks" (Originally published as "In every walk with Nature one receives far more than thet seek"
  • Added clarifying language about the variations of Muir's writings by his editors, publishers, and by Muir himself.

2025 April 10

In Songs About John Muir, and Music:

  • Added George Robinson's song John and Rachel (2020): A joint tribute to two historic environmental heroes, John Muir and Rachel Carson, who never met in this life.

2025 February 15

In Film and Video:

  • Added entry for Yellowstone to Yosemite with Kevin Costner (2025): A 3 part limited series focuses on the story of John Muir and his epic 1903 camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt. The series travels from Glacier Point to El Capitan to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to Yosemite Falls, with spectacular visuals of the iconic geology, flora, and fauna of present-day Yosemite. Interspersed with this, in the first part, is how Theodore Roosevelt grew up to love the wild, and aksed John Muir to lead him on a camping trip in Yosemite. Part two focuses on the life of John Muir, and how Muir showed the President the marvels of Yosemite and stimulated him to protect the wild places of Yosemite and the rest of America. The third part tells the sad story of the Native Americans in Yosemite, but ends with the good story of how Muir's journey with Roosevelt led to the president signing legislation that added Yosemite Valley to the National Park System, and using the Antiquities Act to create many national monuments from Devils Tower to Petrified Forest to the Grand Canyon. After the camping trip with John Muir, Roosevelt ultimately created 150 national forests, five national parks, and preserved 230 million acres of land. This series premiered on the Fox Nation streaming service.

2024 December 26

In Apps, AI and Virtual Reality:

  • Added Selections from John Muir "rebound" by Bill McKibben, by Rebind Publishing. This initiative pairs a contemporary world-class expert with a classic work, and combining that with technology similar to ChatGPT to replicate the dialogue between a student and the expert.

2024 April 25

available on Bibliographic Resources, Children's Books:

  • Added entry for Kelley, Janice, Inspired by John Muir: A Guide to Studying Nature, Capturing Stories and Advocating for Wild Places, 2020.

2024 April 23

In Favorite Quotations:

  • Added quote "In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks" and two citations for its source.

In Historical and Literary Analyses

  • Added the book Wurtz, Mike, John Muir's Grand Yosemite: Musings & Sketches (Yosemite Conservancy, 2020).

2024 March 6

In Film and Video:

2024 March 2

In Songs About John Muir:

  • Added Hiking with John (YouTube) by Dan Rush, on the 2024 "Dan and Cindy" album Heartwood.

2024 January 14

In Favorite Quotations:

  • Added quote attributed to John Muir by C. Nelson Hackett from the 1908 Sierra Club Outing to Kern River region saying hiking is a vile word! with Muir preferring the term saunter.

2023 December 21

In Songs Inspired by John Muir:

2023 November 30

In Favorite Quotations:

  • Added Muir's "Hiking" quote ("I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike...") - from "A Parable of Sauntering" from The Mountain Trail and Its Message by Albert W. Palmer (1911)

2023 November 28

In Brother Cornelius, John Muir Gravesite:

  • Added a photo and paragraph about Brother Cornelius being a close friend of the Muir family, including Muir's grandson Robert Hanna, who named one of his sons "Neil" in honor of Brother Cornelius.

2023 September 18

In Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, Book Chapters Featuring John Muir:

  • Added Parsell, Diana P., Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees (Oxford University Press, 2023): Chapter 9 of this book, the first book-length biography of Eliza Scidmore, "Among the Scientists" deals extensively with Scidmore's friendship and time spent with John and Louie Muir, especially with reference ot explorations in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

2023 September 8

In Book Chapters Featuring John Muir:

2023 September 2

In Podcasts and Audiobooks:

2023 August 18

In John Muir Misquoted:

  • Added clarification to expose the inaccuracy of a recent source which brazenly attributed the "into the forest I go to lose my mind and save my soul" misquote to a specific date in John Muir's journal - July 27, 1869 - explaining that a careful examination of the original of the entry for that date reveals nothing approximating it whatsoever.

2023 June 30

In Podcasts and Audiobooks:

  • Added entry for 2022 edition of Travels in Alaska by John Muir, narrated by Darren Roebuck.

2023 June 25

In Apps, AI and Virtual Reality:

  • Added description and links for "Experience Yosemite," a 3D immersive virtual reality experience offered in-person at the Yosemite Cinema in Oakhurst, California. Also deleted broken links for other elements on this page.

2023 May 16

In Songs Inspired by John Muir,  song entry Come Back Home by Jonathan Sprout & Dave Kinnoin:

2023 May 8

In Bibliographic Resources, Children's Books:

  • Added entry and book cover image for Mattern, Joanne John Muir, Abdo Publshing, 2014.
  • Added entry and book cover image for Devara, Czeena (author), Bane, Jeff (illustrator), John Muir (My Early Library: My Itty-Bitty Bio), 2018.

 

2023 March 25

In Mountain Days, the John Muir Musical:

  • Added links to YouTube version of the Original Cast CD and performances from Illinois and Arizona since the original California production.

2023 March 21

In Historical and Literary Analyses

  • Added the book King, Dean, Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite (Scribner, 2023), which tells about Muir's friendship and collaboration with Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of the Century Magazine which led to the preservation of Yosemite.

2023 March 14

In Book Chapters Featuring John Muir:

  • Added Manna, Salvatore John, "Chapter 6: Muir" in Glorious Trees: Alfred Russel Wallace in California, Calaveras History Publishing (2017), which tells about Muir's meeting with the co-discoverer of natural selection on May 28,1887.

In Stickeen: John Muir's Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier:

  • Added Stickeen: L'aventure d'un chien et d'un glacier (French translation by publisher Les Editions Blanche de Peuterey, 2023) and Stickeen Die Geschichte eines Hundes, a German translation by Ursula Maria Ewald (Engelsdorfer Verlag, Leipzig, 2023).

2021 August 24

In Influential People in John Muir's Life:

  • Added new entry for Ah Fong, the Chinese cook the Muir family employed for many years..
  • Updated entry for William Kent regarding his donation of Muir Woods and his discriminatory policies concerning Asian immigration.

2021 August 19

In Notable People Influenced by John Muir:

2021 August 17

In Gifford Pinchot, Biographies:

  • Updated content and corrected links; added entries for Natural Rivals: John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the Creation of America's Public Lands by John Clayton (2019)

2021 July 4

In John Muir Gravesite:

  • Added new photographs, a video, and updated text information.