World famous as a naturalist, geologist, writer and explorer, this "Man of the Mountains", defender of our primeval forests, was instrumental in obtaining vigorous support of the conservation movement and in the establishment of such great national parks as Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, Mount Rainier.

Even as a boy in his native Scotland, John Muir was fascinated by nature, and when his family came to the United States, settling on a Wisconsin farm, he was delighted by the glorious untouched wilderness which he immediately set out to explore. Young Muir had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and read books on a variety of subjects. He also taught himself algebra, geometry and trigonometry. Inspired by his grasp of mathematics, his head became filled with projects and inventions and he made all kinds of clocks, a self-setting sawmill, a mechanical desk, barometers, thermometers. Encouraged by prizes he won at state fairs, he left home and supported himself by selling his inventions and doing odd jobs, hoping to earn enough money to become a physician. At the age of twenty-one he entered the University of Wisconsin to study medicine, but he became interested in botany and geology and abandoned medicine for his life's work—the pursuit of the wilderness and the great outdoors.

This interest sent John Muir on a 1,000 mile-walk all over the United States, which finally led him to the beautiful Yosemite Valley and the High Sierras, to which he returned again and again throughout his life. Always in search of new botanical specimens, rivers, glaciers, plant life, but especially forests and their trees, his travels took him to far-off places around the world—Africa, New Zealand, Russia, China, the South Seas, India, Egypt.

When greedy lumber interests, sheepmen and ranchers ravaged the forests, Muir wrote newspaper and magazine articles urging Americans to an awareness of the destruction of their natural resources and aroused conservationists to enforce protective legislation. Through his work he met such men as Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Burroughs, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and being a modest man it always surprised him that his writings were compared to those of Thoreau and other outstanding naturalists whom he admired but never thought to emulate.

In his wanderings John Muir had many exciting and dramatic experiences—he was trapped on an Alaskan glacier, he climbed Mount Shasta alone in the dead of winter and was caught in a violent storm for two days, he discovered living glaciers and a petrified forest 160,000,000 years old.

This is the true and thrilling story of a man dedicated to saving God's wilderness, whose courage and sagacity were tested by incredible physical hardship. Our national parks today are a living memorial to a selfless man who spent his whole life fighting for the perpetuation of America's great mountains and forests.

From the book

Imaginary conversations about such a man would never do; therefore, in this book there is not a single word he is made to say which is not authentic. I do not think anyone will wish to quarrel with me over this—his own talk could not be improved. I have also woven into the texture of my narrative certain bright threads—and sometimes more—from his own writings. Perhaps they will send some of my readers to his books, if they do not already know them.

Author's note from the book