A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

I am currently writing a novel set in Cedar Key. In my research, I discovered that John Muir had walked there (recorded in this book) and that he had become ill there. I read that his words about Cedar Key were revealing of the era and the place, so I purchased it. It was exactly what I was looking for. As someone who loves and visits Cedar Key, I felt that the writing was precise to the feel of the location. But I also enjoyed the rest of the book. How adventurous of Mr. Muir to take on this task of walking 1000 miles to the Gulf. For fortunate for him that he was able to do so. And how fortunate for me that I am able to read about it. Eva Marie Everson Things Left Unspoken: A Novel

The title sums up quite a bit of the review for me. Not only was he a brilliant naturalist and visionary, but he was a better than decent science and adventure writer. This book, thousand mile walk to the gulf, is from Muir's younger days when he basically dropped out and went exploring. He walked from Wisconsin to the gulf, shortly after the war, and literally slept wherever he felt like- hedges, roadsides, and even the occasional house. His observations on reconstruction South are all the more insightful because they are unadulterated (is that a word?) by any agenda, and have the overpowering reality of truth. While his time in the Sierras is what he is most famous for, and the mountains more rugged and inspiring, this pre-Jenkins "Walk Across America" is a tamer warm-up for reading his journals from Yosemite days. I highly recommend it as it gives the reader a bit of botany and a lot of background on Muir himself.

I thought this was a great insight into a time in our country when many things were undiscovered. Living in the south myself, it was great to hear about Bonaventure and descriptions of the people John Muir came across in his travels. If you want a sense of what nature and the southern way of life used to be like, this is the book for you.

As the human population expands the natural world around us disappears. This is a fact we mostly ignore as we go about our daily life. One day, you wake up, and discover that within your own lifetime things have been permanently altered. When John Muir made his "Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf" the U.S. was not as heavily populated as it is today, although much had changed from the time when European settlers first moved through the area he explored -- a path that stretched from Indianapolis Indiana to the Gulf just north of what is Tampa Florida today. Muir moved South in the aftermath of the Civil War, so he encountered much unrest, unhappiness, and destruction along the way. He describes not only the flora and fauna he found but the condition of humans as they struggled to rebuild their lives. He says, "My plan was to simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest." To a great extent, he was able to do that, however, he could not escape some of the realities of the world around him. For example, in Georgia, he encountered the graves of the dead, whom he says lay under a "common single roof, supported on four posts as the cover of a well, as if rain and sunshine were not regarded as blessings." A bit further he says, "I wandered wearily from dune to dune sinking ankle deep in the sand, searching for a place to sleep beneath the tall flowers, free from the insects and snakes, and above all my fellow man."Muir wonders at the teachings of those who call themselves God's emissaries, who fail to ask about God's intentions for nature. He says, "It never seems to occur to these far-seeing teachers that Natures's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more that a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of the unit--the cosmos?" Partly as a result of his writing, and the writing of other Naturalists, the National Park System came into being, and today, more trees grow on the East coast than grew in the late 1700s (American Revolution). The fight is not over, however, it has only begun. Many of those trees are "harvested" every year. Sometimes, even within National Forests they are all felled at the same time through a process called clear cutting. The lovely large oaks that Muir beheld are mostly long gone and have been replaced by Pine.

This is one of John Muir's best books (the other being _First Summer in the Sierra_). It's Muir's slightly-edited diary of his 1000-mile trip through the Southern U.S. to Florida, then Cuba. He traveled on foot observing nature and the people. The book holds your interest as it's written on the spot through the enthusistic eyes of a young man. It reminds me a little of Mark Twain's book _Roughin' It_, another story through the eye's of a young man latter to become famous (about working on antebellum riverboats).