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Acknowledgments

I AM FILLED WITH GREAT GRATITUDE to many people who have helped bring this book to fruition. First, of course, is John Muir himself, whose magnificent writings have inspired and informed my life. I am grateful to the host of Muir scholars and biographers, present and past, who have written on John Muir’s life, especially Linnie Marsh Wolfe and William Frederic Badè whose books still set a high standard of scholarship, and Muir’s most recent biographers, Frederick Turner and Donald Worster. I am grateful to the Sierra Club and the Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of the Pacific for making available online most of John Muir’s works.

Special thanks are due to my hiking companion and friend, Cynthia Shattuck, who urged me to stop talking about John Muir and to start compiling this book. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to three talented friends whose patient reading of the entire manuscript resulted in many valuable suggestions: David Bingham, inspired by John Muir, is a self-described “tree hugger,” the founder of Salem Land Trust, and serves on numerous volunteer boards and commissions involved with community participation in environmental protection, policies, and planning; Hilary Thimmesh, OSB, President Emeritus, and former professor of English at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota; and George Willauer, former professor of English at Connecticut College who taught courses on nature writers.

I am grateful to the Collegeville Institute at St. John’s University in Minnesota for providing accommodation, warm fellowship, and a beautiful natural environment to begin researching the book. Especially I would like to thank the Institute staff: Director Donald Ottenhoff, Carla Durand, and Elisa Schneider.

Librarians have helped immensely in locating sometimes difficult-to-find sources, and I am especially grateful to Bev Ehresmann at the Alquin Library at St. John’s University and Jackie Hemond of the Salem Free Public Library, in Connecticut. Bob and JoAnne Pokrinchak and Yuanjin Chen kept my temperamental computer going long enough to finish the book.

Hans Christoffersen, the editorial director of the Liturgical Press, helped me find the right publisher for this book. I have been hugely fortunate in all the support and encouragement I received from Wilderness Press, especially from editors Susan Haynes who was insightful and enthusiastic from the start, and Donna Poehner whose expertise and many fine suggestions improved the book; also for the artistry of designers Annie Long and Scott McGrew. Along with Molly Merkle, they have all been wonderful to work with.

As always, family members have provided inspiration and sanity, along with lots of laughter and joy, during the compiling of the book. They are: Virginia Rowthorn and her husband, Michael Apel, and their children, Anna and Nathaniel; Perry and Hayley Zinn-Rowthorn and their children, Jackson, Beckett, and Juliette; and Chris and Hiroe Rowthorn and their children, Kieran William and Hannah Anne.

As always, my greatest thanks are reserved for my husband, Jeffery, who first discovered John Muir with me on a weekend camping trip many years ago to Yosemite National Park. By coincidence, just last week a tattered brown paper bag dropped from that trip’s hiking guide with two John Muir quotations written on it: “One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of nature…inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look at any of her operations, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty.” I had scribbled those words, and on the same scrap, Jeffery had copied another Muir quotation, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for I found, I was really going in.”

We are still out for that walk, and I heartily thank all who have traveled with me along the way, those mentioned here and everyone else who has been part of this joyous journey.