James Baquet

    Whenever Earth Day rolls around, I think of John Muir (1838-1914), a Scottish man who moved to California in 1868. He had lived in Canada for a couple of years, and walked from Indiana to Florida. He visited Cuba, returned to New York, and then took a ship from there to Panama. He crossed the isthmus overland and arrived in San Francisco at age 30. A month later he was in what is now Yosemite National Park — a park established later, in 1890, largely due to his urging.

    Although Yellowstone had been founded 18 years earlier, Muir became known as the “Father of the National Parks” due to his activism for Yosemite’s founding. Yosemite is located in California’s Sierra Nevada Range, and in 1892 Muir founded the Sierra Club, today one of America’s leading organizations for conservation of the environment, and a major promoter of modern Earth Day celebrations.

    So closely was Muir’s life wrapped up with the Sierra Nevadas that he also became known as “John of the mountains,” and his biographer wrote that he has become “one of the patron saints of 20th-century American environmental activity.”

    In addition to living in the Yosemite area from time to time, Muir also hiked and camped throughout the mountains, and wrote eloquently of his experiences. There is a 211-mile trail through the range named the “John Muir Trail,” and numerous landmarks bear his name, such as Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, and Muir Glacier.

    Let me end with a passage from Muir’s 1912 book, “The Yosemite”:

    “[It] seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after 10 years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.”

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. a row of mountains

    2. activity meant to influence political decisions

    3. people who protect a particular thing or activity

    4. looking like a rainbow

    5. with moving expression

    6. across the ground, not by sea or air

    7. red light seen in mountains after sunset

    8. narrow strip of land with water on either side, and connecting two larger pieces of land

    9. person who encourages people to support something

    10. strongly suggesting something