John Muir's Environmentalism

          Having never heard of John Muir or his book My First Summer in the Sierras, I really didn't know what to expect. (The fact that it was published in 1911, in the United States, gave me somewhat of an indication as to what the style may be like, but as for the content I was without any preconceived notions.) I wasn't sure if it was fiction, autobiography, epic poem or anything else. As a matter of fact, my conception of "what the book was" or in what genre it properly belongs to changed more than a few times even after I began reading it; however I am now satisfied with the category I have come up with for Muir's book: philosophical travel literature slash nature porn. (Please don't waste your time looking for this genre/section in your local bookstore.)
           I say travel literature because the journal entry-style narrative follows Muir and Co. (a herd of "hoofed locusts" and their shepherds) on their way through California's most famous and grandiose wild regions; the action of the novel is a journey (traveling). I say philosophical because along with the facts, scientific name-droppings and observations of nature recorded by Muir during his trek, the reader is treated to his thoughts, opinions, musings and interpretations as well (which in my view constitutes the most interesting part of the work). And finally I say nature porn because the whole book is more or less an orgy of all that could be called wilderness: exhaustive cataloguing of every tree, shrub, rock, river, plant, bug, grass, animal, and even cloud, down to the most mind-boggling detail, such as the exact depth and circumference of the acorn of a particular acorn-bearing tree (which tree it was exactly is beyond the scope of this blog entry). The man had a serious green fetish; the leering excitement he feels when encountering some new shrub or other borders on inappropriate.
          Up to this point I have been (half) jokingly referring to Muir's relationship to nature as that of a lover to his beloved, and indeed in many ways it is, but his relationship to nature is also just as accurately characterized as that of a devout worshipper to his or her god. Words like "glorious, noble, sublime, and holy" are routinely used by Muir to describe trees, rivers, mountain ranges and the like. Those who go into the wilderness are entering a "temple," a temple wherein the "holy mountains" and the "psalms of the falls" will undoubtedly cause one to become "devout." This is all vocabulary of the sacred, and sacred is how Muir views the natural world; his environmentalism is a worship of the natural creation.