Our National Parks

John Muir wrote these sketches with the urgency of a man who knew wilderness could be lost. First published in the Atlantic Monthly around the turn of the twentieth century and gathered into this volume in 1901, they document the wildest corners of a young nation still learning what it had. Six of the ten pieces focus on Yosemite, that cathedral of granite and waterfalls that Muir practically willed into protected existence. But he also ventures to Yellowstone's geothermal marvels, the towering sequoias of California's interior, and what is now Kings Canyon, each landscape rendered with the reverent attention of a naturalist who saw the divine in stone, water, and ancient tree. Muir doesn't simply describe these places; he argues for them, convincing readers that these public lands belong to the people and must be preserved not just for beauty but for the nation's soul. More than a century later, his passion feels prophetic, his warnings about commercial exploitation of wild places now urgent rather than merely wise.