Steep Trails

John Muir wrote with the ferocity of a man who had seen God in a glacier and wanted everyone to feel the same terror and delight. Steep Trails gathers essays written across decades of wandering the American West, from the granite cathedrals of Yosemite to the inner gorges of the Grand Canyon, from Utah's red deserts to Nevada's silver ranges. These are not gentle nature walks. Muir clambers into avalanches, gets lost in snowstorms, watches bighorn sheep on impossible cliffs, and returns to tell about it with the excitement of a man who has just survived something magnificent. The collection opens with a provocation: wild sheep, Muir argues, grow wool for themselves, not for human coats. Nature creates for its own purposes, not for our use. This is the spine of everything he wrote. He despises cultivation, the taming of rivers and hills, the human need to improve upon what already works. For Muir, the only beauty worth having is wild beauty. These essays helped make the case for saving Yosemite and Sequoia, bearing witness to a West that was already disappearing. Muir's passion hasn't dimmed. If you've ever stood in front of a mountain and felt small in the best possible way, his words will feel like coming home.