My First Summer in the Sierra, by John Muir

Long before Donald Miller pondered prayer on a road trip in a Volkswagen, John Muir took a journey through the Sierra that not only changed his life, but continues to influence ours. His vivid descriptions of God’s creation in My First Summer in the Sierra foreshadows his founding of the Sierra Club.

At thirty-one years old, Muir was already sick of working as an industrial engineer. Wanting to get back to nature, he took a job herding Pat Delancey’s sheep from California’s Central Valley to the Yosemite Valley. Although Muir had previously enrolled in the “university of the wilderness,” walking from Indiana to Florida, he knew nothing about sheepherding and worried they’d get eaten by wolves if left in his care. Delancey reassured him that he actually wanted someone to keep an eye on the shepherd.

Referring to the sheep as “hoofed locusts,” Muir’s primary objective was to study the ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada. He became entranced by the pristine beauty of the region, as he traveled through Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana, and Mono Lake. In My First Summer in the Sierra, his diary of his adventures, he describes the snowcapped mountains, lush valleys, waterfalls, and towering fir trees that dazzled his eyes.

Nature opens Muir’s eyes to God. “The horizon is bounded and adorned by a spiry wall of pines, every tree harmoniously related to every other; definite symbols, divine hieroglyphics written with sunbeam,” he writes in his diary on June 4, 1869. Ten days later, upon discovering a waterfall, he writes, “The place seemed holy where one might hope to see God.” Even within the thick of the mountains, he revels in “Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show God.” The most poignant passage related to finding God in nature comes toward the end of his travels, on September 7:

No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the Cathedral [Peak] itself, a temple displaying Nature’s best masonry and sermons in stones. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing! This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshipper. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars. And lo, here at last in front of the Cathedral is blessed cassiope, ringing her thousands of sweet-toned bells, the sweetest church music I have ever enjoyed.

Given Muir’s religious experience in the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite, it’s no wonder he went on to fight so hard to protect it. Adamantly opposed to letting loggers and domesticated animals overrun the great outdoors, he founded the environmental organization the Sierra Club, influenced Theodore Roosevelt to preserve America’s landscape, and helped set up national parks like the Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, the Petrified Forrest, and Sequoia National Park. Today, in Northern California’s Redwood Forest there is Muir Woods National Monument in honor of his conservationist efforts.

Besides being a captivating work of nature writing, My First Summer in the Sierra encourages us to experience God through the wondrous works of His hands.