For the Love of the Mountains

"The mountains are calling and I must go" has become a mainstay as decals on the backs of Jeeps and 4X4 trucks covered in mud and even the occasional car that has never seen a forest road like the one before. When John Muir penned these famous words that describes the hearts desires of those that love the steep bluffs, rocky ledges, woodlands of hardwoods and deciduous trees, and thus are always called to the mountains. I would like to re-maintain this blog to reflect my admiration for the beauty God created in the Appalachian mountains and for the time being I show that I'm still alive and kicking and learning to worship a magnificent God while doing so. For now a little history of John Muir's famous quote, only one of many others.

Below is a copy of the letter Muir wrote to his sister that holds the origins of Muir's famous quote:

Dear Sister Sarah:
I have just returned from the longest and hardest trip I have ever made in the mountains, having been gone over five weeks. I am weary, but resting fast; sleepy, but sleeping deep and fast; hungry, but eating much. For two weeks I explored the glaciers of the summits east of here, sleeping among the snowy mountains without blankets and with but little to eat on account of its being so inaccessible. After my icy experiences it seems strange to be down here in so warm and flowery a climate.

I will soon be off again, determined to use all the season in prosecuting my researches–will go next to Kings River a hundred miles south, then to Lake Tahoe and adjacent mountains, and in winter work in Oakland with my pen.

The Scotch are slow, but some day I will have the results of my mount mountain studies in a form in which you all will be able to read and judge of them. In the mean time I write occasionally for the Overland Monthly, but neither these magazine articles nor my first book will form any finished part of the scientific contribution that I hope to make. . . . The mountains are calling and I must go, and I will work on while I can, studying incessantly.

My love to you all, David and the children and Mrs. Galloway who though shut out from sunshine yet dwells in Light. I will write again when I return from Kings River Canyon. The leaf sent me from China is for Cecelia.

Farewell, with love everlasting 

John Muir

Muir and his companion

Muir's slender long body is like a tree trunk naturally fitting amongst the forest and the depths of the crevices in his face like the valleys and a white beard mirroring the billowing mountains that crown the mountain peaks.

On this day the mountains called me deeper into the wilderness. The road to Buck Bald, north of Turtletown, Tennessee.

Sincerely,