• The mountains are calling and I must go.

• How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

• There is nothing more eloquent in nature than a mountain stream.

• Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

• The snow is melting into music.

• Rocks and waters are words of God, and so are men.

• We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love.

• I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted, they travel about as far as we do.

• The power of imagination makes us infinite.

• The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

• In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

• When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

• As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.

• So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees.

• No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

• Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

• Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, with days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

• Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

• Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.

• Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

    

BOOK CHAT

FUN FACTS!

- Though born in Dunbar, Scotland, John Muir became a California naturalist and author.

- A state park in Dunbar bears his name.

- He is called the father of America’s National Parks.

- He was a tireless conservationist and played a large role in establishing both Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks.

- He and other conservationists founded The Sierra Club.

 

AUTHOR SHARE:

In March of 2023, I had the good fortune to ride the Scottish Borders with my daughter, Ingrid. We took a day trip up to Dunbar and rode the beach at John Muir State Park. It was a blustery day and a full gallop on a giant Irish Draught Horse for me. Ingrid rode an Irish Sport Horse. I’ll never forget that day. Do you love to be out in nature?

 

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COPYRIGHT © 2024, Laurette Klier, Nana's Books, All Rights Reserved

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Reprinted with permission.