John Muir was a naturalist who spent many years living in California's Yosemite area. He explored the glacier carved canyons and mountains and studied its wildlife. Muir was instrumental in saving Yosemite Valley and the surrounding mountains and meadows from development and getting the area turned into America's second National Park. Which in time started the worldwide National Park movement.

"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away;"

"It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these western woods ... God cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods, but he cannot save them from fools"

"Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind, but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water."

"Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending Pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or, escaping over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on flame-like crests."

"After a mile or so of this memorable cliff work I approached Yosemite Creek, admiring its easy, graceful, confident gestures as it comes bravely forward in its narrow channel, singing the last of its mountain songs on its way to its fate--a few rods more over the shining granite, then down half a mile in snowy foam to another world, to be lost in the Merced, where climate, vegetation, and inhabitants, all are different. Emerging from its last gorge, it glides in wide lace-like rapids down a smooth incline into a pool where it seems to rest and compose its gray, agitated waters before taking the grand plunge ..."

"While perched on that narrow niche I was not distinctly conscious of danger. The tremendous grandeur of the fall in form and sound and motion, acting at close range, smothered the sense of fear ..."

"Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest fountains, enjoying the charm that every explorer feels in Nature's untrodden wildernesses. The voice of the mountains were still asleep. The wind scarce stirred the pine-needles. The sun was up, but it was yet too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell here. Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams came streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the col, glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes ..."

"There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties."

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising."

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

"No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening--still all is Beauty!"

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter."

Yosemite Falls, "last pool"

Yosemite Falls, "plunge to valley"

Note: photos were taken in late summer, when water is lowest, and Yosemite Falls Channel is most accessible.

View from South Entrance to Yosemite Valley

More interesting quotes from John Muir

Learn more about the Writings of John Muir

Link to Sierra Club's John Muir page

Link to John Muir among the Indians

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