The Early Life of John Muir
John Muir (April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914) was born in Dunbar, Scotland where he expressed an early love for nature.
"When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild ... I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the shore to gaze and wonder at the shells and the seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of old Dunbar Castle." -John Muir (The Story of My Boyhood and Youth by John Muir, Chapter 1, 1913) |
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Muir's family moved to Wisconsin in 1849. Muir had limited education, but his mind was always working, whether exploring outdoors or inventing elaborate devices, like the “early rising machine” that “at the appointed time, tipped up his bed and dumped him on the floor” (John Muir: Biography) These inventions earned him respect at the state fair in Madison in 1860, where he met professors from the University of Wisconsin. He was accepted despite his lack of schooling; they saw his eagerness and were glad to have him. He attended three years, studying natural sciences, then left to travel the country’s wilderness.
“As a teenager, he had no time for school and little opportunity for formal study. Yet his mind hungered for knowledge. When his father grudgingly gave permission for him to rise before the rest of the family to read, he took to rising at one in the morning. He wrote, “I had gained five hours, almost half a day! ‘Five hours to myself!’ I said. ‘Five huge, solid hours!’ I can hardly think of any other event of my life, any discovery I ever made that gave birth to joy so transporting glorious as the possession of these five frosty hours.”
-Men Who Conquered by John Thomson Faris, 1922
“While at the Fair Grounds this morning we saw some very ingenious specimens of mechanism, in the form of clocks, made by Mr. John Muir, of Buffalo, Marquette County. They were without cases, and were whittled out of pine wood. The wheels moved with beautiful evenness. One registered not only hours but minutes, seconds, and days of the month. The other was in the shape of a scythe, the wheels being arranged along the part representing the blade. It was hung in a dwarf burr oak very tastefully ornamented with moss about its roots. We will venture to predict that few articles will attract as much attention as these products of Mr. Muir's ingenuity.”
-The Wisconsin State Journal, September 25, 1860.
-Men Who Conquered by John Thomson Faris, 1922
“While at the Fair Grounds this morning we saw some very ingenious specimens of mechanism, in the form of clocks, made by Mr. John Muir, of Buffalo, Marquette County. They were without cases, and were whittled out of pine wood. The wheels moved with beautiful evenness. One registered not only hours but minutes, seconds, and days of the month. The other was in the shape of a scythe, the wheels being arranged along the part representing the blade. It was hung in a dwarf burr oak very tastefully ornamented with moss about its roots. We will venture to predict that few articles will attract as much attention as these products of Mr. Muir's ingenuity.”
-The Wisconsin State Journal, September 25, 1860.