The Mountains of California

About this book

Muir's enduring celebration of the Sierra Nevada mountains he dedicated his life to saving - a classic work that becomes a model for three generations of nature writers. Muir's ebullient spirit and love of nature infuse these accounts of visiting Yosemite Valley, Kings Canyon, sequoia groves, and Mount Whitney. Also included are visits to two famous Cascades peaks, Mount Shasta and Mount St. Helens. Blending keen observations of flora, geography, and geology, the natural forces that shape the landscape, and the changing seasons, Muir paints a timeless portrait of the wilderness he called "the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen." With a naturalist's eye and a poet's sensitivity, he extols "the richness of the life it cherishes, the depth and grandeur of its sculpture, its magnificent forest-crowned ridges, the summit-peaks so clear and high in the sky, glaciers still at work in the shadows of the peaks, thousands of lakes and meadows [that] shine and bloom, canyons to a depth of from 2000 to 5000 feet, in which flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers." He also recalls a variety of adventures, from scaling Mount Ritter to a near-fatal glacier crossing.