John Muir...

Once every hundred years or so there comes along a man or woman with such vision and such extraordinary ways, so out of step with the world as it stands, that only years later are their accomplishments recognized. John Muir was such a man.

            John Muir founded the Sierra Club, that environmentalist organization whose name has become internationally synonymous with protection of nature. John has become the legendary “guru” of preservationists everywhere. He set the pace and planted the seeds of consideration for an unspoiled America, an unspoiled world--seeds that have germinated, and a few of which are beginning to bear fruit.

            If we think of John Muir at all, we think of him in the setting of the Pacific Northwest; the high Sierras with the snow-capped peaks and tall trees; of the grandeur that is the Yosemite Valley. We know of his untiring fight to save his beloved Redwood trees. We know that he approached his crusade as would a religious zealot. Few of us realize what part Cedar Key played in his life; indeed, in saving his life!

            John Muir, by profession was a botanist whose laboratory and classroom was the entire out-of-doors. He was to plant life what Dr. Doolittle was to animals. It is safe to assume that he spoke to the ferns, argued with the brambles and embraced the oaks. He was described by a contemporary as “a man who could get lost on the city streets but could find his way thru unmapped wilderness...” 

            Like many young men, he had a dream. He wanted to explore the Orinoco and Amazon Valleys of South America and document the fabled flora of those jungles. Short on money, long on ambition, nerve and good will, he set out on foot, alone and unarmed from Kentucky for the Gulf of Mexico, for the west coast of Florida and the Cedar Keys, in September, 1867--a One Thousand Mile Trek! Until that time, John Muir had not been farther south than Indiana. He promised his mother that he would not sleep on the ground. (Little did she know!)

            Muir depended largely on the hospitality of war-ravaged and suspicious farmers for lodging and meals along the way. He hadn’t counted on bands of displaced former slaves-turned-highwaymen. Several encounters with marauders erased some of his wide-eyed innocence. He found that the native rattlesnakes were sometimes friendlier than the native humans. He met enough hospitable southerners to keep his body and spirit alive.

            He expected that once in the Cedar Keys he would board a vessel bound for Cuba and thence to South America for more study of his beloved flowers and plants which he described as “the smile of God.” John Muir was a profoundly spiritual man.

            A few days before October 23, 1867 John Muir smelled the salt in the air. Long-winged gulls met him. His mind transported him back to his native Scotland with its high bluffs and sea sprays. He was approaching the Cedar Keys. This was not Scotland! He had momentarily forgotten the magnolias and palmettos that surrounded him. It was that relentless olfactory sense so keen in childhood that screamed “Dunbar!” “Firth!” to his mind.

            Muir found himself at an empty harbor with money for passage but no vessel to board. He was feeling especially alone and none too well, having eaten little but breads for the past several weeks, drinking from murky streams and defying his mother’s wishes; sleeping on the ground, sometimes with a headstone in a cemetery for a pillow.

            “Should I continue down the coast to Tampa or Key West to find a vessel?” John Muir really had no conception or respect for distances.

            Muir did what any tourist today would do; he stopped in a local store and asked questions. He might have said “I’m trying to get to Cuba. Do you know of any boats leaving?” The shopkeeper probably gave him a beady-eyed stare, sized him up for a reputable, if strange, customer and shouted to his wife; “Hey, Mamie, tell this feller where the Hodgson’ Mill is...” 

            “Fact is, son, that the mill has a boat goin’ out in a coupla weeks. Old-Man Hodgson probably needs help down there right now. He’s got a load of timber due in Galveston and can probably use a strong back right now.”

            Whether the above dialogue actually took place is moot. The fact is that John Muir did indeed find his way to the Hodgson’s timber mill and worked for them awaiting passage on their schooner to Texas. John Muir missed that boat. John became increasingly fatigued and feverish, finally collapsing into delirium. The Hodgsons took him into their own home and nursed him with the only available means of the day: quinine and bedside manner. The malaria progressed into a complication...typhoid.

            During his convalescences John Muir learned to sail the little skiffs of the islands. He learned the local names of the wading birds, their plumage, their language. He counted the leaves on the old oaks. He described in detail the Spanish bayonet; he was enamored of the Cedar Key cactus--our prickly pear. He was fascinated by the draping Spanish moss he had met earlier in South Carolina and Georgia.

            John Muir called the Cedar Keys “a clump of palms arranged like a bouquet and placed in the sea to be kept fresh.”

            He could not have been particularly happy here; frustrated by his illness and his inability to work, hemmed in by a sea he could not ford. It was, as one might say today, “a learning experience.”

            His boat sailed for Cuba—an island more tropical than any Florida isle he had experienced. John Muir continued to suffer bouts of ague from the malaria and was exasperated that he could not trek as he had done before for long hours. The island’s heat took its toll as well. He abandoned his plan to go to South America. Instead he set his sights on California-by way of New York! 

            For John Muir, New York City was the first frightening “jungle” he had seen. He was truly afraid to lose sight of his ship and make his way to the gardens of Central Park for fear he would not be able to find the wharf again! From New York he went to California. The rest is Sierra Club history.

            John Muir never returned to Cedar Key. For us who revere this strong willed Scotsman, a man who wept openly at the beauty of nature; one who chose “the lonely way,” he will always be a favorite son.