The Yosemite

When I set out on the long excursion that finally led to California I wandered afoot and alone from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico with a plant-press on my back holding a generally southward course like the birds when they are going from summer to winter.

Sierra Club founder Muir, pioneering conservationist who a century ago fought to establish Yosemite National Park, wrote timelessly of his travels through this High Sierra wilderness. In a new edition of Muir's classic, Rowell ( Mountain Light ) offers a complementary vision in color photographs of the monumental region. Celebrating the purity of the landscape Muir loved, he unveils bare mountain peaks, snow- and mist-filled realms and the pristine particularity of nature on a smaller scale in green and scarlet dogwood foliage and a snug cache of primroses sprouting among massive rocks. An ideal accompaniment to Muir's verbal tour, the photographs, like the prose, verify that "everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.