The Yosemite (Modern Library Classics)

In the spring of 1869, John Muir was looking for means of support to fund his explorations of California’s Central Valley region. A ranch owner offered him a job herding sheep in the Sierra Nevada. As he explored the region, he jotted down his keen observations of the scenic countryside, and he eventually became a guide for some of Yosemite’s most famous visitors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Muir documented these experiences in The Yosemite, first published in 1912. It is at once a vivid, accurate description of the land and a passionate homage to nature.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is a facsimile of the 1912 edition and includes the original illustrations.

Gretel Ehrlich, a native Californian, is the author of the award-winning The Solace of Open Spaces, as well as John Muir: Nature’s Visionary and This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland, among other books and essays. She lives in Wyoming and California.