John Muir Quotes about Yosemite to Inspire the Inner Mountaineer in You
There are places so intertwined with a person that you can’t think of one without bringing up the other. Sir Edmund Hilary and Mount Everest. Henry David Thoreau and the Walden Pond. For Yosemite National Park, it's John Muir. No one has described the beauty and been such a champion for it to become a park than him. To really appreciate his love for it, here’s a few of John Muir’s quotes about Yosemite.
“The famous Yosemite Valley … includes the head waters of the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, two of the most songful streams in the world; innumerable lakes and waterfalls and smooth silky lawns; the noblest forests, the loftiest granite domes, the deepest ice-sculptured canons, the brightest crystalline pavements, and snowy mountains soaring into the sky twelve and thirteen thousand feet.”
Photo by: Breeze Turner
“So harmonious and finely balanced are even the mightiest of these monarchs in all their proportions that there is never anything overgrown or monstrous about them. Seeing them for the first time you are more impressed with their beauty than their size, their grandeur being in great part invisible; but sooner or later it becomes manifest to the loving eye, stealing slowly on the senses like the grandeur of Niagara or of the Yosemite Domes.”
Photo by: Annie Starkey - Giant Sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove
“The day after the “storm” (a most damnable name for the flowering of the clouds) I lay out on the meadow to eat a grand meal of newmade beauty, and about midday I suddenly wanted the outside mountains, and so cast off my coat and ran up towards Glacier Point. I soon was near [the] top and was very hungry for the view that was so grandly mingled and covered with snow and sky, but the snow was now more than ten feet deep and dusty and light as winter fog. I tried to wallow and swim it, but the slope was so steep that I always fell back and sank out of sight, and I was fully baffled. I had a glorious slide downwards.”
Photo by: Local Freshies
“The mountains are calling and I must go and I will work on while I can, studying incessantly.”
We hope these quotes inspire you to delve deeper into who John Muir was. To not just visit Yosemite's main attractions but to experience every acre like he did, using all of your senses. Happy Trails!
About The Author:
Alex founded localfreshies.com® in 2014 to be the #1 website providing the “local scoop” on where to eat, drink & play in mountain towns throughout North America. When he’s not writing and executing marketing strategies for small businesses & agencies, he’s in search of the deepest snow in the winter and tackiest dirt in the summer.