Who was John Muir? You’ve probably seen his immortal line “the mountains are calling and I must go", quoted countless times on Instagram or printed on any number of hoodies or camping mugs. You may have heard of the John Muir Trail, a 211 mile (340km) long-distance trek across the High Sierra backcountry and wilderness areas. You might even know him as the ‘father of the national parks’ or as ‘John of the mountains’. So, what was it that ingrained him so deeply into the wider consciousness of the great outdoors community?
First and foremost, Muir was a lover of nature and the wild places, enjoying nothing more than donning his hiking boots and exploring the backcountry. It was this burning passion that drove him to campaign for the protection of certain landscapes. Through his writing, his activism and his exploits, he became the figurehead of the modern nature conservation movement. Fascinated by both the huge scale of wilderness landscapes and the minutiae contained within, he became an early authority on botany, glaciology and zoology.
