John Muir Walked 1,000 Miles to Heal his Soul after Nearly Going Blind.

Mindful

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Today the world remembers John Muir as the Father of National Parks, a conservationist who fell in love with the high country of California and ignited passions–including that of President Theodore Roosevelt–to save the most splendid of America’s landscapes. His saying “The mountains are calling and I must go” is commonly seen even today on posters, T-shirts, and bumper stickers.

But long before Muir ever set foot in the West, he set out on a 1,000-mile journey that cemented his love of nature. It was an accident, a simple slip of a file, that triggered that journey from the banks of the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico.

John Muir Walked 1,000 Miles to Heal his Soul after Nearly Going Blind
 
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John Muir c1902

He knew the final steps toward healing would come from immersing himself in the world’s natural wonders and he began making plans of his own.

“God has nearly to kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons,” he wrote later. Muir traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, to launch his journey. And if he thought blindness was the closest brush with death he’d have, he was mistaken. Along the way, he ran into highwaymen, hunger, and contracted malaria. And yet there’s little evidence he would have changed a thing.
 
The Ken Burns films about the National Parks are fantastic. They are on Amazon Prime right now if you're game. Muir is widely mentioned.

It blows me away (not sure why) that you can go to the exact place where he and Teddy Roosevelt stood still today.

See the source image


The National Parks are really America's best idea.
 

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