Last year I did some environmental roots reading, revisiting both Charles Darwin's classics and some of John Muir's autobiographical books. Now the Drinking and Reading Society has taken up Donald Worster's new bio of Muir, A Passion for Nature, and it's once again becoming clear that what we think we know if often more spin than reality. To read Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra is to experience the wonder of the high country with him step by step, shuddering at his reckless risk-taking and standing in awe of the incredible vistas. But Worster makes it clear that those word pictures were drawn and redrawn 20 years after the fact to color in the character Muir wished to present to the world. Even his miraculous meeting with Prof. Butler seems more mundane when you have all the facts and circumstances in hand.
That doesn't make Muir any less genuine or admirable. It actually more of a cautionary tale. Beware of what you think you know.
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