THE PAPER CANOE

 A Paper Canoe?
   Here is some rainy day writing for those who might require some rainy day reading. I will begin at "The Paper Canoe" which is located on the Currituck Sound in Duck, N.C. We were fortunate to recently have dinner there, but it was a busy night and I wasn't able to inquire about the name, "The Paper Canoe." 
   I was reminded of some notes I had about the book, The Voyage of the Paper Canoe: A Geographical Journey of 2500 Miles From Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, During the Years 1874-5, by Nathaniel Holmes Bishop. I do not know if the name of the restaurant relates to the title of the book, but I do know that you will enjoy reading it.
   You will find The Voyage... for varying prices on Amazon where someone has printed it for you and you will find more on AbeBooks. The very expensive ones will be copies of the original, not knockoffs. Or, you can simply read the e-version quickly found on Gutenberg or the Internet Archive, which has a fine copy that is easily read and searched. But, if you prefer paper, live in London and have access to the Western Libraries, one will be found for you in storage.

The Paper Part
   Bishop began his voyage from Quebec in a very heavy wooden boat, but swapped it for a paper one on the upper Hudson River. You can learn more about it in Chapter V., "The American Paper Boat and English Canoes." This description is from the Introduction: Having proceeded about four hundred miles upon his voyage, the author reached Troy, on the Hudson River, New York state, where for several years E. Waters & Sons had been perfecting the construction of paper boats.  The advantages in using a boat of only fifty-eight pounds weight, the strength and durability of which had been well and satisfactorily tested, could not be questioned, and the author dismissed his assistant, and " paddled his own canoe " about two thousand miles to the end of the journey…..

An additional bit from the Introduction will help you determine if you want to search for the book or even buy it: 
   To an unknown wanderer among the creeks, rivers, and sounds of the coast, the courteous treatment of the Southern people was most gratifying. The author can only add to this expression an extract from his reply to the address of the Mayor of St. Mary's, Georgia, which city honored him with an ovation and presentation of flags after the completion of his voyage :
" Since my little paper canoe entered southern waters upon her geographical errand, — from the capes of the Delaware to your beautiful St. Mary's, — I have been deeply sensible of the value of Southern hospitality. The oystermen and fishermen living along the lonely beaches of the eastern shore of Maryland and Virginia ; the surfmen and lighthouse keepers of Albemarle, Pamplico, and Core sounds, in North Carolina ; the ground-nut planters who inhabit the uplands that skirt the network of creeks, marshes, ponds, and sounds from Bogue Inlet to Cape Fear ; the piny- woods people, lumbermen, and turpentine distillers on the little bluffs that jut into the fastnesses of the great swamps of the crooked Waccamaw River ; the representatives of the once powerful rice-planting aristocracy of the Santee and Peedee rivers ; the colored men of the beautiful sea-islands along the coast of Georgia ; the Floridians living between the St. Mary's River and the Suwanee — the wild river of song ; the islanders on the Gulf of Mexico where I terminated my long journey ; — all have contributed to make the * Voyage of the Paper Canoe' a success."

Chasing the Paper Canoe
   From the description above one notices that the 'Paper Canoe" travelled in the area of the restaurant, so there may be a connection. There is mention of the crooked Waccamaw River also found in the introduction and that was noticed by someone at Coastal Carolina University. ln 2012 faculty and students at Coastal Carolina traced the wake left by Bishop and identified places he mentioned. The result is the book, Chasing the Paper Canoe, which was published by Athenaeum Press at Coastal Carolina. To learn more about the project see, Chasing the Paper Canoe. If you look under "Bishop" you will learn more about him and the voyage of the "Paper Canoe." If you would rather just look at beautiful photos from the coastal Carolina area, click on "Gallery." The book can be purchased on Amazon, from which this description is taken:
  This inaugural publication from The Athenaeum Press reimagines Nathaniel Bishop’s journey down the Waccamaw River in a paper canoe more than a century ago. The book is the culmination of a year’s collaboration between students and faculty at Coastal Carolina University. Chasing the Paper Canoe portrays the culture, desolation and stoic beauty of the Waccamaw River. Within its pages, readers find the historic rice fields contrasted to bankside home construction; the weathered waterfront of Georgetown and portraits of modern fisherman. It is a true portrait of what Bishop described as that “most crooked waterway.” The project takes readers on a journey across history and form. Throughout the printed book, readers can see the stunning photographs come to life as streaming video through a feature called augmented reality. Both photographs and multimedia components were designed and produced by students in Coastal Carolina University’s pre-professional studio.

The Bonus:

    Nathaniel Bishop is an interesting fellow and was a very active one. Two more of his books are found in storage in the Western Libraries (for now, at least) and they can also be read online or purchased in print. 
Four Months in a Sneak-box: A Boat Voyage of 2600 Miles Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Along the Gulf of Mexico, 1879:

"A 2,600 mile voyage in 1875 from Pittsburgh to Florida down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a 12 foot duck hunting boat called a "Barnegat Bay Sneak Box."This curious and staunch little craft, though only 12 feet in length, proved a most comfortable and serviceable home while the author rowed it more than 2,600 miles down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, until he reached the mouth of the wild Suwanee River."

If you prefer works about walking: 

The Pampas and Andes: A Thousand Miles' Walk Across South America, 1855:
"Bishop was a mere lad of 17 in 1855 when, with $45 in his pocket, he left Massachusetts bound for South America. Pursuing a love of natural history, he arrived in Buenos Aires, ascended the Plata and Parana Rivers, walked across the pampas and the Saline Desert, hiked over the Andes into Chile, and at Valparaiso caught a boat for home. Barely able to speak the language, he slips quietly through South America, eyes open. The ultimate boy's adventure."

For more from MM about long walks, see John Muir who took a Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf  from Ontario.  To read more about things From Far Away and Long Ago, in South America see: "W.H. Hudson and the Hail Storm."
  If you are now feeling enthused and considering your own trek, see "The Trans Canada Trail." 

Working Wonders With Wood

 

   It is rather incongruous that one would receive these days, via email, information about how to buy a woodworking book written in 1949. It came from Lee Valley which, by the way, is Canadian and that allows me to fulfil my Canadian content quota. It is also family owned, and finely named when you think about it. 

   The book reminded me of how ill-suited I was for the “trades” (even more so now) and that we should not be so dismissive of them. A skilled one like woodworking reminds me also that I was generally incapable of handling higher intellectual endeavours ( even more so now.) That is, I did not have the surgical skills required to deftly construct wooden contraptions and would not have been smart enough to calculate area, construct geometric shapes and determine miter angles, and do many of the other things which the Woodworker's Pocketbook explains. 

John Muir - The Woodworker

   I can at least recognize the talents of others and, in the case of working with wood, told you about the tremendously complicated objects constructed by the naturalist John Muir. That is one of his, pictured above. I will point you to a historical site where you can see more illustrations and learn about Muir’s inventions. He created one machine that booted him out of bed. He created another that allowed him to light a fire in a school house far away so it would be warm when he arrived!!??

The Clocks of the Bily Brothers

   I told you far too much about Muir earlier in this blog, but did not say anything about the Bily Clocks when I passed through Spillville, Iowa a while back. There is a museum there devoted to them. When the Bily brothers weren't busy farming, they were carving intricate and elaborate clocks like The Apostles' Parade which is almost ten feet tall and includes the twelve apostles. 

   Your day will be better spent looking at these wooden works of art, rather than reading what I have to say about them so I will provide what you need below.

Sources: 

For Muir, the place to begin is at the Wisconsin Historical Society where you will find, in the link provided, a good essay and other images. 

You know Muir's wooden inventions are interesting since they are included in both:

Mental Floss - "Conservationist John Muir’s Youthful Hobby: Inventing Amazing Alarm Clocks"

and

Atlas Obscura - "John Muir's Alarm Clock Desk"

   I provided a good description of Muir's fire-starting device which was taken from his, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth.  See the section on his inventions in "School Days and Labour Days."  If you want to read a novel-length post about Muir's wood working days in Meaford, Ontario see, John Muir. 

My cryptic reference to Spillville relates to the book review I did of Zoellner's The National Road. He is the one who actually went to Spillville and that is where I learned that Dvorak also visited and it was where the Bily boys did their work. They even 'manufactured' a Dvorak clock.

 The Bily museum can be learned about here: https://www.bilyclocks.org/

  A couple of hundred miles away in Libertyville, IA, you can learn more about the Bily clocks and many other kinds. See: The Well Made Clock. 

  The Bily clocks also made it into Atlas Obscura. 

  If you want to see them in action (the clocks, not the Bily brothers) see footage from the Bily Clocks Museum in this YouTube video. 

The Bonus:

  There is even a Dvorak clock. 

"Without nails or screws or training, and with homemade glue, the most unexpected and marvelous thing happened. Frank and Joseph Bily, a pair of bachelor brothers, carved and crafted some of the most beautiful, unique, intricate timepieces ever designed by untrained hands. For almost forty five years, from 1913 to 1957, when they weren’t busy running their family farm in northern Iowa, they carved and carved.

What you’re going to hear next, though, is what makes their story, not just unusual, but also stirring, heartening and thought provoking. They never sold their clocks, not even one, not even in 1928 when Henry Ford, the automaker who had an affinity for clocks and music boxes, upon hearing about their eight foot, five hundred pound American Pioneer History Clock, had offered them an astounding million dollars! Instead, they wanted to keep the collection in tact and stored in their barn."

[From The Wellmade Clock]

John Muir

     A while back I happened upon A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, by John Muir. I enjoyed the book and you will as well if chapter headings like, “Kentucky Forests and Caves”, “Crossing the Cumberland Mountains” and “Through the River Country of Georgia”, are appealing. I quoted from the book in a post back in April about what are now  “Polluted Rivers”. 
    I then went on to quote at length from his equally enjoyable book The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. The more I read by him and about him, the more I realized that there was no need for me to carry on about Muir since there are so many good resources available. But, before leaving him I would like to: 1) offer some suggestions about sources; 2) say something about those who followed in Muir’s footsteps and 3) introduce you to material that relates to the time Muir spent in Canada. 
     Given what is going on politically in the United States, it is useful to read about and remember Muir, who played a major role in developing the parks which are now under attack by an unsympathetic Secretary of the Interior and the POTUS.

Basic Muir Sources:
    Muir was a founder of the Sierra Club and you should begin at their website which presents The John Muir Exhibit. It is a model of what a website should be and has been continually updated since 1994. You can read all of his books there as well as most of what has been written about them and him. If you prefer to hold a book, get the Library of America’s - John Muir: Nature Writings.

Walking the Walk


     If you are not convinced by my meagre remarks about A Thousand-Mile Walk then I will introduce you to some people who were so inspired by the book that they undertook the trip as well. I am sure that some of you have felt like striking out for the territories when a scene such as the one above was briefly spotted along an otherwise industrially blighted I 75. Well, these people decided to re-trace Muir’s footsteps which were, at times, near that route.

     Muir begins his walk with a short train ride in Sept. 1867 from Indianapolis. Reaching Louisville, he 
“steered through the big city by compass without speaking a word to anyone. Beyond the city I found a road running southward, and after passing a scatterment of suburban cabins and cottages I reached the green woods and spread out my pocket map to rough-hew a plan for my journey. My plan was simply to push on in a general southward direction by the wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find, promising the greatest extent of virgin forest.” (p.2)

     He does not go as the crow would and veers east to Savannah and takes a steamship from there to Fernandina and then walks west across Florida to Cedar Key (the one on the northwest coast, not any of the ones heading to Key West.) I don’t think it was quite a 1000 miles, but it was still a long trek through the post-Civil War south. (Readers get their money’s worth, however,  since the concluding chapters take him to Cuba, New York, and back across Panama to California.)
     
      Presented here are some energetic and adventurous people who have followed Muir’s walk, although it should be added, that most didn’t walk and most didn’t make the complete trip. If you are thinking about it I suggest beginning with “John Muir’s Walk Across the Appalachians,” by Dan Styer. Styer closely read Muir and then used historical maps and other sources to chart his route through the Appalachians. His work provides a good example of how one should proceed. The text and pictures from Oberlin are available here. As a bonus, if you type in this phrase on the Internet you can see a portion of the route on google maps: “John Muir’s Walk Across the Appalachians”.

The most recent one was just completed in 2017. With the exception of the first one, these are found on the Sierra Club site.

Retracing John Muir’s: Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf., Chad Gilpin.
“In 1867 the budding naturalist and future father of our national parks, John Muir, embarked on his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf from Jeffersonville, Indiana, to Cedar Key, Florida. Almost 150 years later I undertook the same journey, retracing the wilderness advocate’s footsteps through the South to catalog all that has changed in a century and a half of progress, to try and better understand the inception of his environmental ethics, and to learn to see the world as he did, harmonious, interconnected, rejuvenating and imbued with a pervasive spirituality. The chapters of this thesis retell selected legs of that journey.
Chad Gilpin - work for a Master of Fine Arts and the University of Kentucky.
[The entire work is available through the University of Kentucky.]

Chuck Roe -A Sesquicentennial Account of John Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk 
 “A review of the landscape 150 years after Muir's walk, with a focus on the progress of land conservation and identification of the many publicly-accessible, protected natural areas now located immediately along Muir's route. Roe's intent was to observe and describe the publicly accessible parks, nature preserves, forests and wildlife management areas, and other recreational areas along Muir's walking route through parts of five southern states, in homage and testimony to the success story of land conservation in the southeastern U.S.”
[ This is a very well-done and a useful resource. From the introduction:
“As 2017 is the sesquicentennial year for John Muir’s thousand-mile walk across the southeastern U.S. (1867-68), it is likely that many people will be attempting to trace his path. After largely retiring from a forty-year career as a land and environmental conservation professional in the same region of our country, I've been inspired to retrace the path of Muir’s long walk myself, but with a different focus—that being by telling the story of land conservation along the route of Muir's Southern Trek.”]

James B. Hunt, Restless Fires: Young John Muir's Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf in 1867-68 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012). “Provides a detailed rendering of Muir's thousand-mile walk based on both manuscript and published accounts. Hunt particularly examines the development of Muir's environmental thought as a young adult. Includes 14 photographic reproductions of pages from Muir's journal containing Muir's often whimsical drawings; three period photographs; and 1 modern (2011) map of Muir's route. As part of his research for the book, Hunt traveled Muir's route from Louisville, Kentucky, to Cedar Key, Florida beginning on September 1, 2007, discovering major and minor libraries and research institutions all along the route which aided in providing maps, diaries, newspapers, local histories, and other historical material relevant to the social, political, and economic context of Reconstruction of the communities through which Muir passed in 1867. A book jacket summary of this book is available, and an annotation on our Annotated John Muir Bibliography.”[on the Sierra Club website]

Ron "Ramblin" Boone, John Muir's "Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf" "Revisited". 
“This self-published book relates the author's physical re-tracing of Muir's approximate waking route via a mini-camper. Each chapter includes brief excerpts from Muir identifying the various towns he passed through; Boone then elaborates on the history of each geographic area, both before and after Muir's 1867 journey. Includes a line-drawn map, and 14 sketches of various buildings seen along the route. While not really a scholarly work, the endnotes include references to many reference books which elucidate the history of the places Muir visited on his famous walk. (Washington, PA: "Ramblin" Ron Boone, 2006). ISBN No. 0910042969. 87 pp.; Illustrated, Preface, Endnotes, Index. 

Wil and Sarah Reding - Re-Walking Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk (2006) 
“Wil Reding, an interpretive naturalist, has long dreamed of re-walking Muir's 1,000 mile walk. He and his wife Sarah plan to begin re-tracing Muir's steps from Kentucky to Florida in May, 2006.”
[The Redings are a husband/wife team at “Rent a Rambling Naturalist”. They live close by in Kalamazoo and will for a fee share their walking experiences.]

Michael Muir's Horse Journey Re-Tracing Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk (2003) 
“Michael Muir, the great grandson of America's most famous naturalist, John Muir, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 15. He is a passionate believer in what people with disabilities can achieve. He uses Horse Journey to show by example that disability does not mean inability. In 2003, his Horse Journey followed the route taken by John Muir in his first great wilderness adventure, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.”

Robert Perkins, "Looking for John Muir" - film documentary (1996) 
“The filmmaker here passed up an excellent opportunity to explore what Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk to the Gulf may look like today, but instead provides little more than scenes of driving a sidecar motorcycle down truck-infested highways; visiting motels and hotels; and finding almost nothing of Muir left in the South. Because Perkins travels with a dog, he cannot even visit the one place Muir visited which is now a National Park - Mammoth Cave National Park. The only bright spot in this dismal documentary is the visit to Bonaventure Cemetery, which appears to be as beautiful today as when Muir slept there in October of 1867.”

Dr. D. Bruce Means retraced Muir's 1,000 walk on the same dates as Muir (leaving Louisville Kentucky on September 2), but in 1984 rather than in 1867, using Muir's journals as a guide. He wrote about it on pages 212-214 (chapter 22 - "Okefenokee Alligators") of his book Stalking the Plumed Serpent and Other Adventures in Herpetology (Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 2008). Means was heartsick to discover that virtually none of Muir's wilderness remained along the route: "The deep, green sea of bossy oaks and virgin hardwood forests described by Muir were gone from Kentucky and Tennessee. 1 couldn't walk up 'the leafy banks of the Hiawassee ... with its surface broken to a thousand sparkling gems' because that 'most impressive mountain river' had long been drowned behind dams. And more than 90 percent of the vast Coastal Plain longleaf pine forest was clearcut and replaced with agriculture and sterile tree farms."
[For an account of this account see: “Retracing Naturalist’s 1867 Trek Across a Very Changed Southeast,” Robert Press, The Christian Science Monitor, Nov.19, 1984.]

John Muir's Longest Walk: John Earl, a Photographer, Traces His Journey to Florida by John Earl, with Excerpts from Muir's A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. (1975)
“Photographs of the route of the thousand-mile walk in March of 1973, starting at Cedar Key and retracing Muir's route backward so as to follow spring north. Earl sought out the few places that remain the way they were when Muir first saw them.”

(Another account is mentioned below. See Good’s, On The Trail of John Muir.)

John Muir in Canada

     I always associated Muir with the West and the Sierras. Prior to taking his 1000 mile walk he spent two years in what is now Ontario. From 1864 to 1866 he walked around southern Ontario and worked in Trout Hollow along the Bighead River near Meaford. He was employed at a mill making rakes and broom handles and clearly was very clever and inventive. Evidence of that is found at the Wisconsin Historical Society - have a look.

     Muir did not offer a specific account of his time in Canada and he probably lost most of his notes in the fire that destroyed the mill. What is known is found in letters he wrote while in Canada and, later, to friends in Canada and from the few local sources noted below. 

   As an aside, we often impute motives from the present as explanations for actions in the past and in that context the subject of ‘draft dodging” is raised by some who have studied Muir. He and his younger brother may have ‘skedaddled’ to Canada and there was a draft at the time. It is clear that both temperamentally and religiously John Muir would not have been ‘gung ho’ about the war that was raging. It was the case, however, that the numbers of both brothers were never called.

Sources Related to Canada



The Canadian Friends of John Muir
     It is odd that this reference found at the top of a list of resources refers to  a group that no longer exists and to a website which is defunct. The “Friends” are listed first, however, since they were clearly dedicated and produced some very useful information. In 2018 the link to the website created by the group formed in 1998 still works and is found here: http://www.johnmuir.org/canada/.

     It offers “A Bit of Background” and additional information about “The Friends of John Muir”. After accomplishing their mission of making people aware of Muir’s Canadian connection, the group disbanded (exactly when is not clear). Useful material about Trout Hollow, the Trout family and Meaford is provided along with these essays about John Muir.

      1)   “John Muir and His Canadian Friends,” Bruce Cox, Dec. 1998. Mr. Cox was a founding member of the CFJM, who taught history and was a high school principal. The accompanying bibliography is very useful and the essay informative.

     2)  “How John Muir Got to Meaford,” by Scott Cameron. No one knows for sure how exactly Muir got to Canada and where he entered. Mr. Cameron discusses the transportation options and routes available at the time.  He suggests Muir could have come from the “Soo” by boat to Collingwood. He is unlikely to have walked around the east coast of Georgian Bay. Muir could have come by train from Toronto to Collingwood and taken a boat from there to Owen Sound and walked to Meaford.

Meaford Museum
 
     The energy and interest created by “The Friends of John Muir” are maintained by the Museum which promotes a “John Muir Day”. For sale one will find: The John Muir Letters to His Meaford Friends, which consists of five letters from Muir to the Trout family.  In late September, 2017 the Museum was involved in a ceremony when new signage was created for the Trout Hollow Trail. 

    Some articles related to this ceremony are provided below since the contacts mentioned within them will be useful.

“Walk a Trail to the Past With John Muir,” Helen Solmes, The Meaford Independent, Sept. 26, 2017. A portion is provided below:
“More than 20 years have passed since the Canadian Friends of John Muir confirmed the location where the great conservationist and founder of the Sierra Club spent two years as a young man – in Trout Hollow, on the shore of the Bighead River, within the Municipality of Meaford….”
“This year, the Trout Hollow Trail that runs parallel to the Bighead River - from Bakeshop Bridge in Meaford south to the 7th Line and back toward Meaford on the opposite side of the river - has been designated an interpretive trail, with signs that identify points of interest along the way and offer historical information on John Muir’s time living and working in Trout Hollow.
     The trail will be officially opened during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday, September 30 at 10 a.m. at the Riverside Hall on the 7th Line. Local historian and Muir enthusiast, Robert Burcher, will then lead a hike into the site of the Muir cabin and Trout Sawmill.
     Burcher was a member of the former Canadian Friends of John Muir and the Bighead River Heritage Association and has led several guided tours to the site over the years. He is keen to share his knowledge of Muir based on his personal research retracing Muir’s travels to Canada that led him to Trout Hollow, the Bighead River, and the short two years living there before he began his long journeys on foot throughout the United States. Burcher, like many historians, views Muir’s time in Trout Hollow as the formative years that helped shape Muir’s conservationist views. In later life, Muir founded the Sierra Club that today is recognized as the leading conservation organization worldwide. He is also credited for his work with President Roosevelt in amalgamating the Yellowstone and Yosemite Parks, and for the formation of the American national park system.”

     The following account is provided by the Owen Sound Field Naturalists:

“Nature Club News,” John Dickson,October, 2017
(“A version of this column appeared in the OS Sun Times on Friday October 6, 2017 and in the Owen Sound Hub on Sunday October 8, 2017.”)
“On September 30,Robert Burcher led a tour to the Trout Hollow area of the Bighead River just outside Meaford. OSFN Club member Joe Buchanan reported “We enjoyed a delightful and informative talk and ribbon cutting ceremony held at the Riverside Community Hall followed by a walk-and-talk into Trout Hollow led by local historian (and archeological sleuth) Robert Burcher, all to celebrate the new info-signs locating and describing the mill workings and footsteps of John Muir during his time here. Robert’s enthusiasm is infectious. Although I had walked the area several times, to hear the details while standing in the actual locations was especially refreshing for me. I would also recommend a visit to the Meaford Museum any day as a further source of information re John Muir’s stay in the area.” The OSFN offers our gratitude to the Meaford Museum, and to Ron Knight whose generosity and welcoming hospitality has been key to the success of this historical recognition. Of special note was the opportunity to meet George Trout of Austin, Texas, a direct descendant of the Trout family.”

The Trout Hollow Trail
     See the “Ontario Bluewater Visitor Guide” which includes information about the Trout Hollow Trail & Bighead River Conservation Area.
    The Bighead River Heritage Association offers a map and pictures of the Trout Hollow Trail.
     Another good source is found at the Municipality of Meaford’s website under “Trails”.

The Upper Credit Field Naturalists Club For Nature
     In the newsletter produced by this Club one finds in the August, 2016 issue an unsigned article: “John Muir in our Headwaters Area!” It deals largely (as most Canadian-related accounts do), with Muir’s discovery of the orchid, Calypso borealis (the Hider of the North) in the Holland Marsh. If, like me, you do not usually associate orchids with Ontario, you can learn more (much more) here- Ontario Wildflowers.

Selected Books:
     Most standard biographies contain material about Muir’s travels to Canada. Here are three that specifically discuss the Canadian experience.

     Fox, W. Sherwood. The Bruce Beckons: The Story of Lake Huron’s Great Peninsula.
      Fox was a classicist and former President of the University of Western Ontario (now Western University). Chapter 12 of the book above bears the title “John Muir Was Here”. Here is how it begins:
     “That John Muir, the famous American apostle of conservation, early in his career drew from a prolonged sojourn on the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron a measure of the inspiration that made him what he was, is a bit of history known only to a few. Among the parts of this region in which he fared was the Bruce Peninsula. That fact is enough to entitle him to space in our pages, though he was more familiar with the territory east of Owen Sound. It is an honour to the whole region to have a valid though small claim to a great name, a name that will live as long as the Muir Glacier of Alaska flows and the Yosemite Valley retains unimpaired its imposing nobility and beauty. Of this claim our knowledge has been scant until a friend recently opened the pages of an unpublished manuscript. This, written by one in whose home Muir lived near the Georgian Bay shoreline, tells of a formative stage in Muir’s life about which he himself was strangely silent.” (p. 135.)
      He is using and cites on p.138: William H. Trout, History of the Trout Family. 1910 and  Peter Trout’s handwritten story “What I Know of John Muir”.( p.138)
Fox thinks Muir crossed “form the Michigan “Soo” to the Canadian “Soo” over the St. Mary’s River.” (p.137.) He then says that Muir “crossed the fifteen-mile strait from Manitoulin to the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula”.... “ It is absurd to think that at time of the year [April] they [he was with his brother, Daniel]  tramped all the way around the east side of the Georgian Bay - a formidable journey of over three hundred miles - to enter the Peninsula from the south”.
     Fox is correct that Muir was “more familiar with the area east of Owen Sound” and he did wander about much of southern Ontario, but not much is known about where he might have been on the Bruce. (Fox’s account is discussed in: “Calypso Trails: Botanizing on the Bruce Peninsula,” Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands.
The Dalhousie Review, Vol. 90, No.1, Spring 2010.)

Gisel, Bonnie G., Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy.
     In this beautiful book see Chapter 2: “Canada and Indianapolis”. Gisel thinks that Muir entered Ontario this way: “Leaving Portage, Wisconsin, Muir traveled by train from Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Detroit and then to Windsor, Ontario. In all probability at Windsor, he boarded the Great Western Railway and traveled east into southern Ontario. By April 1864, he was already wading in swamps, and on May 18 he started out on a “three weeks’ ramble through Simcoe and Grey Counties, walking an estimated distance of about three hundred miles.” (p.44) ( For Londoners, a copy is available in the Taylor Library at Western).

Good, Cherry, On the Trail of John Muir.
     Chapter 3 covers “Canada”. Good thinks that Muir crossed into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie. This is from the publisher:
“In this book, each stage of Muir's life and development is set within the context of the places that were special, magical to him - the Canadian forests, the glaciers of Alaska, Arizona's Grand Canyon, and most important of all, the High Sierra of California, where the John Muir Trail now runs for over two hundred miles from Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney. By following the directions and maps included in On the Trail, readers are able to participate in Muir's adventures on both sides of the Atlantic, to feel a part of Muir's world as they too experience the beauty of the wilderness and the need to preserve it.” (For locals, there is a copy in the Brescia University Library).
  

School Days and Labour Day

It is highly likely that there is considerable anxiety in those households containing small children since school is about to begin. Even in the houses without children there is likely to be some residual dread and, besides, Labour Day even for those of us who no longer work, makes us realize that we have to face the fall.

    This year, unfortunately, we can all remind ourselves that things could be worse and we could be in Houston. If you have children and that argument is not convincing and you are running low on new anecdotes about the hardships of your own school days when you had to walk miles to a school where you were certain to be bullied and also beaten by the teachers, here is some additional ammunition.

    I have been reading the works of John Muir who was beaten at school and thrashed thoroughly at home. You might as well benefit from my hard work. Dispense with all trigger warnings and simply read these excerpts to your kids to  toughen them up.

Muir on Well Digging (p.111)

     You can use this example to convince them that there are worse things than school - work, for example. Young Muir spent months in a hole and almost died from poisonous gas.

We called our second farm Hickory Hill, from its many fine hickory trees and the long gentle slope leading up to it. Compared with Fountain Lake farm it lay high and dry. The land was better, but it had no living water, no spring or stream or meadow or lake. A well ninety feet deep had to be dug, all except the first ten feet or so in fine-grained sandstone. When the sandstone was struck, my father, on the advice of a man who had worked in mines, tried to blast the rock; but from lack of skill the blasting went on very slowly, and father decided to have me do all the work with mason's chisels, a long, hard job, with a good deal of danger in it. I had to sit cramped in a space about three feet in diameter, and wearily chip, chip, with heavy hammer and chisels from early morning until dark, day after day, for weeks and months. In the morning, father and David lowered me in a wooden bucket by a windlass, hauled up what chips were left from the night before, then went away to the farm work and left me until noon, when they hoisted me out for dinner. After dinner I was promptly lowered again, the forenoon's accumulation of chips hoisted out of the way, and I was left until night.

One morning, after the dreary bore was about eighty feet deep, my life was all but lost in deadly choke-damp,--carbonic acid gas that had settled at the bottom during the night. Instead of clearing away the chips as usual when I was lowered to the bottom, I swayed back and forth and began to sink under the poison. Father, alarmed that I did not make any noise, shouted, "What's keeping you so still?" to which he got no reply. Just as I was settling down against the side of the wall, I happened to catch a glimpse of a branch of a bur-oak tree which leaned out over the mouth of the shaft. This suddenly awakened me, and to father's excited shouting I feebly murmured, "Take me out." But when he began to hoist he found I was not in the bucket and in wild alarm shouted, "Get in! Get in the bucket and hold on! Hold on!" Somehow I managed to get into the bucket, and that is all I remembered until I was dragged out, violently gasping for breath.

One of our near neighbors, a stone mason and miner by the name of William Duncan, came to see me, and after hearing the particulars of the accident he solemnly said: "Weel, Johnnie, it's God's mercy that you're alive. Many a companion of mine have I seen dead with choke-damp, but none that I ever saw or heard of was so near to death in it as you were and escaped without help." Mr. Duncan taught father to throw water down the shaft to absorb the gas, and also to drop a bundle of brush or hay attached to a light rope, dropping it again and again to carry down pure air and stir up the poison. When, after a day or two, I had recovered from the shock, father lowered me again to my work, after taking the precaution to test the air with a candle and stir it up well with a brush-and-hay bundle. The weary hammer-and-chisel-chipping went on as before, only more slowly, until ninety feet down, when at last I struck a fine, hearty gush of water. Constant dropping wears away stone. So does constant chipping, while at the same time wearing away the chipper. Father never spent an hour in that well. He trusted me to sink it straight and plumb, and I did, and built a fine covered top over it, and swung two iron-bound buckets in it from which we all drank for many a day.

Muir on Bathing (p.13)

     If the little buggers are reluctant to bathe, read them this.

It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the Scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary bathing for health terrible to us. I well remember among the awful experiences of childhood being taken by the servant to the seashore when I was between two and three years old, stripped at the side of a deep pool in the rocks, plunged into it among crawling crawfish and slippery wriggling snake-like eels, and drawn up gasping and shrieking only to be plunged down again and again. As the time approached for this terrible bathing, I used to hide in the darkest corners of the house, and oftentimes a long search was required to find me. But after we were a few years older, we enjoyed bathing with other boys as we wandered along the shore, careful, however, not to get into a pool that had an invisible boy-devouring monster at the bottom of it. Such pools, miniature maelstroms, were called "sookin-in-goats" and were well known to most of us. Nevertheless we never ventured into any pool on strange parts of the coast before we had thrust a stick into it. If the stick were not pulled out of our hands, we boldly entered and enjoyed plashing and ducking long ere we had learned to swim.

Muir on the Self Esteem Thing (p.130)

     If your child is still upset that he/she didn’t get the gold participation medal for almost running one lap around the track last year, then tell them that they shouldn’t expect one and that their room is being rented out, one week after they turn 18.

When I told father that I was about to leave home, and inquired whether, if I should happen to be in need of money, he would send me a little, he said, "No; depend entirely on yourself." Good advice, I suppose, but surely needlessly severe for a bashful, home-loving boy who had worked so hard. I had the gold sovereign that my grandfather had given me when I left Scotland, and a few dollars, perhaps ten, that I had made by raising a few bushels of grain on a little patch of sandy abandoned ground. So when I left home to try the world I had only about fifteen dollars in my pocket.

Strange to say, father carefully taught us to consider ourselves very poor worms of the dust, conceived in sin, etc., and devoutly believed that quenching every spark of pride and self-confidence was a sacred duty, without realizing that in so doing he might at the same time be quenching everything else. Praise he considered most venomous, and tried to assure me that when I was fairly out in the wicked world making my own way I would soon learn that although I might have thought him a hard taskmaster at times, strangers were far harder. On the contrary, I found no lack of kindness and sympathy.

Muir on Early Rising (p.120)

     If your child wants to stay up late playing video games don’t follow the example of Muir’s father. He told young John that he had to go to bed and that if he wanted to read (!!), he had to get up early to do it. He started getting up at 1 a.m.

Father's strict rule was, straight to bed immediately after family worship, which in winter was usually over by eight o'clock. I was in the habit of lingering in the kitchen with a book and candle after the rest of the family had retired, and considered myself fortunate if I got five minutes' reading before father noticed the light and ordered me to bed; an order that of course I immediately obeyed. But night after night I tried to steal minutes in the same lingering way, and how keenly precious those minutes were, few nowadays can know. Father failed perhaps two or three times in a whole winter to notice my light for nearly ten minutes, magnificent golden blocks of time, long to be remembered like holidays or geological periods. One evening when I was reading Church history father was particularly irritable, and called out with hope-killing emphasis, "John, go to bed! Must I give you a separate order every night to get you to go to bed? Now, I will have no irregularity in the family; you must go when the rest go, and without my having to tell you." Then, as an afterthought, as if judging that his words and tone of voice were too severe for so pardonable an offense as reading a religious book, he unwarily added: "If you will read, get up in the morning and read. You may get up in the morning as early as you like."

That night I went to bed wishing with all my heart and soul that somebody or something might call me out of sleep to avail myself of this wonderful indulgence; and next morning to my joyful surprise I awoke before father called me. A boy sleeps soundly after working all day in the snowy woods, but that frosty morning I sprang out of bed as if called by a trumpet blast, rushed downstairs, scarce feeling my chilblains, enormously eager to see how much time I had won; and when I held up my candle to a little clock that stood on a bracket in the kitchen I found that it was only one o'clock. I had gained five hours, almost half a day! "Five hours to myself!" I said, "five huge, solid hours!" I can hardly think of any other event in my life, any discovery I ever made that gave birth to joy so transportingly glorious as the possession of these five frosty hours.

Muir on Inventions (pp.136-137)

    In spite of all the beatings and rough times and the lack of any esteem-raising endeavours, Muir, as you know, turned out okay. He was even a school teacher for a while. He was also quite inventive, designing a machine to oust him from bed early for his reading. He also invented a remote control fire-starting device which would certainly contravene our current safety laws.

One winter I taught school ten miles north of Madison, earning much-needed money at the rate of twenty dollars a month, "boarding round," and keeping up my University work by studying at night. As I was not then well enough off to own a watch, I used one of my hickory clocks, not only for keeping time, but for starting the school fire in the cold mornings, and regulating class-times. I carried it out on my shoulder to the old log schoolhouse, and set it to work on a little shelf nailed to one of the knotty, bulging logs. The winter was very cold, and I had to go to the schoolhouse and start the fire about eight o'clock to warm it before the arrival of the scholars. This was a rather trying job, and one that my clock might easily be made to do. Therefore, after supper one evening I told the head of the family with whom I was boarding that if he would give me a candle I would go back to the schoolhouse and make arrangements for lighting the fire at eight o'clock, without my having to be present until time to open the school at nine. He said, "Oh, young man, you have some curious things in the school-room, but I don't think you can do that." I said, "Oh, yes! It's easy," and in hardly more than an hour the simple job was completed. I had only to place a teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of potash and sugar on the stove-hearth near a few shavings and kindling, and at the required time make the clock, through a simple arrangement, touch the inflammable mixture with a drop of sulphuric acid. Every evening after school was dismissed, I shoveled out what was left of the fire into the snow, put in a little kindling, filled up the big box stove with heavy oak wood, placed the lighting arrangement on the hearth, and set the clock to drop the acid at the hour of eight; all this requiring only a few minutes.

The first morning after I had made this simple arrangement I invited the doubting farmer to watch the old squat schoolhouse from a window that overlooked it, to see if a good smoke did not rise from the stovepipe. Sure enough, on the minute, he saw a tall column curling gracefully up through the frosty air, but instead of congratulating me on my success he solemnly shook his head and said in a hollow, lugubrious voice, "Young man, you will be setting fire to the schoolhouse." All winter long that faithful clock fire never failed, and by the time I got to the schoolhouse the stove was usually red-hot.

Source: The page numbers all refer to The Story of My Boyhood and Youth as found in the Library of America edition of John Muir: Nature Writings, ed. by William Cronon.

Polluted Rivers

Tennessee Rivers

    It was my intention to write often about rivers in this blog, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I will pause here, however, to post a short note about one river since I was reminded of it by a recent article in the New York Times. The article was a depressing one and the number of such articles is likely to increase as the funding to the EPA decreases.

   It had to do with coal ash and the toxic sludge that seeps into the ground or escapes from the coal ash disposal ponds into rivers. The piece was mainly about the Gallatin Fossil Plant on the Cumberland River, pollution and lawsuits. There was also mention of an earlier episode in 2008 when  “an ash pond dike at its Kingston Fossil Plant in eastern Tennessee collapsed, releasing just over a billion gallons of coal ash water into the Emory River, which flows into two other rivers, including the Tennessee. The slurry released in that spill, which has been called the largest environmental disaster of its kind, buried 300 acres of land in toxic sludge. That sludge was taken to an unlined landfill in Alabama, just outside a predominantly African-American community, prompting challenges under federal civil rights law.”

The Emory RIver

    I recently read a book which mentions the Emory River and describes it just about 150 years ago. The following description is taken from a book by John Muir - A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. I will say more about the book and rivers later.

This will serve to remind us of what we have lost:

September 12.[1867] Awoke drenched with mountain mist, which made a grand show, as it moved away before the hot sun….Obtained fine views of a wide, open country, and distant flanking ridges and spurs. Crossed a wide cool stream [Emory River], a branch of the Clinch River. There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream, and this is the first I ever saw. Its banks are luxuriantly peopled with rare and lovely flowers and overarching trees, making one of Nature’s coolest and most hospitable places. Every tree, every flower, every ripple and eddy of this lovely stream seemed solemnly to feel the presence of the Creator. Lingered in this sanctuary a long time thanking the Lord with all my heart for his goodness in allowing me to enjoy it.

Sources: The current article: “2 Tennessee Cases Bring Coal’s Hidden Hazard to Light,” Tatiana Schlossbergapril, NYT,  April 15, 2017. The 2008 article: “Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards”

By Shaila Dewan, NYT  Dec.. 24, 2008. (Christmas eve, no less). The photograph is by Aubrey Bodine who worked for the Baltimore Sun. The Patapsco River is surely poisoned as well.

Functional Furniture

By chance I have come upon two descriptions I will share with you. The first is for the diner; the second for the reader.

The Dining Table

    “The family table was unlike any I ever saw before. It was circular, and the central part of it revolved. When any one wished to be helped, he placed his plate on the revolving part, which was whirled around to the host, and then whirled back with its new load. Thus every plate was revolved into place, without the assistance of any of the family.”

   

    This quotation is from John Muir who found such a table in the backwoods of Georgia, c1867. From: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, pp.59-60. It may have resembled a more rustic version of this:

The Book Wheel

    Admittedly, this device may have been rendered obsolete by the internet, but it is nonetheless ingenious.

    “Princeton historian Anthony Grafton may win the contest for most interesting home reference section, thanks to a six foot-tall “book wheel” or “reading wheel,” modeled on a contraption designed by European scholars in the late sixteenth century. “Think of a small Ferris wheel,” writes a reporter who has seen it, “ with shelves instead of seats”; the shelves rotate, like the cars on a Ferris wheel, so that the books always remain upright. “From his seat he can rotate any one of eight shelves into view by spinning the wheel.”

    From: “Tell Me How You Organize Your Books,” Chapter 7 ½, in You Could Look it Up: The Reference Shelf From Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia, Jack Lynch, pp.104-105. This photograph is found in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, April 4, 2007.