
Source: Wikipedia
Fresh beauty opens one’s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.
-John Muir from In the Sierra Foot-hills
It was in 2008 when I first read A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf. It’s a book that was put together posthumously in 1916, based on John Muir’s journals and writings from his 1,000-mile walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico:
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.
His idea that walking at more than one mile per hour is going too fast as to miss the scenery is something speaks to me – I can sit for hours in a patch of grass watching the life, mostly hidden from our view, come out from out from its hiding place and buzz all around me. Muir’s writings and life, along with the life adventures of my good friend and artist John Raux and many others have inspired me to live thoughtfully and to escape from the concrete cell where most of us spend most of our waking hours.
In honor of John Muir – go outside, take an hour and walk a block. What do you see? Have you ever seen it before? Why not?
Read about John Muir at the Sierra Club’s website.
Read A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf online for free.

…and thanks to Foodimentary for bringing Muir’s birthday to my attention.
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