Faster by book

To learn a bit more about John Muir’s life in Scotland and his emigration to America, I’ve been reading ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ which he wrote later in his life and which was published in 1913. I started reading it really to find out about the journey he made from Dunbar to Helensburgh to set sail west – the same journey I’m about to walk. I had in my mind pages of descriptive writing of step after step across the country, that I would be following. I could see the horse-drawn carriage laden with wordly goods, and expected the journey would throw up Grapes-of-Wrath style challenges to read about. Perhaps I was confusing my John Steinbeck with my John Muir because his journey is summed up with one line on page 27 – “Next morning we went by rail to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed away from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the winds, carefree as thistle seeds.” And that’s it. Hmmm. Can’t say I’m not disappointed. One review of this book by Peter Browning says “It has the distinctive tone and content that mark the retrospective autobiographical view. His perceptions of early life inevitably were colored and slanted by the experiences of a lifetime. It was not a false view of his life, but it most certainly was not what he would have written – assuming the ability – at age fifteen or twenty.” And, yes, Muir is definitely writing with regret at some of the things he got up to as a boy, particularly things like nest-raiding or throwing stones at cats, but he also describes experiences in nature that could be – I’m sure still are - had by children today. One of my favourites is this passage about the skylark – I’ll think of it if I hear any on my walk. “To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest sighted of us all. ‘I see him yet’ we would cry, ‘I see him yet!’ ‘I see him yet!’ ‘I see him yet!’ as he soared. And finally only one of us would be left to claim that he still saw him. At last he, too, would have to admit that the singer had soared beyond his sight, and still the music came pouring down to us in glorious profusion, from a height far above our vision, requiring marvelous power of voice, for that rich, delicious, soft, and yet clear music was distinctly heard long after the bird was out of sight.”