"This exhibition is filled with wonder and discovery," says guest curator Dorris Welch. "We all have many things to learn from John Muir's legacy. To be able to honor and bring John Muir's legacy into a modern-day light is an extremely important thing," Welch says of the OMCA-exclusive show.
The exhibition features striking large-scale photographic murals by Steven Joseph showcasing the natural wonders of Muir’s explorations and dramatic landscape paintings by William Keith and Thomas Hill, allowing visitors to explore the beautiful scenery that inspired John Muir. Through original artifacts on loan from the John Muir Papers, University of the Pacific, and the John Muir National Historic Site, visitors will be able to see Muir’s journals and manuscripts where he cites the awe and wonder he experienced alone in nature — from the musical qualities of waterfalls, streams and rivers in Yosemite Valley to the majestic glacially sculpted granite landscapes he explored in the highest of the High Sierra. Visitors can also explore how the minimal gear Muir carried in the mountains compares to the elaborate mountaineering gear of today. The exhibition also features Nature’s Beloved Son, a print gallery highlighting Stephen Joseph’s prints of Muir’s original pressed plant collections, displayed with Muir’s original plant collection herbarium sheets.
John Muir's A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf continues:
"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. Folding my map, I shouldered my little bag and plant press and strode away among the old Kentucky oaks, rejoicing in splendid visions of pines and palms and tropic flowers in glorious array, not, however, without a few cold shadows of loneliness, although the great oaks seemed to spread their arms in welcome.
I have seen oaks of many species in many kinds of exposure and soil, but those of Kentucky excel in grandeur all I had ever before beheld. They are broad and dense and bright green. In the leafy bowers and caves of their long branches dwell magnificent avenues of shade, and every tree seems to be blessed with a double portion of strong exulting life. Walked twenty miles, mostly on river bottom, and found shelter in a rickety tavern.
September 3. Escaped from the dust and squalor of my garret bedroom to the glorious forest. All the streams that I tasted hereabouts are salty and so are the wells. Salt River was nearly dry. Much of my way this forenoon was over naked limestone. After passing the level ground that extended twenty-five or thirty miles from the river I came to a region of rolling hills called Kentucky Knobs — hills of denudation covered with trees to the top. Some of them have a few pines. For a few hours I followed the farmers’ paths, but soon wandered away from roads and encountered many a tribe of twisted vines difficult to pass.
Emerging about noon from a grove of giant sunflowers, I found myself on the brink of a tumbling rocky stream [Rolling Fork]. I did not expect to find bridges on my wild ways, and at once started to ford, when a negro woman on the opposite bank earnestly called on me to wait until she could tell the “men folks” to bring me a horse — that the river was too deep and rapid to wade and that I would “sartain be drowned” if I attempted to cross. I replied that my bag and plants would ballast me; that the water did not appear to be deep, and that if I were carried away, I was a good swimmer and would soon dry in the sunshine. But the cautious old soul replied that no one ever waded that river and set off for a horse, saying that it was no trouble at all.
Continue the journey with the rest of Muir's book at the Yosemite site.
Image credits: John Muir (1838-1914)
Orlando Rouland (1871-1945)
Oil on canvas, not dated
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Gift of Mrs. E. H. Harriman
to the United States National Museum, 1920
Pages: 1 · 2
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