In 2020 during the COVID pandemic, I spent time in my studio going over the original edit of the film, The Unruly Mystic: John Muir (2018) in consideration of the new footage that I had shot in 2019.
This cut has a new runtime of 75 minutes in what I am calling it “The Scotland Cut.” Here is why it got that moniker.
The John Muir Way
During the summer of 2019, I walked the 134-mile John Muir Way in Scotland with my wife, Heather. We were accompanied by the development person from the Green Action Trust, who took additional pictures and video in support of our journey (not pictured below).
This is path, across the country, east to west that John Muir’s family had taken when they had immigrated to the United States in 1849, as an eleven year old. It figured strongly in my imagination before we arrived. For our trip, we walked west to east as that keeps the prevailing winds at your back.
We ended in the town of Dunbar, which is Muir’s hometown where he only visited once years later, and it is right on the east coast, there’s cliffs there and there’s big seas and there’s his birthplace museum. That is included in the film.
While in Dunbar, I did a screening to benefit John Muir’s Birthplace Charitable Trust and was able to conduct an interview with the chairman of that trust which runs John Muir’s Birthplace Museum.
The Scotland Cut
With this experience I got a chance to viscerally feel what John’s Muir’s childhood might have felt like in Scotland. There is the rough ocean, a constant wind, a suddenness of changing weather that might have prepared him for California High Sierras. I shot additional footage with drone to supplement the other footage I was shooting. There were a few scary moments with the almost losing the drone over the sea.
All of the above was the visual that was missing in the 2018 film, not having that direct connection to Scotland. It was a bit of a myth in my own mind what Scotland was really like, and hopefully the viewer will appreciate that new aspect in this cut.
My Return to Yosemite National Park
In April 2019, I had returned to Yosemite National Park to do a free screening of the film for the public and park service at the visitor center. I was also able to get Shelton Johnson on camera again for a more extended interview. That new footage is in this release. In it, Park Ranger Shelton shares his experience of also being an artist-photographer in Yosemite through his growing Instagram channel @yosemite_shelton
[…] Columbia, a magical place that some have called “Yosemite by the Sea.” When making my film, The Unruly Mystic: John Muir, my own perspective of the First Nations people in Canada expanded when I met “Cecil Paul” from […]