There are always some people in the mountains who are known as “hikers.” They rush over the trail at high speed and take great delight in being the first to reach camp and in covering the greatest number of miles in the least possible time. they measure the trail in terms of speed and distance.
One day as I (Albert W. Palmer) was resting in the shade Mr. Muir overtook me on the trail and began to chat in that friendly way in which he delights to talk with everyone he meets. I said to him: “Mr. Muir, someone told me you did not approve of the word ‘hike.’ Is that so?” His blue eyes flashed, and with his Scotch accent he replied: “I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike!
“Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, “A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers.
Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”
John Muir lived up to his doctrine. He was usually the last man to reach camp. He never hurried. He stopped to get acquainted with individual trees along the way. He would hail people passing by and make them get down on hands and knees if necessary to see the beauty of some little bed of almost microscopic flowers. Usually he appeared at camp with some new flowers in his hat and a little piece of fir bough in his buttonhole.
Filmmakers saunter along the John Muir Trail, Scotland
Now, whether the derivation of saunter Muir gave me is scientific or fanciful, is there not in it another parable? There are people who “hike” through life. They measure life in terms of money and amusement; they rush along the trail of life feverishly seeking to make a dollar or gratify an appetite. How much better to “saunter” along this trail of life, to measure it in terms of beauty and love and friendship! How much finer to take time to know and understand the men and women along the way, to stop a while and let the beauty of the sunset possess the soul, to listen to what the trees are saying and the songs of the birds, and to gather the fragrant little flowers that bloom all along the trail of life for those who have eyes to see!
You can’t do these things if you rush through life in a big red automobile at high speed; you can’t know these things if you “hike” along the trail in a speed competition. These are the peculiar rewards of the man who has learned the secret of the saunterer!
John Muir, a key figure in the environmental movement, has recently come under scrutiny for his documented racist attitudes towards Native Americans and Black Americans, leading to some diminished stature within the Sierra Club. Despite his legacy as a pioneer of the conservation movement, some have reckoned with the problematic aspects of his views towards those who lived on the land before him. While there is evidence of racial bias and erasure of Native Americans in his writings, some argue that Muir had a change of heart during his 1879 trip to Alaska. It is important to acknowledge both Muir’s contributions to conservation and the problematic aspects of his legacy.
Three leaders of the Chilkat, a Tlingit group, wear ceremonial dress for a potlatch. (Library of Congress)
At 41 years old, he had recently become engaged to Louisa Wanda (Louie) Strentzel, and he wouldn’t see her again for 6 months while he explored Alaska. Seeing Alaska glaciers for the first time would later support his argument that the Yosemite Valley had also been formed by glaciers. He would also find his own perspectives deeply challenged. His meeting of the Chilkat/Chilkoot Tlingit Tribes dramatically changed his prior opinion that Native Americans “seemed to have no right place in the landscape.”
Muir wrote:
I have not seen a single specimen that looks in the least like the best of the Sioux, or indeed of any of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. They also differ from other North American Indians in being willing to work, when free from the contamination of bad whites.
Travels in Alaska, Alaska Indians Chapter 13
It is worth noting that even though Muir’s later views represented a shift from his earlier racial biases, they still reflect the patronizing and racist attitudes prevalent during his time. It is also important to recognize that the exploration, claiming, and establishment of wilderness areas in North America by early pioneers was rooted in racist practices. While Muir’s evolution should be acknowledged, it does not erase his earlier comments and actions that reflect his legacy and their impact on marginalized communities.
A draft of his book was open on his bed stand when he died on Christmas Day, 1914, a final testament to the man who not only loved the wilderness with all his being but, perhaps, was able to look past his racist beliefs and uncover common humanity within a culture other than his own. My hope is that the future of John Muir’s legacy allows for both the upholding of his work in environmental conservationism as well as the reality of his racist views. The wilderness is and should be for everyone
Awaken in Alaska
While coming to terms with John Muir’s racism, I wanted to know more about Muir’s encounter with Native American tribes in Alaska. I discovered that author Daniel Lee Henry had also explored Muir’s Alaskan awakening in his book, Across the Shaman’s River: John Muir, the Tlingit Stronghold, and the Opening of the North. Henry has a direct connection to the Chilkat/Chilkoot Tlingit descendants, having lived and taught school in Haines, Alaska for many years. His book takes the reader into this community in Alaska during Muir’s Northern travels.
I asked Henry to write a new foreword for the 2022 annotated printing of Travels in Alaska (Illustrated and Annotated) (which also includes an eBook and an audiobook version). It is important to address why this book continues to be significant and relevant in the context of our modern times.
In my new introduction to Travels in Alaska, I write about my travels along the Inside Passage of British 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 Xenaksiala, an elder of the Killer Whale Clan. This unexpected introduction happened when we went deep into the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest in search of the elusive White Spirit Bear along the shores of Lake Kitlop. More details can be found in the film.
Knocking down our own Monuments
A quick overview of current events helps to explain why Travels in Alaska is still so timely for our conversation today.
In 2020, the Sierra Club’s national executive director, Michael Brune, brought attention to the racism of “the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history” in a post to the organization’s website. Brune notes that Muir’s views do appear to have “evolve(d) later in his life,” but notes that Muir’s “derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples…continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.”
As a young man, Muir had described the Native Americans he encountered on his famous walk in 1867 from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico as “dirty,” and referred to African Americans using an offensive racial slur, reported Darryl Fears and Steven Mufson for the Washington Post.
Several months after Brune’s original announcement, the Sierra Club put together a special task force, mostly of people of color, to study the history of the Club further and Michael Brune’s original allegation. They concluded that while John Muir used derogatory language about Indigenous people which “created harm” that “Muir later recognized and appreciated the achievements of Indigenous people and spoke about the equality of all people and the importance of making public lands accessible for all.”
Nonetheless, the issue has continued to be controversial within the Club. The Club board of directors officially excoriating former Club President Aaron Mair (a Black man) for defending Muir and punishing him and two others for publishing the Earth Island Journal article, Who Was John Muir, Really? There is a “nuance” that must be applied to the issue and I hope that the club takes a balanced perspective.
In a recent interview, Mair made a statement one might find fascinating – – “intellectual dishonesty is a form of white supremacy.” The truth of the matter is John Muir was racist, the exploration of the American wilderness was racist, and generations of Native Americans have been traumatized by these facts. That can be acknowledged while also appreciating the conservation work done by pioneers like John Muir and the understanding that views can change.
I love John Muir. So much so that I made a 75-minute documentary film in 2018 that was screened internationally and highlighted how Muir’s prose enabled in me a deeper appreciation of nature and spirit, a feeling shared by many others. It caught me by surprise when I found out the Sierra Club had called out the racism of its own beloved founder, John Muir.
I wasn’t sure what to do or say, except learn more. I had no idea Muir was considered a racist or had made racist statements. Staunch Muir defenders quickly condemned Brune’s statement, based upon additional historical facts and later statements Muir made. I spent some time between then and now, asking the difficult questions of how, when, and why, and doing research into what really happened afterward.
There is still a lot to learn as I have discovered when I first wrote this post. For example, how about those that say that John Muir was never racist? If so, there would be no reference point like Travels in Alaska that some are espousing including me. A non-evolving Muir was already self-aware and wrote what he saw, using common terms in the vocabulary of literate Americans at that time. That does not of course excuse his racist views or the harm they caused.
“They are displaying considerable ignorance of their founder member’s early life, his nuanced writings, and above all of the attitudes prevalent when he lived. They have been seduced by the modern fad for rewriting history, preferably combined with some statue-toppling and feet of clay.”
There is some truth in that too. It is also a matter of interpretation as we only have historical records as evidence, and no living witness to question.
All of which brings up that I must also acknowledge my own racism that has been unintentional, and make amends. I admit I have too often failed to speak up and confront institutions that hurt Black and Indigenous people. Any racism is morally repugnant, and any decent person today knows that. There lies the power of redemption for all of us; to recognize the power of our words and thoughts; to evolve towards kinder, more compassionate, and broader thinking; to realize our mistakes and make amends towards others.
For those who wish to learn about this nuanced John Muir, please consider reading Travels in Alaska. Muir’s written experiences there represent a man who loved the wilderness and found within it a way to uncover shared humanity. While I am of the opinion that John Muir evolved beyond some of his racist perspectives during his time in Alaska, I challenge you to read and uncover your own interpretation of his story.
Here is a portion of the Zoom interview that I conducted with Daniel Lee Henry on April 1, 2022. The question I posed was: What would Chilkat/Chilkoot Tlingit Tribes say to the Sierra Club today?
Nature & Spirit, a special, seven-week virtual symposium in which the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church gathered a diverse array of presenters to offer insight into our evolving and essential relationships with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.
Before John Muir, California’s wilderness was seen by many as a place meant to be tamed and developed by man. He founded the Sierra Club to preserve rather than destroy the beauty of California’s natural landscape, ensuring future generations could behold its wonder.
A century later, acclaimed composer Tōru Takemitsu, whose many works were inspired by gardens both real and imagined, visited Muir Woods near the end of his battle with cancer. He then composed his final piece, now considered to be one of the most challenging and beautiful songs ever written for guitar.
Join us as we explore the giant legacies left by these two men after their experiences with the Woods, and what they can teach us about the divinity of nature through two films: a performance of “In the Woods” by acclaimed guitarist Xavier Jara, captured by director Ian Carr of Goldilocks Studios; and the documentary “The Unruly Mystic: John Muir”, directed by Michael M. Conti. Both followed by Q&A with Xavier Jara, Ian Carr and film director Michael M. Conti.
Week 1 – May 5-9, 2021 “Ineffable Nature”
The following is edited and an abridged version of the actual Zoom Q/A that was moderated by Devin Zuber, Ph.D. on May 9, 2021 with Jara, Carr and Conti. The focus here is on The Unruly Mystic: John Muir. Please use the following link if you want to follow the full series program.
How did you come to create a movie about John Muir?
My personal connection is when I first encountered Muir’s exuberance of nature in reading “My First Summer in the Sierra” as an early teen in Boulder, Colorado. It reminded me of that personal connection I was having when I went into the forest, climbed a peak, but I really could not really put any words to it.
The initial purpose of the film was to ask others about their own nature connection and how John Muir’s writings affected them. And in exploring that connection, I realized there was also a spiritual aspect of John Muir as a mystic which was missing. I was also meeting people who were stepping into the words of John Muir and how it was enriching their lives and others.
What is the experience you want someone to have in seeing the filming?
It should be experiential. You are really experiencing what it is like to be in the forest. The sounds, the moments, the light coming through that little sparkle of darkness and light are the sorts of things that I think when we read John Muir, we are also picking up on are those sparkles that remind us of nature. And we were able to appreciate it even more.
Early morning sunlight in the Sequoias of Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California, USA
Ian Carr (the filmmaker behind Xavier Jara’s performance of In the Woods):
Something that really struck me about Michael’s film: Is this idea of translation, trying to take something, these experiences that these people would have when they went out into nature. And there was a lot of discussion about how Muir’s spiritual learnings and his time with the scriptures gave him some of the words that he was able to use to describe these experiences he had outside and with Takemitsu’s music.
I was talking to Xavier Jara just last week, and I listened to the piece many times. And every time I hear it, or I watched the video, I noticed something different. There is something new. I think there is a beautiful quality to these experiences that artists can create or that nature can create, or that we can find on our own where, when they have these things that don’t have words to describe. It means that when we look, we keep seeing different sides of it and it’s something that I also find in the sanctuary of the Swedenborgian church. I’ve spent many years, most of my life visiting it quite regularly. And the church itself is an experience for those of you who have not visited.
It is often called the garden church to get into the sanctuary. You must first go through a small passageway through past a cast iron gate. And then you suddenly emerge into this garden, this little Oasis in the middle of San Francisco. And it is only after you pass through that garden, you are able to enter the sanctuary.
And when you enter the sanctuary, often the very first thing your eyes are drawn to are the dove window, which is above the altar. And I think this is something I really found in Takemitsu his work, as I got to learn it for this piece. And something I really noticed in Michael’s documentary is the depth that can come from trying to put something into words that maybe has never been put into words before.
It was meaningful to me to get to experience that myself.
How did the musical score and sound design support that experience?
For this film we knew we were going to do a theatrical release with 5.1 surround sound. And as somebody who also teaches film, most passive viewers of entertainment content don’t fully appreciate how much the score and sound effects plays into the experience that we have with the visual.
I think the best way to always explain that is you’re watching a horror movie: What you are seeing is really just scary, the person walking down a dark hallway, the camera’s below and behind them. It follows behind the person. Your heart starts racing as the sounds and music get more intense. Instead of closing your eyes, try to plug your ears. And now you are just seeing this visual information, which is just someone walking down a darken hallway; and without the audio information, the visual loses much of its impact.
There is one point in the Muir film where Stephen K. Hatch is talking about being out in the desert and how a fly can buzz and sounded like voices.
And with 5.1 surround sound, I could literally have the fly buzzing sound go around all the theaters speakers. Good sound is all part of the movie going experience. You need it to have that subtle step into an imaginary world being created on the screen. It’s all part of that immersive experience that the musical score envelopes you with.
What is special with new release of the film in 2021?
I am calling it the “Scotland Cut.” Besides returning to Yosemite in April 2019 while doing a special screening, I was also able to get Shelton Johnson on camera again for a more extended interview. That piece is in the new film. Then, in the summer of 2019, I walked the 134-mile John Muir Way in Scotland. 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.
We ended in the town of Dunbar, which is his hometown, 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. You walk west to east as that keeps the prevailing winds at your back.
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.
It was a 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.
Along The John Muir Way 2019, overlooking Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park. Photo by Gavin Morton.
Each of us, have our own experiences when we go into nature, sometimes we see a hawk, and that has a meaning for us. Visiting Scotland was that important for me.
In the film, I talk about having done this art performance piece when I was at Colorado College and had created the structure about “chaos and order” in Southeastern Colorado. And in spring equinox 2017, I was out near Canyonlands National Park in Utah and I stumbled upon a bilocation that was a natural made look-alike to what I had created in 1985.
I have always been curious to return to the place of that “mystical” encounter in Utah. And so, this last April, I went back with my musician son, Morris Conti, to camp. I had a really difficult time trying to find the place. I had stumbled upon its placement at the end of a long hike. I think over the two days I hiked there, I covered close to 30 miles up and down canyon slot canyons.
And eventually I found it later on that second day. I had a drone now, I had my camera again. And so of course, for those two days, I’m carrying like a full geared backpack of equipment. And so I brought that back into the new cut of the movie.
I think we are all familiar with that same kind of “thin veil.” This place really has it. There was like a connection, deeper sense of something very special. And in that part of the part of Canyonlands, there’s a lot of Anasazi Puebloans cliff dwellings, there was there’s clearly is a sense that people had lived there, a thousand years ago. It’s completely emptied of anything really now, except for these beautiful, sculptured rocks and sparse vegetation. There are still small mammals and birds.
But when you discover something like that structure, you realize that it was probably been there for a long time and other people have noticed it too. Maybe the Puebloans? So that was something that I felt I had to share again, that experience that I had being there more fully.
Describe how seeing a good movie in a theater can be like attending a good church service?
I really think, for me, that good immersive cinema is also like being in a church. For example, to be in a theater, where you hear the same sounds, see the same visuals as one audience. And before Covid, we could safely breath the same air. All of which gives us something like the same heartbeat, same breath. A good sermon in a church where everything can be immersive, light through the stain glass windows, the chorus singing, the altar candles, a well-spoken sermon, all of which can create a communal experience of sorts. You come out of that church service with a greater appreciation for the moment. “Victor and Edith Turner have called the “communitas” of community that comes out of cinema is almost a pilgrimage.” (comment added by Dr. Zuber).
How did you end up selecting the people you chose to interview or include in the documentary?
It’s a little bit like stepping stones. I do not quite know where I’m going until I get there, such it becomes a learning process for me. And so in the film I just referred Stephen K. Hatch, who talked about hearing the fly in the desert. Stephen introduced me to Shelton Johnson in Yosemite National Park. Johnson is a very dynamic park ranger who does incredible work, bringing inner city youth to experience the transformative wonder of Yosemite. He shares a lot of his photography work on social media.
And so it’s these little steps of who I meet lead, who lead to somebody else. It is not like I have a whole list made up before. So, it is a creative process where your own curiosity goes, as opposed to trying to check off a list of who the people should be.
Has the film been impacted by the response to people acknowledging Muir’s racist writings?
In 2018, we had an uncomfortable encounter with protestor when we were doing a screening in Asheville and it became clear that we had gone into a place that I knew nothing about. I deeply abhor racism and I have tried to be aware and inclusive in how I conduct my own life and work. My heart was broken with this news.
I had to do some research on Muir’s racism, so I reached out to family members, academic and Sierra Club experts that knew more than I knew about his letters, his personal history. While what I found does not excuse him, it appears Muir’s racism was not persistent through his whole life. It was not a legacy racism of hatred. He was using descriptive racist language of the times to describe the Blacks he saw when walking through the devastated south just after the end of the Civil War. He was writing about what he saw, using the racist words of the times. That still does not excuse him, but it helps to put his racist language into a context or modern lens to view it.
In 1879, Muir went to Alaska, which is really the point where he finally “saw” the Indigenous people as suffering from all the disease, social illnesses that we brought to them, including alcohol. Their pitiful situation was a consequence of our interaction with them. It was not their “true” nature. Other Indigenous tribes had not been so misfortunate in their encounters with the outsiders, like the Chilkat and Chilkoot Tlingit. These powerful tribes gave him new respect with their thriving culture and land stewardship. I found this out in this book, “Across the Shaman’s River,” by Daniel Lee Henry. This book really goes into that experience in Alaska where Muir’s transformation occurs. I asked Daniel to write the foreword to one of the books that I will be publishing on Muir.
We all make mistakes or do stupid things. The question is, can we correct our mistakes? Can we find redemption? Maybe. And that is what Muir did later, he created a fund for the Indigenous people. I would like to think that if he were indeed a lifelong racist, he would never do that.
Andrew Dodd from (SF-Swedenborgian Church) commented: “There is a fabulous article that appeared in last months, Sierra magazine. Written by Rebecca Solnit, she is quite an advocate for rights and for ecological conservancy. But she dealt with the issue of John Muir in Native America from an extremely balanced viewpoint, John Muir in Native America, that I think covers all the topics that could be addressed further here.”
Any thoughts about our current planetary crisis?
Saint Hildegard talks about what she saw when she was alive in the 10th century, she saw the destruction of nature. She stood up and was making us aware of that long ago just as John Muir was doing as we showed in the film. I’m hoping somebody who is watching, will wake up to make and have an impact, or to recognize that, that they have that innate power within themselves.
And they don’t need to wait for somebody else to do that.
Nancy Ellen Abrams, “A God that Could Be Real” was interviewed for the third film on spiritually and science shared a profound thought with us, and I would just leave that as my final kind of statement is that what if we are alone in the universe, we are the most evolved beings, there is nobody coming to save us? This is it. We are the most evolved. I think that is a profound way to look at the situation that we’re in.
Thank you to Andrew Dobb of San Francisco Swedenborgian Church for including The Unruly Mystic: John Muir (2021) for the first session of this symposium.
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"I greatly enjoyed the film. Very well done, and I appreciate the special focus on spirituality which I think is lacking from most other Muir documentaries."Volunteer Webmaster, Sierra Club John Muir Exhibit Harold Wood vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/
