Alaska Days with John Muir

by Samuel Hall Young, Richard F Fleck (Introduction)

Overview

Samuel Hall Young, a Presbyterian clergyman, met John Muir when the great naturalist's steamboat docked at Fort Wrangell, in southeastern Alaska, where Young was a missionary to the Stickeen Indians. In "Alaska Days With John Muir" he describes this 1879 meeting: "A hearty grip of the hand and we seemed to coalesce in a friendship which, to me at least, has been one of the very best things in a life full of blessings."

This book, first published in 1915, describes two journeys of discovery taken in company with Muir in 1879 and 1880. Despite the pleas of his missionary colleagues that he not risk life and limb with "that wild Muir", Young accompanied Muir in the exploration of Glacier Bay. Upon Muir's return to Alaska in 1880, they traveled together and mapped the inside route to Sitka. Young describes Muir's ability to "slide" up glaciers, the broad Scotch he used when he was enjoying himself, and his natural affinity for Indian wisdom and theistic religion. From the gripping account of their near-disastrous ascent of Glenora Peak to Young's perspective on Muir's famous dog story "Stickeen", Alaska Days is an engaging record of a friendship grounded in the shared wonders of Alaska's wild landscapes.

This series celebrates the tradition of literary naturalists-- writers who embrace the natural world as the setting for some of our most euphoric and serious experiences. Their literary terrain maps the intimate connections between the human and the natural world, a subject defined by Mary Austin in 1920 as "a third thing... the sum of what passed between me and the Land." Literary naturalists transcend political boundaries, social concerns and historical milieus; they speak for what Henry Beston called the "other nations" of the planet. Their message acquires more weight and urgency as wild places become increasingly scarce. This series then, celebrates both a wonderful body of work, and a fundamental truth: that nature counts as a model, a guide to ho

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780879053567
Publisher:	Peregrine Smith Books
Publication date:	04/19/1991
Series:	Peregrine Smith Literary Naturalists
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.04(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Samuel Hall Young was a Presbyterian clergyman and missionary. He met John Muir in 1879 in southeastern Alaska, and described their ensuing friendship and travels in Alaska Days with John Muir.

Foreword writer Richard F. Fleck is author of many books including Henry Thoreau and John Muir Among the Indians, editor of John Muir’s Mountaineering Essays, A Colorado River Reader, which was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to be the reader for seven states project 2001-2. He contributed a biography of John Burroughs for the Encyclopedia of New York State. Fleck is also the author of numerous introductions to trade paperback editions including Henry David Thoreau’s Maine Woods, John Muir’s Our National Parks, and Samuel Hall Young’s Alaska Days with John Muir.

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter 11, The Rescue

After the first wild moment of panic when I felt myself falling, I do not remember any sense of fear. But I know what it is to have a thousand thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant—an anguished thought of my young wife at Wrangell, with her immanent motherhood; an indignant thought of the insurance companies that refused me policies on my life; a thought of wonder as to what would become of my poor flocks of Indians among the islands; recollections of events far and near in time, important and trivial; but each thought printed upon my memory by the instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling up against my head. The jar of a little rock, and all would be over. The situation was too desperate for actual fear. Dull wonder as to how long I would be in the air, and the hope that death would be instant— that was all. Then came the wish that Muir would come before I fell, and take a message to my wife. Suddenly I heard his voice right above me. “My God!” he cried. Then he added, “Grab that rock, man, just by your right hand.”
I gurgled from my throat, not daring to inflate my lungs, “My arms are out.”
There was a pause. Then his voice rang again, cheery, confident, unexcited, “Hold fast; I’m going to get you out of this. I can’t get to you on this side; the rock is sheer. I’ll have to leave you now and cross the rift high up and come down to you on the other side by which we came. Keep cool.”
Then I heard him going away, whistling “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” singing snatches of Scotch songs, calling to me, his voice now receding, as the rocks intervened, then sounding louder as he came out on the face of the cliff. But in me hope surged at full tide. I entertained no more thoughts of last messages. I did not see how he could possibly do it, but he was John Muir, and I had seen his wonderful rock- work. So I determined not to fall and made myself as flat and heavy as possible, not daring to twitch a muscle or wink an eyelid, for I still felt myself slipping, slipping down the greasy slate. And now a new peril threatened. A chill ran through me of cold and nervousness, and I slid an inch. I suppressed the growing shivers with all my will. I would keep perfectly quiet till Muir came back. The sickening pain in my shoulders increased till it was torture, and I could not ease it.
It seemed like hours, but it was really only about ten minutes before he got back to me. By that time I hung so far over the edge of the precipice that it seemed impossible that I could last another second. Now I heard Muir’s voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a little below.
“Hold steady,” he said. “I’ll have to swing you out over the cliff.”
Then I felt a careful hand on my back, fumbling with the waistband of my pants, my vest and shirt, gathering all in a firm grip. I could see only with one eye and that looked upon but a foot or two of gravel on the other side.
“Now!” he said, and I slid out of the cleft with a rattling shower of stones and gravel. My head swung down, my impotent arms dangling, and I stared straight at the glacier, a thousand feet below. Then my feet came against the cliff.
“Work downwards with your feet.”
I obeyed. He drew me close to him by crooking his arm and as my head came up past his level he caught me by my collar with his teeth! My feet struck the little two-inch shelf on which he was standing, and I could see Muir, flattened against the face of the rock and facing it, his right hand stretched up and clasping a little spur, his left holding me with an iron grip, his head bent sideways, as my weight drew it. I felt as alert and cool as he.
“I’ve got to let go of you,” he hissed through his clenched teeth. “I need both hands here. Climb upward with your feet.”
How he did it, I know not. The miracle grows as I ponder it. The wall was almost perpendicular and smooth. My weight on his jaws dragged him outwards. And yet, holding me by his teeth as a panther her cub and clinging like a squirrel to a tree, he climbed with me straight up ten or twelve feet, with only the help of my iron-shod feet scrambling on the rock. It was utterly impossible, yet he did it!
When he landed me on the little shelf along which we had come, my nerve gave way and I trembled all over. I sank down exhausted, Muir only less tired, but supporting me.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Mountain
The Rescue
The Voyage
The Discovery
The Lost Glacier
The Dog and the Man
The Man in Perspective