John Muir 
A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) 

The title of this posthumously published 1916 volume says it all.  Editor William Frederic Bade uses Muir’s journals to recount his 1867 walking tour from Indiana to the Gulf Coast just two years after the end of the Civil War.  An extraordinary adventure for a twenty-nine-year old budding naturalist, it marked the beginning of Muir’s lifelong commitment to wilderness preservation.

About the author

John Muir (1838-1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist and conservationist.  He founded the Sierra Club.  A fierce advocate of wilderness protection, Muir influenced President Theodore Roosevelt’s national park system and, through his passionate, often unabashedly spiritual writings, helped to shape Americans’ attitudes toward wilderness preservation and land stewardship.