Friends of John Muir's Birthplace

On 15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by
Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York. It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the
wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County andinspired him to change the world’s view of wild places

Today’s quote

After attaining the manly, belligerent age of five or fix years, very few of my schooldays passed without a fistfight, and half a dozen was no uncommon number.  When any classmate of our own age questioned our rank and standing as fighters, we always made haste to settle the matter at a quiet place on the Davel Brae.  To be a ‘gude fechter’[1] was our highest ambition, our dearest aim in life in or out of school.  To be a good scholar was a secondary consideration, though we tried hard to hold high places in our classes and gloried in being Dux.

On 15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.  It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County and inspired him to change the world’s view of wild places.

Today’s quote

One of our best playgrounds was the famous old Dunbar Castle, to which King Edward fled after has defeat at Bannockburn.  It was built more than a thousand years ago,and though we knew little of its history, we had heard many mysterious stories of the battles fought about its walls, and firmly believed that every bone we found in the ruins belonged to an ancient warrior.  We tried to see who could climb highest on the crumbling peaks and crags, and took chances that no cautious mountaineer would try.  That I did not fall and finish my rock-scrambling in those adventurous boyhood days seems now a reasonable wonder

On 15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.  It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County and inspired him to change the world’s view of wild places.

Today’s quote

At this time infants were baptized and vaccinated a few days after birth.  I remember very
well a fight with the doctor when my brother David was vaccinated.  This happened, I think, before I was sent to school.  I couldn’t imagine what the doctor, a tall, severe-looking man in black, was doing to my brother, but as mother, who was holding him in her arms, offered no objection, I looked on quietly while he scratched the arm until I saw blood.  Then, unable to trust even my mother, I managed to spring up high enough to grab and bite the doctor’s arm, yelling that I wasna gan to let him hurt my bonnie brither, while to my utter astonishment mother and the doctor only laughed at me.
So far from complete at times is sympathy between parents and children, and so much like wild beasts are baby boys, little fighting, biting, climbing pagans.

On
15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by
Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.
It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his
early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the
wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His
love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County and
inspired him to change the world’s view of wild places

Today’s quote

With my school lessons father made me learn hymns and Bible verses.  For learning ‘Rock of Ages’ he gave me a penny, and I thus became suddenly rich.  Scotch boys are seldom spoiled with money.  We thought more of a penny those economical days than the poorest American schoolboy thinks of a dollar.  To decide what to do with that first penny was an extravagantly serious affair.

On 15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.  It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County and inspired him to change the world’s view of wild places

Today’s quote
With red-blooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one.

Friends’ Facebook Quotes

On 15 March 1913, John Muir’s ‘The Story of My Boyhood and Youth’ was published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.  It has constantly been available in the 100 years since. It tells of his early years in Dunbar and then, from ages 11 to 22, of growing up in the wonderful Wisconsin countryside.  His love of nature, awakened in East Lothian, was nurtured in Marquette County and inspired him to change the world’s view of wild places.

Today’s quote.

1.  When I was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my life I’ve been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures.  Fortunately around my native town of Dunbar, by the stormy North Sea, there was no lack of wildness, though most of the land lay in smooth cultivation.