<p>John Muir (1838 - 1914) was an influential naturalist author environmental philosopher and advocate for the preservation of wilderness areas in the United States.</p><p>In 1869 Muir travelled to California and spent a long time in the area that is now the Yosemite National Park. This narrative takes the form of a hiking guide filled with adventure. Muir was a master of description providing stirring portraits of the area’s wildlife waterfalls valleys meadows giant sequoias groves lakes mountains and glaciers.</p><p>About Yosemite Falls he writes “At the top of the fall they seem to burst forth in irregular spurts from some grand throbbing mountain heart.”</p>