Alaska Days with John Muir

Samuel Hall Young

Description

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

Sujets

• HISTORY
• 19th century
• Interest group (disambiguation)
• Literature
• Environmentalism
• Naturalism (literature)
• Travel
• General officer
• John Muir Trail
• General
• United States
• John Muir
• Alaska

Informations

• Publié par: West Margin Press
• Date de parution: 13 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780882409689
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contemporary Praise for Alaska Days with John Muir
Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John Muir s dog story? Here is a book by the man who owned Stickeen and was Muir s companion on the adventurous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Alaskan wilderness, it is also a living portrait of John Muir in the great moments of his career.
- New York Times
I can see only one fault with the book, it is far too short. I should love to read such a book as big as the dictionary. Thank you very much!
-Gene Stratton-Porter
One need not be an admirer of John Muir to be thoroughly entertained by the lively pages. The Muir of this book is the familiar vibrant personality. This little book, the record of these trips, is written in a style animated and vivid without being journalistic-a style not unlike that of the lover of glaciers himself.
- The Nation
A LASKA D AYS with J OHN M UIR
T HE L ITERARY N ATURALIST S ERIES
A LASKA D AYS with J OHN M UIR
S AMUEL H ALL Y OUNG
Foreword by
R ICHARD F RANCIS F LECK
Foreword 2013 by Richard Francis Fleck
All rights reserved. No part of the copyrighted materials may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, Samuel Hall, 1847-1927.
Alaska days with John Muir / Samuel Hall Young ; foreword by Richard Francis Fleck.
pages cm. - (The literary naturalist series)
Originally published: New York : Fleming H. Revell Company, 1915.
ISBN 978-0-88240-943-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-88240-968-9 (e-book)
ISBN 978-0-88240-977-1 (hardbound)
1. Alaska-Description and travel. 2. Natural history-Alaska. 3. Muir, John, 1838-1914-Travel-Alaska. 4. Young, Samuel Hall, 1847-1927-Travel-Alaska. I. Title.
F908.M96Y6 2013
917.98-dc23
2013021374
WestWinds Press An imprint of Graphic Arts Books P.O. Box 56118 Portland, OR 97238-6118 [phone] www.graphicartsbooks.com
Design by Vicki Knapton Cover image: Don Paulson / Jaynes Gallery / Danita Delimont.com
FORT WRANGELL
N EAR THE MOUTH OF THE S TICKEEN-THE STARTING POINT OF THE EXPEDITIONS

J OHN M UIR WITH A LASKA S PRUCE C ONES
CONTENTS
Foreword
I The Mountain
II The Rescue
III The Voyage
IV The Discovery
V The Lost Glacier
VI The Dog and the Man
VII The Man in Perspective

FOREWORD

The blue-veined glacier, cold of heart and pale, Warmed, at his glance, to amethystine blush, And murmured deep, fond undertones of love.
-Samuel Hall Young
Anumber of summers ago during my first evening in Alaska, a Tsimshian elder gracefully spread swan s down on the floor of Juneau s Native Brotherhood Hall to open the Nishkiya ceremony. As white feathers floated through the air, my mind and spirit seemed released from all the tensions of travel from the lower 48; I was more than ready to listen to stories of beaver and porcupine people out in the wilds of the surrounding sitka forests, rivers, and mountains of panhandle Alaska.
Later that evening, Juneau Harbor, blinking with shiplights, did little to dispel my hypnotic state: I ambled down to the dock where my day cruise would begin the next morning to Sum Dum Bay and Tracy Arm and tried to imagine what I would see. In preparation for my trip I had read two companion volumes, John Muir s Travels in Alaska (1916) and Samuel Hall Young s Alaska Days with John Muir (1915). The Tlingit and Tsimshian Indians in those days (1879-90) were in the process of learning English and a new religion from Protestant missionaries like Samuel Hall Young whom the famous Scottish naturalist from Yosemite had met and befriended.
Muir explains in his book that he wanted to hire several Indian guides (in whose stories and conversations he delighted) to go into the back country where he could explore glaciers. The Tlingits suggested the names of a few including Sitka Charlie who would be best for that purpose because he hi yu kumtux wawa Boston -knew well how to speak English.
Dawn came bright and clear very early my second day in Alaska. About twelve of us boarded the Riviera skippered by a young man called Rusty from Cape Cod; we soon left the harbor behind us. Sitka-studded Admiralty Island looked like a Rockwell Kent print with snowcapped peaks flanked by feathery clouds of silver. On the mainland side we could make out Taku Inlet but not the receded Taku Glacier. On another day I would take a seaplane over the immense Juneau Icefields and the crinkly surface of Taku Glacier to land on a marshy inlet. On that flight I would catch an icy glimpse of what most of North America looked like at the height of the Wisconsin Ice Age or what Iceland s Vatnaj kull glacier looks like today.
As our craft plied through icy waters beyond Taku Inlet, we passed numerous crab boats hauling in their harvest of Alaskan snow crabs. Within an hour we entered Sum Dum Bay as John Muir had done over a hundred years earlier. We gazed at the hanging Sum Dum Glacier in cloudy mountains south of Tracy Arm fiord. Quickly, granite walls engulfed us rising straight up to brightly glaring snowfields. Streams of water hurled through space down to the green waters of the fiord. Bright blue icebergs drifted past as we closed in on a tell-tale cliff carved and scratched by a myriad slow-moving glaciers of yore. Following Ralph Waldo Emerson s lead, John Muir called these scratchings glacial hieroglyphics because they surely furnished as much information as the Egyptian Rosetta Stone.
Approaching South Sawyer Glacier, we amused ourselves watching jet-black seals sunbathing on bright blue bergs, blue being the only color refracted out of their dense masses. Our ship came to within a hundred yards of the glacier looking like an arched blue planet all its own. A sudden thunderous boom startled us as a huge chunk of ice broke off the edge of the glacier and splashed down into the narrow bay. The Tlingit words sum dum are indeed apt. The berg makes the sound SUM, and the echoing cliffs DUM! Aquamarine and copper-colored ice chunks bobbed all around the glistening new berg. Here we could easily envision future yosemites. Samuel Young writes, glaciers were Muir s special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he held sweet communion. Their voices were plain to his ears, their work, as God s landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best Nature could offer.
We sailed silently through a fiord as mesmerizing as the floating swan s down of the Nishkiya ceremony. In the silence I imagined an Indian s voice singing from atop some immense summit. By now we had become accustomed to a world of dark blue ice, hieroglyphic cliffs, and rivers falling out of the sky. But we were in store for something more. Just off Admiralty Island a humpback whale rose out of the water to flap his tail fin so forcefully it sounded like a cannonade. His gigantic body rose and splashed several times before disappearing southward. Too quickly Juneau Harbor, dominated by Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts, came into view. We camped at the site of what is now Juneau, the capital of Alaska, writes Samuel Young of his and Muir s 1879 voyage, and no dream of the millions of gold that were to be taken from those mountains disturbed us. If we had known, I do not think that we would have halted a day or staked a claim. Our treasures were richer than gold and securely laid up in the vaults of our memories.
I sought a different gold as well. It wasn t difficult finding the trailhead above the city where soft rain angled down from greyness of cloud. I gingerly proceeded along Mount Roberts trail through foggy forests of sitka spruce, hemlock, yellow cedar, alder, thick undergrowths of stinging devil s club, ferns, mosses, and clusters of blue lupine and bright red Indian paint-brush. But quickly the trail became extremely steep with a series of tiring switchbacks. I rested for a spell glancing down on Juneau Harbor filled with fishing craft, luxury liners, and seaplanes taking off like noisy mosquitoes through layers of fog. However, Nature s own sounds held sway. Aisles of spruce resounded again and again with the musical quiver of rising and falling notes of the Swainson s thrush, and splashing threads of waterfalls tumbling down the flanks of Mount Juneau spun with webs of mist.
I plodded ever upward. From beneath my dripping poncho I noticed how scrawny the trees had become; ferns had barely unfurled from fiddleheads. Notes from some distant thrush or warbler suddenly caught my ear, but the more I listened the more I imagined them to be faint notes from a stone flute. One cannot help but feel the presence of the Tlingit and Haida Indian s spirit in such a place. How fortunate Muir and Young were to have shared a portion of their lives with the natives of Alaska a hundred and twenty years ago.
Mist cleared long enough for me to spot the glazed summits of Mount Gastineau and Mount Roberts looming above like humpback whales-only to disappear in greyness. An omnipresent wind shifted direction and blew gently across the valley carrying the plash of many distant waterfalls. Was I in Scandinavia? The music of Finlandia kept creeping through my mind.
Ever upward I hiked through endless groves of leafy scrub alder bushes as if in a dream. But suddenly I was scared witless by a willow ptarmigan fluttering and clucking like something out of mythology, trying to decoy me away from her brood of chicks. With a fast-beating heart, I continued my climb across glaring snowfields melted down to the green tundra of June. A denizen