Traveling in Alaska

Belonging to the breed of multifaceted pioneers, John Muir - farmer, inventor, speaker, naturalist, environmental explorer, and amateur writer - brings his pantheistic and anti-utilitarian ethics through which he proposes, like Emerson - the teacher of Borges -, Thoreau, and Robert Marshall, a connection between nature and divinity. Our Antonio Machado would illustrate beautifully how despite the colonizing axe, the ultimate secret of things remains intact for sensitive spirits: "And the whole field for a moment/ falls silent and gloomy/ meditating." This beauty and mystery perceived transcendentalize matter, giving it a soul, humanizing an almost virgin landscape during these five trips to Alaska, made between 1879 and 1899, twenty years of geographical discoveries and human contacts. From the dazzled encounter with the Bay glaciers or the ones named after him to the Thlinkit Indians, descendants of the Mongols, to the arrival at Taylor Bay and the vision of violet auroras, this diary of wonders is an invitation to integrate ourselves into a nature that was then mostly uncontaminated and untouched, largely thanks to the efforts of people like Muir.

John Muir

Desnivel Editions.

240 pages. 14.