Robert Macfarlane
John Muir (1838-1914) was born and raised in Dunbar, East Lothian. When his family emigrated to Wisconsin in 1849, young John was bought up to hard labour on his father’s homestead. A natural inventor, he first discovered the joys of walking, and writing, after an industrial accident nearly blinded him. His journals, articles and lectures helped to develop international awareness of the need to preserve and protect the environment, and led to the foundation of the General Grant, Sequoia and Yosemite national parks in the US, as well as important conservation areas in his native East Lothian. John Muir has been honoured ever since as the father of the modern environment movement.
“So there I lie on the plateau, under me the central core of fire from which was thrust this grumbling grinding mass of plutonic rock”
‘Nan Shepherd’s prose is as bracing as water from a mountain stream’
Nicholas Lezard
The Guardian
Nan Shepherd: How one woman saw the Cairngorms in a different light
Steven Brocklehurst
The BBC
