My not being a TV junkie, I missed the announcements about the Ken Burns’ PBS special that began last night (Sunday): The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. But since I usually begin each week with “Nature” on PBS, I stumbled upon it—and was totally captivated.

Narration near the beginning was familiar, and when I detected the actor’s  Scottish accent, I knew it had to be statements by John Muir, America’s “nature prophet”—and, arguably, the best of our nature writers.  Episode 1 was subtitled “The Scripture of Nature,” and you can view it online, just as all six episodes will be viewable after their first showing this week.

Because Muir was compelled by his father’s brutal discipline to memorize huge portions of Scripture [read his childhood story here], his writings are filled with biblical phrases and allusions ironically and almost entirely couched in expressions of love and tenderness.  Below are a just a few that I noted in reading his classic The Mountains of California:

Referring to the volcanic peaks:

Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some of them with lakes in their throats, others  overgrown with trees and flowers. Nature in these old hearths and firesides literally given beauty for ashes.

Referring to glaciers:

These mighty agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries, crushed and ground the flinty lavas and granites beneath their crystal folds, wasting and building until in the fulness of time the Sierra was born again brought to light nearly as we behold it today. . . . Plants and animals, biding their time, closely followed the retiring ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the new-born landscapes.

Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky [snowflakes], one may easily fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the mountain mines on errands of divine love.  Silently flying through the darkened air, swirling, glinting, to their appointed places, they seem to have take counsel together, saying, “Come, we are feeble; let us help one another.  We are many, and together we will be strong.  Marching in close, deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountain sepulchers, and set the landscapes free.”

It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian summer, when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers.  The path of the vanished glacier was warm now, and shone in many places as if washed with silver.  The tall pines growing on moraines stood transfigured in the glowing light, the poplar groves on the levels of the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the late-blooming goldenrods added gold to gold.

On the high peaks of the Sierras:

In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality.  Now came the solemn, silent evening.  Long, blue, spikey shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountaintop, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them.  This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.  At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout worshipers. . . .

In tone and aspect the scene was one of the most desolate I ever beheld.  But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illumined with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone.

You can read a couple of my previous posts on Muir here:

http://www.wonderofcreation.org/2009/04/21/thanks-for-saving-yosemite-john/

http://www.wonderofcreation.org/2009/04/08/whats-mine-is-mine/

Read an article on John Muir in Christian History here.

So unless you are watching the rest of the PBS special series each evening this week, I’ll. . .

. . . see you outdoors!

Dean