Muir, John

A collection of 10 autograph letters signed ("John Muir"), totalling 11 pages (ca. 11 x 8 1/2 in.; 278 x 214 mm), Martinez, California, 31 [sic] April 1912 to 2 July 1914, to Mary Frances Kellogg, accompanied by 7 autograph envelopes (4 of these also signed by Muir); browned, letters and some envelopes hole-punched at left margin, most items tipped to mounting sheets or with remnants of mounting sheet on verso.

An engaging late-life correspondence from the naturalist and pioneering conservationist to a young member of the Sierra Club. The first letter describes Muir's recent expeditions to South America and Africa, from which he returned, despite "hardships and dangers," "in good health, like Tam O. Shanter over a' the ills of life victorious, and gloriously laden with the rocks, mountains, forests, rivers, animals and other riches of those two grand continents." In a letter of 24 August 1912, Muir reports that he has not been able to see the Kelloggs because "Looking over a lot of old notes on Alaska to see what sort of a book may be made of them keeps me busy." At the end of that year, 22 December, Muir is still at work on his Alaskan monograph: "I've been in Berkeley three weeks with a typewriter getting Alaska notes copied & am now at work on them in my lonely old den." The idea of moving while in the midst of writing strikes Muir as a "desperate job. The best thing about the trip to the next world is that there will be no baggage to bother about."

Muir continues this theme in a letter of 1 February 1913: "I often think or dream of a house in Altadena—a good roomy one with a big library but the thought of moving all my collections, getting servants etc. is appalling and always makes me feel like taking to a hollow tree." On 22 October 1913, Muir thanks Kellogg for a photograph of Muir Lodge, which was built by the Southern California chapter of the Sierra Club in Big Santa Anita Cañon, but more significantly, he reports on his efforts to protect the Hetch-Hetchy Valley from commercial development, which he terms "this long drawn out battle for our National parks." The final letter in this series, 2 July 1914, was written just six months before Muir's death and provides a fitting coda to the correspondence as Muir sends Kellogg best wishes for her "grand excursions among the forests, gardens, mountains & streams of the songful Merced" region of the San Joaquin Valley and regrets that he cannot accompany her. Muir's Travels in Alaska was posthumously published in 1915.