My First Summer in the Sierra

My First Summer in the Sierra is John Muir’s account of the months he spent in the high country of California in 1869. The text opens on June 3 of that year, when Muir leaves a ranch near French Bar on the Tuolumne River with a flock of sheep, bound for the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers. The book is built from the notes he kept at the time, and the volume in the evidence is the Sierra Edition printing of 1917 from Houghton Mifflin, which carries a 1911 copyright in Muir’s name.

The first chapter explains how he came to go. The Central Valley dries out by the end of May, and flocks are driven up to the cool green pastures of the mountains. Muir longs for the Sierra but has little money and worries about bread. A sheep owner, Mr. Delaney, offers him work: go along with the shepherd and the flock, make sure the shepherd does his duty, and stay free to study plants, rocks and scenery. Muir doubts he is the right man, since he does not know the upper country, its rivers, or the animals that prey on sheep, but Delaney brushes these worries aside.

Muir also gains a companion, a St. Bernard named Carlo, entrusted to him by a hunter who fears the plains heat will kill the dog. The scene of the dog listening to the two men and choosing to follow Muir shows the attention to animal character that runs through the book.

The party that sets out includes Delaney, the shepherd Billy, two helpers for the first days, and Muir with a notebook tied to his belt. Muir describes the flock in motion: the irregular triangle of sheep, the eager leaders, the dawdling tail end, and the mothers and lambs who know one another’s voices amid the din. The midday heat, the panting animals and the tawny foothills, with blue oaks and slate slabs like tombstones, give a vivid sense of the lowland journey before the climb begins.

The contents list shows the shape of the whole summer. After the foothills come a camp on the North Fork of the Merced, a bread famine, the move to the high mountains, and a long chapter on the Yosemite. Later chapters take him to Mount Hoffman and Lake Tenaya, a strange experience, the Mono Trail, Bloody Cañon and Mono Lake, the Tuolumne camp, and the return to the lowlands.

The book is also illustrated. It includes photographs of Yosemite Falls, the Domes and Cathedral Peak, and it reproduces sketches Muir made in 1869, such as his camp on the North Fork of the Merced, a sugar pine, and a Douglas squirrel. These show that the observation was visual as well as verbal. The dedication to the Sierra Club, described as a faithful defender of the people’s playgrounds, signals the conservation purpose that later readers associate with Muir.

From the opening chapter alone, the book combines practical detail, humor, natural history and eager anticipation of the mountains. Muir presents himself as an unqualified but willing shepherd’s overseer whose real purpose is to learn, and the narrative follows that curiosity upward through each forest belt as the snow melts.