The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
Written by John Muir
Narrated by LibriVox Community
5/5
()
About this audiobook
"The only fire for the whole house was the kitchen stove, with a fire box about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide and deep,- scant space for three or four small sticks, around which in hard zero weather all the family of ten shivered, and beneath which in the morning we found our socks and coarse, soggy boots frozen solid." Thus, with perceptive eye for detail, the American naturalist, John Muir, describes life on a pioneer Wisconsin farm in the 1850's. Muir was only eleven years old when his father uprooted the family from a relatively comfortable life in Dunbar, Scotland, to settle in the backwoods of North America.
The elder Muir was a religious fundamentalist. What his father taught, John Muir writes, was "grim self denial, in season and out of season, to mortify the flesh, keep our bodies in subjection to Bible laws, and mercilessly punish ourselves for every fault, imagined or committed." Muir's father believed that the Bible was "the only book human beings could possibly require," while John secretly read every volume of poetry and literature he could get his hands on. With no formal schooling after leaving Scotland, John also learned from nature--keenly observing details of the seasons, the life of the farm oxen, and wild animals and birds. John also became an amateur inventor, eking out time from farm chores by getting up at 1 a.m. to whittle intricate wooden clocks by candlelight in the unheated farm house basement.
Muir finally made a break for freedom--his decision was to go to Madison, Wisconsin, and enter his clocks in the State Fair, with the hope that somebody might see them and offer him a job in a machine shop! All the baggage he carried the day he left home was a package made up of "two clocks and a small thermometer made of a piece of old washboard, all three tied together with no covering or case of any sort, the whole looking like one very complicated machine." His father's goodbye was to admonish John about the "wicked world" and to warn him sternly that if he should find himself in need of money, none would be forthcoming. John would have to depend on himself.
How John Muir made his way from that Wisconsin farm to become the great American naturalist, spokesman for Yosemite and the California redwoods, is the stuff of legend: which makes Muir's autobiographical account of his early boyhood a fascinating read. (Summary by Sue Anderson)
John Muir
John Muir (1838-1914) was one of the most influential conservationists and nature writers in American history. He was instrumental in the creation and passage of the National Parks Act, and founder of the Sierra Club, acting as its president until his death. Muir was a spirit so free that all he did to prepare for an expedition was to "throw some tea and bread into an old sack and jump the back fence."
More audiobooks from John Muir
Stickeen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Travels in Alaska Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yosemite Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
Related audiobooks
A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wilderness Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steep Trails Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Mountains of California Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My First Summer in the Sierra Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf: Unabridged Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Muir: The Scotsman Who Saved America's Wild Places Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Heroes: John Muir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5California Coast Trails Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John James Audubon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Maine Woods Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of the National Parks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBird Stories from Burroughs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst Wilderness: My Quest in the Territory of Alaska (Revised Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouth! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nature Near Home and Other Papers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfloat & Afoot: Two Classic Catskills Essays plus commentary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Exploration of the Colorado river and its Canyons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Raven's Witness: The Alaska Life of Richard K. Nelson Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Big Blackfoot: Readings, Interviews and Reflections Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5To the South Seas: A Wild 1929 Family Adventure to the Galapagos Islands Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rangers, Trappers, and Trailblazers: Early Adventures in Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories of California Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cache Lake Country: Or, Life in the North Woods Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Walden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lewis and Clark: Explorers of the Louisiana Purchase Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Journals of Lewis and Clark: Excerpts from The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lure of the Labrador Wild Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Biography & Memoir For You
Twisted Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Blood and Ash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Divine Rivals: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hang the Moon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Local Woman Missing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Zone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Later Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ivy League Counterfeiter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When No One Is Watching: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If He Had Been with Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
2 ratings0 reviews