It was this journey, in the company of men such as paleontologist William Dall, Forest and Stream editor George Bird Grinnell, photographer Edward Curtis, geologist G.K. In his sketches and notes, Muir made it clear that Alaska's glaciers were simply unforgettable.Īfter a second trip in 1888, which gave him the adventure with a small dog that inspired the book "Stickeen," Muir returned to the Southeast again in 1899 as a member of the famous Harriman Expedition. Some were steep and twisted and tortured by crevasses as they spilled down tight mountain valleys others ran straight and on a gentle gradient that enabled them to wear few wrinkles, as if they'd had an easier life. Some were heavy with burden, others clean and gleaming. Some were a deep, compelling blue, others pale and white.
Muir wanted to inspect every glacier, as if each were a book like the others, similar in general characteristics yet distinctive in its specifics. The glaciers were a powerful inspiration. The lure of the glaciers brought him back to Alaska two more times in the years that followed and heavily influenced his writings and activism. What he found was something he did not know existed, a place of mystery and grace that defied all reason.
Arriving in Fort Wrangell, he set out by canoe with Tlingit guides and missionary Samuel Hall Young to visit the country and "to seek knowledge," as Young explained. It was there that he became, as his friend naturalist John Burroughs dubbed him, "Cold Storage Muir," and a nationally acclaimed authority on glaciers who inspired countless others to follow in his studies of the ice.Īs Heacox recounts through references to Muir's own works and the works of his biographers and contemporaries, the naturalist first visited Alaska in 1879. Gustavus author Kim Heacox dove deep into the life of an American icon to craft his stirring new title, "John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire." Heacox, whose highly regarded memoir "The Only Kayak" is a modern Alaska classic, takes readers along with Muir on his late 19th century journeys among the glaciers of the state's southeast region.
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