The Story of my Boyhood and Youth

<p><em><strong>The Story of my Boyhood and Youth</strong></em> is the affecting memoir of the now internationally renowned <strong>John Muir</strong> a Scottish-American boy subject to a most unusual upbringing his transition into adulthood and the path that led him to petition for the concept of protected national parks.</p><p>Born in <strong>East Lothian Scotland</strong> in 1838 Muir was raised by a fanatically strict religious father with his numerous brothers and sisters and loving mother. From an early age a shy Muir showed fascination with the natural world and at aged eleven his father announced the family were to move to an American wilderness in Wisconsin – Muir had a new playground.</p><p>His adolescence is spent labouring on the family’s grassroots farm. Working seventeen-hour days an exhausted yet inquisitive Muir desperately snatches moments to himself yearning to explore the environment around him secretly studying books on topics other than religion and rising at 1 a.m. to pursue his hobby of inventing intricate time and energy-saving devices – much to his father’s disapproval and everyone else’s admiration.</p><p>At age twenty-two Muir takes it upon himself to apply to university and does so without financial or moral support from his father. He makes his way to the <strong>University of Wisconsin-Madison</strong> to study chemistry and botany and though never graduating with a degree he is satisfied that he had learned all he wanted to there before completing the rest of his nature education in ‘the university of the wilderness’.</p><p><em><strong>The Story of my Boyhood and Youth</strong></em> includes a new foreword by <strong>Terry Gifford</strong> and offers insight into the development of Muir’s spiritual connection with the natural world and suggests an explanation for his passion for freedom in the wilderness a stark contrast to the forced rigidity of his early years.</p>