Review: My First Summer in the Sierra

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Muir describes his tagging along with a group of sheep herds taking a flock of sheep up the mountains for a season to graze them on high grass. Muir tends to describe everything natural that he sees as beautiful, from flickers to squirrels to fir trees to black ants. He splits his time describing about everything he sees in equal measure, and includes some little stories if he can. The book is written in diary format, following the trip up, then back in the end. While mostly about nature, Muir also describes his travel companions, with the most ink given to his St. Bernard. He also describes the natives he runs across with as much detail as the nature he sees. By far the strangest anecdote was when Muir was seized with the thought that a former teacher was nearby. He hikes to the nearest city to find that in fact this professor was touring in the area, and he meets up with him. Muir believes it a telepathic connection, which seems out of place in this ode to nature.

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