The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

In this moving memoir of an unusual childhood, John Muir recalls his younger days in East Lothian, Scotland, with a startling clarity, depicting a wild boy whose quiet individuality and determination were already emerging. In the mid nineteenth century, when Muir was 11, his fanatically religious father took the family to build a new life in America's vast wilderness. Muir charts their pioneering years in Wisconsin, where his battles for survival powerfully anticipate the extraordinary career that eventually followed. The book reveals a free spirit who perceived bonds between man and nature that were subtle and far reaching for both.