JOHN MUIR— PRESIDENT OF THE SIERRA CLUB 

 By William E. Colby 



John Muir was the Sierra Club's first President and held that 

 office for twenty-two years — until his death. The Sierra Club 

 was organized in 1892 largely as a result of the wide-spread 

 interest in California's wonderful mountain playgrounds, which 

 had been aroused by his twenty years of preaching the necessity 

 for their preservation before it should become too late. The 

 Yosemite National Park had just been created as one result of 

 his splendid work. While we could have this great leader of 

 all true mountaineers and lovers of "pure wildness," it was 

 unthinkable that any one else should hold the office of President. 



It was my good fortune to be Secretary of the Club for the 

 last fifteen years of this period and I came to know this wonder- 

 ful man as I have known few others. It is a priceless privilege 

 to be in close contact with a man whose mind was as pure and 

 whose ideals were as high as were John Muir's, and moreover, 

 one who so thoroughly lived up to this ideal purity. 



John Muir will never be fully appreciated by those whose 

 minds are filled with money getting and the sordid things of 

 modern every-day life. To such Muir is an enigma — a fanatic 

 — visionary and impractical. There is nothing in common to 

 arouse sympathetic interest. That anyone should spend his 

 whole life in ascertaining the fundamental truths of nature and 

 glory in their discovery with a joy that would put to shame even 

 the reHgious zealot is to many utterly incomprehensible. That 

 a man should brave the storms and thread the pathless wilder- 

 ness, exult in the earthquake's violence, rejoice in the icy blasts 

 of the northern glaciers, and that he should do all this alone and 

 unarmed, year in and year out, is a marvel that but few can 

 understand. These solitary explorations were quite in contrast 

 with the usual heavily equipped expeditions which undertake 

 such work. John Muir loved and gloried in this sort of life and 

 approached it with an enthusiasm and power of will that made 

 hardships and those things which most human beings consider 



