The Wilderness World by John Muir, Edited by Edwin W. Teale

Summary (Amazon):
As a conservationist, John Muir traveled through most of the American wilderness alone and on foot, without a gun or a sleeping bag. In 1903, while on a three-day camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt, he convinced the president of the importance of a national conservation program, and he is widely recognized for saving the Grand Canyon and Arizona's Petrified Forest. Muir's writing, based on journals he kept throughout his life, gives our generation a picture of an America still wild and unsettled only one hundred years ago. In The Wildernesss World of John Muir edited by Edwin Way Teale has selected the best of Muir's writing from all of his major works; including My First Summer in the Sierra and Travels in Alaska to provide a singular collection that provides to be "magnificent, thrilling, exciting, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring" (Kirkus Reviews).

Reviews:
Sierra Club: 
https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/bibliographic_resources/book_reviews/wilderness_world_rv_wood.aspx

Articles:
Smithsonian: Yosemite: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-muirs-yosemite-10737/

The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/the-american-forests/305017/

Dunbar, Scotland (his birthplace): https://www.jmbt.org.uk/

Biography and Exhibit by Sierra Club:
https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/muir_biography.aspx

Videos: 
PBS: National Parks: John Muir:
http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/people/historical/muir/
PBS: John Muir in the New World:
https://www.pbs.org/video/american-masters-john-muir-in-the-new-world-1/

Quotes: 
"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. "

"In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks."

Discussion Questions (Written by John Shiver, who will also lead the discussion)

1. How did John’s childhood and upbringing help prepare him for his life and career as a naturalist and explorer?
2. Muir encountered many people in his travels. how did they contribute to the success of his wanderings and how were they different from what his father had taught him to expect from strangers?
3. Of all his adventures, which would you choose to have experienced or shared with him and why?
4. How did Thoreau’s and Emerson’s writings influence Muir? How were these men and their experiences similar and different?
5. How would you explain Muir’s accurate premonition that his friend, Professor Butler, had arrived in CA from WI? Was this a coincidence or representative of some greater insight that he was capable of?
6. How did Muir’s writings establish and popularize the conservation movement in the US? Discuss his style and why it still holds so much appeal today? What were some of your favorite passages?
7. What were some of his scientific contributions that related to the formation and geology of California Sierras and Yosemite?

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Summary: (Amazon): The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. It details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amid woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.

Current Reviews and Articles for the Bicentennial and more:

Washington Post: "Why I Still Love Henry David Thoreau, 'Walden'": https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/why-i-still-love-henry-david-thoreaus-walden/2017/07/12/7b52c35e-66fc-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html?utm_term=.614cd5c9f42a

The New Yorker: "Pond Scum": 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

The New York Times: "The True American": 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/08/17/henry-david-thoreau-true-american/

The New York Times: "What's the Muck of Walden Pond tells us about our Planet" :

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/what-the-muck-of-walden-pond-tells-us-about-our-planet.html

The Guardian, "Pee and pesticides: Thoreau's Walden Pond in Trouble" :https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/06/pee-and-pesticides-henry-david-thoreau-walden-pond-in-trouble-warn-scientists

The Walden Woods Project: https://www.walden.org/thoreau/

The Thoreau Society: https://www.thoreausociety.org/

Walden Quotes:

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."

"Things do not change; we change."

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

Discussion Questions: (Questions written by and discussion to be led by Richard Myers)

1.      Why did Thoreau go to Walden?   Was he, as some people have claimed, a recluse or hermit?

2.     Would you consider doing something similar today?

3.     What do you think of his claim in the section on “Economy” that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”?   Does this equally apply to today?

4.     Have “men become the tools of their tools” as Thoreau claims?

5.     How might we follow Thoreau’s admonition to “simplify, simplify” today?

6.     How does Thoreau’s observation that “there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root” apply to his time?  To our time?

7.     How might you, or most Americans today, respond to Thoreau’s thought that “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude”?  How do you think Thoreau would respond to our constantly noisy world today?

8.     What technology does Thoreau focus on as an intrusion into the peace of Walden Pond?  How does this fit into the idea of the Anthropocene (not a term Thoreau would have been familiar with)?  Is there a similar technology you would point to today as being particularly disruptive of society?

9.     In the section, “The Ponds,” Thoreau claims that “a lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature.”  What aspect of the landscape particularly attracts you?

10.  Would you agree with Thoreau when he states, “I have no doubt that is part of the destiny of the human race. . . to leave off eating animals.”?

11.  What is your favorite section or idea in Walden?