John Muir

This morning I read to Palmer, and then he read back to me, a book about John Muir, one of America´s first and foremost naturalists. He has been asking about John Muir ever since he noticed that his therapists office is at John Muir Health Center, and I told him that was the same man the big redwood forest on the coast is named after.

The book, which is a short children's book with wonderful illustrations, focuses mostly on his time at Yosemite, and his efforts to get that preserved. I actually started tearing up explaining to Palmer why John Muir did not want the ranchers and loggers to come into Yosemite. This got into a discussion of wilderness and nature. I told him that everything he could see out my window, over the Bay, was not wilderness. The whole Bay area is a compact whole, one community spilling into the next, with freeways lacing it all together. It is a dynamic, beautiful place to live, but most of it is too built up for my taste, too crowded. There are a few exceptions of course: the area east of the Berkeley hills, where Palmer's dad lives, is pretty rural in most parts, and on the west side of the south bay, at the base of the Peninsula, heading towards Santa Cruz, it is also not so densely populated.

I do not like areas that are densely populated, I must admit. This is of course one reason why I admire John Muir, and one reason I have always loved Iceland. It is good to live somewhere with a little bit of open space around, somewhere where the grass has a chance to grow.