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Muir and More
John Muir, his life and walks
- Hardback
- ISBN: 978-1-902173-27-6192 pages
- Author
- Ronald Turnbull
- Publication date
- 1st Jan '08
John Muir: inspired visionary and tiresome tree-hugger – the exiled Scot who invented the American outdoors. In Muir and More Ronald Turnbull takes a look at the man and his legacy while exploring two very different John Muir walks: California’s John Muir Trail and East Lothian’s John Muir Way. He’s the first and probably the only person to have done both in a single season and his witty, thoughtful account makes an engrossing read.
Beside the cold grey waters of the Forth and on the sunlit rock-slabs of California, Turnbull muses on Muir, the paradoxes inherent in the preservation of wilderness, and the fascination of 200 miles of granite. He tastes both the huckleberry and the deep-fried haggis, and contemplates the sexiness of pebbles. Most of all, he considers John Muir himself – the inventor of a clockwork self-awakening bed and the American national park system, and East Lothian’s Man of the Millennium (despite the fact that he left Scotland forever at the age of eleven). For in this world of wind farms, nuclear power stations and big people-crusher cars, Muir matters.
Ronald Turnbull is the author of The Riddle of Sphinx Rock (a cultural biography of Great Gable) and The Life and Times of the Black Pig (a biography of Ben Macdui) – both published by Millrace Outdoor – as well as The Book of the Bivvy (on tentless travel) and walking guides to the Cairngorms and Ben Nevis and Glen Coe for Cicerone Press.
Turnbull was born in St Andrews, just across the Forth from Muir’s Dunbar. He now lives in Dumfriesshire, mid-way between the Lake District and the Highlands. He also walks in warm, Spanish-speaking corners of Europe. He has won the Outdoor Writers’ and Photographers’ Guild award for excellence five times (in various categories) and in 1994 gained the Fell Running Association’s long-distance trophy for a run over all the hills of southern Scotland. His full ‘cartload’ of books, as well as his recent walks in California and the Appalachians, is described on his website www.ronaldturnbull.co.uk.
- Title: Muir and More
- Subtitle: John Muir, his life and walks
- Author: Ronald Turnbull
- Imprint: Millrace Outdoor
- ISBN: 978-1-902173-27-6
- Rights: World
- Publication date: 1 January 2008
- Edition: First
- Format: Hardback
- Size: 170mm x 120mm
- Extent: 192 pages
- Weight: 320g
- Retail price: £10
Ronald Turnbull is, of course, one of the UK’s most prolific outdoor writers. He is also one of our funniest and most eccentric. … So, put these two characters together and we should have a great book. And so we do. – Andy Howell, The Outdoors Station
Around these walks the author spins many entertaining tales and anecdotes, jumping from history to geology to traveller’s tales to ecology to literature, sometimes with startling leaps of logic. The author’s style is deceptively informal, almost languid in places and humorous in others, but don’t be fooled. This book contains hidden depths and repays concentration and thought. There is much going on here. –Chris Townsend, Chris Townsend Outdoors