John Muir, right, with Theodore Roosevelt, Yosemite National Park, 1903
Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
The opening episodes of Ken Burns’ new opus on the National Parks missed an essential narrative detail. Indeed, his narrative would have had no hero but for the story he overlooked, of a lone traveler and the kindness of strangers.
As Burns showed, the decisive voice behind the creation of our National Parks was that of a singular Scottish character called John Muir. The Scots are a gifted people who have had a huge influence on our lives, from the foundation of modern economics (not so brilliant, Adam Smith, as it turns out!) to spectacular feats of engineering. Muir was a concentration of Scottish virtues in one wiry body-he had a scientific intellect, with the acuity of observation that sees things lost on others, a deep literary flair seeded with Biblical analogies, unusual reserves of self-knowledge and life force and extraordinary powers of endurance. It took a lot to bring this man down.
But brought down he was. In October 1867 he reached the end of a thousand-mile trek from Indiana to Florida. He was looking for a ship to take him to Cuba or other islands in the Caribbean as way stations to South America. He arrived at the small port of Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast, but no ships were going his way. He got temporary work in a sawmill, and then fell into a malarial fever. The owner of the mill, a Mr. Hodgson, and his wife, took Muir into their home. The malaria turned into typhoid and Muir looked near death.
In his own account, Muir wrote: “I was nursed about three months with unfailing kindness. To Mr and Mrs Hodgson I owe my life.”
As he was convalescing in Cedar Key something happened to Muir’s plan for the rest of his life. Lying on his back, gazing at the glorious flux of Nature around him, he wrote, “Why should man value himself as more than a small part of one great unit of creation?” It was a typically Scottish response to being saved: Humble, penitent but fired with a new ambition.
After that, Muir turned right around and went to California and on to Yosemite and became the visionary that Burns honors.
I didn’t know any of this until I first discovered Cedar Key a decade or so ago, where there is an historic plaque marking his time there. I found the site of the sawmill. Even now, you can see how Muir would have heard the voices, the winds and the currents of the wild. This is a different Florida. Between the condo belts of the Panhandle to the north and St. Petersburg to the south there is a stretch of wild coast protected by parks and refuges. At the center of this lies Cedar Key. To get there you take a two-lane hardtop west through swamp and wetland and dense riparian woodland, suddenly breaking out into a flat and sultry tropical coastline.
I was looking for a chimera. In the early 1970s I had discovered Key West and went there often. Back then it was still a funky, dissolute backwater with a bit of literary content, thanks to Hemingway. A while later it became a brand, with the T-shirts and cruise ships to prove it. Foolishly, I hoped that Cedar Key-isolated, under-developed and with a whiff of the picaresque-was another Key West. Some of the locals hoped for the same. Most didn’t. They liked the low profile and untrendy way of life.
Nothing much has happened since then. The motel-style accommodations on the seafront are cheap and decent. The digs I stayed in, the 10-room Island Hotel, still has the patina of a Louisiana hangout rather than a Florida resort, with a casual, unhurried application of hospitality. Offshore, the dozen islands of the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge are abundant with white ibis, egret, osprey, cormorant and brown pelican. It’s a really relaxing hideaway that would rather be Nowheresville than hip. John Muir would want it that way. And if anyone in Cedar Key is reading this, I’m really sorry. I hope you don’t get bothered.
Related Stories
American Idylls: Our National Parks (Condé Nast Traveler)
10 National Parks: Where to Stay, Eat, and Play (Condé Nast Traveler)
As he was convalescing in Cedar Key something happened to Muir’s plan for the rest of his life. Lying on his back, gazing at the glorious flux of Nature around him, he wrote, “Why should man value himself as more than a small part of one great unit of creation?” It was a typically Scottish response to being saved: Humble, penitent but fired with a new ambition.
After that, Muir turned right around and went to California and on to Yosemite and became the visionary that Burns honors.
I didn’t know any of this until I first discovered Cedar Key a decade or so ago, where there is an historic plaque marking his time there. I found the site of the sawmill. Even now, you can see how Muir would have heard the voices, the winds and the currents of the wild. This is a different Florida. Between the condo belts of the Panhandle to the north and St. Petersburg to the south there is a stretch of wild coast protected by parks and refuges. At the center of this lies Cedar Key. To get there you take a two-lane hardtop west through swamp and wetland and dense riparian woodland, suddenly breaking out into a flat and sultry tropical coastline.
I was looking for a chimera. In the early 1970s I had discovered Key West and went there often. Back then it was still a funky, dissolute backwater with a bit of literary content, thanks to Hemingway. A while later it became a brand, with the T-shirts and cruise ships to prove it. Foolishly, I hoped that Cedar Key-isolated, under-developed and with a whiff of the picaresque-was another Key West. Some of the locals hoped for the same. Most didn’t. They liked the low profile and untrendy way of life.
Nothing much has happened since then. The motel-style accommodations on the seafront are cheap and decent. The digs I stayed in, the 10-room Island Hotel, still has the patina of a Louisiana hangout rather than a Florida resort, with a casual, unhurried application of hospitality. Offshore, the dozen islands of the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge are abundant with white ibis, egret, osprey, cormorant and brown pelican. It’s a really relaxing hideaway that would rather be Nowheresville than hip. John Muir would want it that way. And if anyone in Cedar Key is reading this, I’m really sorry. I hope you don’t get bothered.
Related Stories
American Idylls: Our National Parks (Condé Nast Traveler)
10 National Parks: Where to Stay, Eat, and Play (Condé Nast Traveler)
Leave a comment