Immersion in the Wilderness: Outside Reading: A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf

John Muir wanted his readers and followers to be baptized in the grace of nature. Immersion in the wilderness gave Muir a sense of revelation from God. This revelation from God was a part of Muir’s gospel that held a universal unifying power. He explains in A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf:

You cannot feel yourself out of doors; plain, sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel. You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence; you blend with the landscape and become part and parcel of nature (416).

Nature gave Muir the chance to see a new earth and a new heaven every day.