Joan McMillen - Readings from John Muir

Readings from John Muir with piano music
Personal Introduction,
John Duryea

Introduction to Texts,
Joan McMillen

John Muir's own words

Piano music arranged
and improvised by
Joan McMillen

With piano

In her introduction to John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938), editor Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote:

"The 'infinite shortcoming of words' filled John Muir with despair. How to describe in 'muddy English' beauty 'so filled with warm God?' he asked. He felt the books people were urging him to write would be only 'dead bone-heaps' of the Living Reality! His Scottish reticence also complicated the task of writing. He said to a friend, "The best things and thoughts we get from Nature we dare not tell.' ... for when John Muir went into the wilderness, he went in absolute surrender of self and all the concerns of self, to become, as he put it, 'like a flake of glass through which the light passes.'"

In Readings from John Muir, John Duryea reads selected passages from Muir's journals, and Joan responds with improvisational piano music. Their shared delight in the beauty of the back country and interest in Muir's writings led to this collaboration.

John Duryea has been a life-long Sierra hiker and camper. He is the author of Alive Into the Wilderness, an autobiography.

©1996 - 1998 Joan McMillen
jmm@windingway.com


			Personal Introduction, John Duryea Introduction to Texts, Joan McMillen John Muir's own words Piano music arranged and improvised by Joan McMillen		With piano In her introduction to John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938), editor Linnie Marsh Wolfe wrote: "The 'infinite shortcoming of words' filled John Muir with despair. How to describe in 'muddy English' beauty 'so filled with warm God?' he asked. He felt the books people were urging him to write would be only 'dead bone-heaps' of the Living Reality! His Scottish reticence also complicated the task of writing. He said to a friend, "The best things and thoughts we get from Nature we dare not tell.' ... for when John Muir went into the wilderness, he went in absolute surrender of self and all the concerns of self, to become, as he put it, 'like a flake of glass through which the light passes.'" In *Readings from John Muir, John Duryea reads selected passages from Muir's journals, and Joan responds with improvisational piano music. Their shared delight in the beauty of the back country and interest in Muir's writings led to this collaboration. John Duryea has been a life-long Sierra hiker and camper. He is the author of Alive Into the Wilderness*, an autobiography.

					©1996 - 1998 Joan McMillen jmm@windingway.com