The American naturalist, John Muir is known for his extensive writing on the natural world in books like The Yosemite, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, and Our National Parks. His life and writing inspired conservation programs and the creation of several national parks in the United States, including Yosemite, Sequoia, and Mount Rainier, among others,  which sets aside large areas of land for preservation from development-keeping it wild. He spent years living outside in the mountains of California and considered nature to be his home. Read more about him at the John Muir Exhibit on the Sierra Club (which he helped to found in 1892)  website.

It recently came to our attention (Thanks Brandice Guerra!) that the University of the Pacific Holt-Atherton Digital Collections has digitized a large collection of John Muir’s drawings. You can browse his sketches of the Sierra Nevada and Alaska as well as wildlife. The archive also includes his photographs, journals, and correspondence. It is a wonderful resource and a great example of art in relationship to ecology.