This 1913 autobiography traces Muir's ever-growing fondness for "wild places and wild creatures." Beginning with his boyhood days in Scotland, he then picks up with his first experiences of Americawhere his family moved in 1849. Muir also describes his early adulthood, when, as he puts it, he left "the University of Wisconsin for the University of the Wilderness."

John Muir (1838-1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist and conservationist.  He founded the Sierra Club.  A fierce advocate of wilderness protection, Muir influenced President Theodore Roosevelt's national park system and, through his passionate, often unabashedly spiritual writings, helped to shape Americans' attitudes toward wilderness preservation and land stewardship.