176 pgs. sepia | $24.99 hardcover | W & A: Lomig
When I think of John Muir, the first things that come to mind are the Muir Woods National Monument in California, famous as the home to many old growth redwood trees, and the Sierra Club, of which he was one of several founders. Beyond that, however, I didn’t know much—until, that is, I read Lomig’s immersive and informative graphic biography John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude.
When we first meet Muir, he’s confined to his bed, his eyes bandaged due to an industrial accident. Uncertain if he will ever regain his sight, he regrets the time he spent working among machines rather than enjoying “nature’s abundant provision and wild beauty.” He is attended to by an unidentified woman (rather unfairly identified only by first name in the main text—in the appendix she is identified as the pioneering educator Catharine Merrill) who urges him to listen to his heart and be guided by what it tells him.
Muir did recover most of his eyesight, and as soon as he was able set off to walk from Kentucky to South Carolina, and from there to travel by boat to Florida and points further south (one of his ambitions was to see the Amazon). This trek takes up about 2/3 of the volume, which is fair because it seems to have been the formative experience of Muir’s life. It also offers an interesting view of the American South a few years after the Civil War, and during his trek Muir meets up with a variety of people who stand in as representatives for various opinions and ways of living. One contrast that is particularly relevant in the current moment is the differing attitudes toward nature present in this book—most of the people Muir meets think it is a source of resources to be exploited for the benefit of man, while Muir values the natural world for its own sake and finds undisturbed nature a source of spiritual fulfillment.
Muir seems to have mostly had good luck in his journey: in an early scene, a Black woman sends a horse across a raging river so he can cross safely, most people he meets invite him to share their food and lodging, and some even congratulate him on his choice to study nature (he’s collecting plant specimens and writing in his notebook throughout his travels) rather than working at a conventional job. Even when his luck turned sour, as when he contracts malaria in Cuba, someone appeared to nurse him back to health. That bout of malaria may have been fortunate for the United States, since it played a role in Muir’s decision to forget about visiting South America and take a ship to California instead. The rest, as they say, is history.
The genius of John Muir is that reading it is like accompanying Muir on his travels: you discover what he discovers and experience what he experiences. Much of this effect is due to the detailed and immersive sepia art by Lomig, which seems realistic enough that someone with more knowledge than myself could identify specific plants and animals from the illustrations. Lomig also varies frame size, using smaller frames for exposition and full-page frames (in an 8 ½ x 11” volume) when he wants to emphasize the view rather than the journey. The illustrations of the Yosemite Valley are particularly stunning and might make you want to take a trip there as fast as you can while it remains a protected wilderness. | Sarah Boslaugh
John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude won the Atomium Cognito Prize for Historical Comics (Best Historical Comic Strip), awarded at the BD Comic Strip Festival in Brussels, which rewards the author who best “through their work, shed(s) light on a period of history.” It includes a biographical appendix filling in more details of Muir’s life, illustrated by photographs and reproductions of some of the pages from his many notebooks.
You can see a sample of the artwork for John Muir: To the Heart of Solitude on the nbm website.
