Studies in the Sierra

Muir, John; Colby, William; Buwalda, John

One is somewhat astounded, on each re-reading of parts of Muir’s works, at the remarkable knowledge which he had acquired, mainly through his own observations, of glacial processes and their physiographic effects. Muir studied the Sierra canyons, cirques, and peaks at a time when knowledge regarding the principles of glacial erosion was not wide-spread. Geology, in contrast to such sciences as Physics, Chemistry and Astronomy, is a very young branch of learning; more than half of what we know in the geological sciences has been discovered and acquired in the last 75 years. Muir was conversant with the glaciology of his day, as discussed in geologic texts and other geologic literature, but much that he wrote about was not treated in textbooks but related primarily and uniquely to the Sierra and was derived directly from his own extensive and long- continued field studies. His contribution to glacial erosion the more singular when one realizes that little attention had been give to alpine glaciation in western America by other geologists at the time when he worked in the Sierra and he therefore received little stimulus or inspiration from other students of the same natural phenomena. How far he was ahead of his time is perhaps suggested by the fact that it was nearly a half century before another study comparable in scope of the nature of glacial erosion in the Sierra and its effects was undertaken.