One of the surprising things I learned after moving to Cedar Key was that the great naturalist and outdoorsman, John Muir, had walked from Jeffersonville, Indiana, to Cedar Key, Florida, in 1867. Here he hoped to catch a schooner to Cuba and continue his travels. Since one had just left and having to wait for another, he got a job at a sawmill. However, after having walked "and waded through the primeval swamplands of north-central Florida, slept in the fetid heat, prey to every insect," he contracted malaria and spent months here recuperating on Hodgson Hill at the western edge of Way Key. John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1832. In 1849 his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Wisconsin. An unusual man, more comfortable outdoors than inside, he began walking. These walks, at first local and exploratory, grew to walks of great length. Before the age of 40, he had seen much of the United States, the eastern side of South American, and Alaska before statehood, a place he returned to again and again. His first encounter with the Sierra Nevada was after his walk to Cedar Key and visit to Cuba. His love for this area probably determined his settling in Martinez, California. It was there he met and married the "boundlessly patient" Louis Strentzel, as nothing deterred him from his travels.
Part of his great legacy to us is Yosemite Valley, which he first visited in 1868. Working with his good friend and camping companion, President Theodore Roosevelt, their joint efforts of preservation eventually paid off, and our National Park Service was created, preserving some of the more spectacular areas of the West. I like to muse about the young John Muir in Cedar Key. Perhaps he strode over the very land I live on. He had to have passed this way, as Hodgson`s Sawmill lay beyond. And which oak with its hanging moss did he sit under, watching the shorebirds, as he recovered? I can only look and wonder. Perhaps it is no longer here. What does remain here is his having visited, enhancing our rich history.
For more information, visit the Cedar Key Public Library and the Cedar Key Historical Society, both on 2nd Street.
DON`T MISS: Public television`s new Ken Burns documentary, THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA`S BEST IDEA, premiering at 8 p.m., Sunday, September 27. The twelve-hour series will air nightly through Friday, October 2. For more information, visit www.pbs.org or www.nps.gov. |
