Please read the text twice - one with your slow speed, and the other with your normal one.
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1838, but grew up in Wisconsin. He walked from the Ohio River a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico, where he planned to continue south to explore the jungles of the Amazon. However, a bout of malaria turned his sights west to California, where he arrived in 1868, immediately falling in love with the land.
Over the next decade Muir became well known as a Sierra Nevada mountaineer, explorer, and naturalist. Later Muir built another more significant career upon his first. He became the nation’s foremost conservationist. Yosemite National Park was established in 1890 essentially because of Muir’s recommendations.
Two years later he helped found the Sierra Club, which originally limited its conservation activities to “preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada Mountains” before it branched out in recent years to tackle global issues.
In 1903 Muir lured Theodore Roosevelt away from his presidential entourage to spend three nights in Yosemite. Later the President remarked to his party that the time he spent talking conservation with Muir was “the greatest day of my life!” His administration was to make the most sweeping conservation effort in the nation’s history.
Thanks a lot, Liz!