John Muir in Chile
At the age of 73, in 1911, John Muir traveled to Chile, so that he could see the native habitat of Araucaria araucana – popularly known as the “Monkey Puzzle Tree.”
Until recently, little was known about this trip, because Muir never published anything about it before his death in 1914. In 2001, Muir’s journals and correspondence from the trip was published in John Muir’s Last Journey by Michael P. Branch. Shortly thereafter, ecologist Bruce A. Byers began studying Muir’s original journals and sketches, and made plans to re-discover the same wild forests that Muir had visited. The outcome of Byers travels in the footsteps of Muir in Chile are contained in the stories and photographs in this section.
Muir’s travel journals from 1911-12, along with his associated correspondence, were finally published in 2001 in this book by Michael P. Branch. Leaving from Brooklyn, New York, in August 1911, Muir, at the age of seventy-three and traveling alone, embarked on an eight-month, 40,000-mile voyage to South America and Africa. The 1911-12 journals and correspondence reproduced in this volume allow us to travel with him up the great Amazon, into the jungles of southern Brazil, to snowline in the Andes, through southern and central Africa to the headwaters of the Nile, and across six oceans and seas in order to reach the rare forests he had so long wished to study. Although this epic journey has received almost no attention from the many commentators on Muir’s work, Muir himself considered it among the most important of his life and the fulfillment of a decades-long dream. While this book records Muir’s travels throughout South America and Africa, it covers in detail the time Muir spent in Chile, between November 11, 1911 through November 26, 1911.
Following John Muir to the Araucaria Forests of Chile by Bruce Byers (PDF). This excellent overview of Muir’s study of the Auracaria forests in Chile was published in Patagon Journal No. 25, pp. 44-53, 2022. The Patagon Journal is Patagonia’s premier international bilingual magazine about nature, the environment, culture, travel and outdoor sports in the Patagonia region of Chile and Argentina and the world’s last wild places.
This comprehensive article, accompanied by Byers’ original photographs, details Muir’s explorations in Chile, and Byers’ rediscovery of these forests, beginning in 2012. Byers also recounts efforts to better protect these forests, and future plans to provide ecotourism opportunities there.
Tracking John Muir to the Monkey Puzzle Forests of Chile by Bruce Byers (off-site link) – fascinating article and photos tracking Muir’s visit to Chile in 1911 and Byer’s re-discovery of the location Muir visited, beginning in 2012.
In February 2013, Bruce Byers and his son returned to the high Andes site in Chile where Muir camped and sketched the Monkey Puzzle trees, following the route he described. In this blog entry, Byers focuses on documenting the forest changes at the Muir site. (off-site link)
In a subsequent visit to Muir’s Araucaria forest studies, this blog entry by Bruce Byers focuses on a comparison of Muir’s sketches, with modern photographs of the same locations. (off-site link)
In another report from 2013, Bruce Byers focused on the human dimensions of John Muir’s travels in Chile. (off-site link)
In this blog entry, Bruce Byers traces the entangled history of John Muir and the father of environmental conservation in Chile, Federico Albert, including a photo of the Monkey Puzzle trees that Muir had been given by the director of the botanical gardens in Santiago, Chile.
Another entry from 2016 in Bruce Byers blog, documenting Byers researches into some mysteries of Muir’s visit to Chile and Muir’s efforts to obtain photographs of the monkey puzzle forests to supplement his sketches.
Bruce Byers April 2016 blog entry telling of a workshop to bring together some of the key people who could help take the next steps in gaining recognition and protection for the historically and ecologically important site Muir visited. Chile’s unique Araucaria forests face threats from land use change, climate change, and invasive species, and are under-represented in the national system of protected areas. The workshop Byers records here helps pave the way for greater protection.
Chile’s first national park, Vicente Perez Rosales, was established in 1926. The country’s national park system has been dramatically increased in recent years, beginning in the 1990’s, through the efforts of Doug Tompkins (1943–2015), the retired founder of The North Face outdoor goods company, who together with his wife Kristine (former CEO of another outdoor retailer, Patagonia), purchased and re-wilded nearly 15 million acres of spectacular landscapes in Chile and Argentina. Doug and Kristine Tompkins recognized that National Parks are the most durable way to protect wildlife habitat and help people reconnect with nature. Doug Tompkins stated, “National parks are the gold standard of conservation in these days of severe ecological crisis.” Near the lodge in Patagonia National Park, which the Tompkins Conservation donated to the government of Chile in 2018, is a cemetery where some of the early settlers of the Chacabuco Valley are buried. The most recent grave is that of Doug Tompkins. At the cemetery entrance is a newly constructed arch that Doug had designed before his death, with the inscription “No hay sinonimo para Dios mas perfecto que la Belleza.” It’s a Spanish translation of a John Muir quote: “No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty.”