Austerity was part of Muir's heritage. As a child, he was raised on paternal severity and Calvinist self denial. His Scottish diet featured oatmeal porridge with a little milk or treacle for breakfast; vegetable broth and mutton for lunch; boiled potatoes, barley scones, and tea with milk and sugar for dinner. "We were always hungry," Muir lamented, "about as hungry after as before meals." As William O. Douglas noted in Muir of the Mountains, at a very young age Muir "acquired the habit of eating very little--a habit that was to stay with him all his life." The most Muir ever weighed was 148 pounds; the least, 90. Both extremes were recorded when he circled the globe in 1903 and 1904; ptomaine poisoning in Russia caused his diminution.

When asked what kind of bread he took to the mountains, Muir replied, "Just bread." At his home in Martinez, California, he'd buy sourdough at an Italian bakery. In Yosemite, he'd secure French bread at Black's Hotel, or soda bread from Degnan's. Sometimes he would bake cakes of unleavened flour over the coals. His preference, however, was "feeding on God's abounding, inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread."

https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/john_muir_menu_j_parker_huber.aspx

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44611164)

that said, he died of pneumonia and may have survived that if not a twink, but it was before antibiotics or steroids

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44611548)

"Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

John Muir lived up to his doctrine. He was usually the last man to reach camp. He never hurried. He stopped to get acquainted with individual trees along the way. He would hail people passing by and make them get down on hands and knees if necessary to see the beauty of some little bed of almost microscopic flowers. Usually he appeared at camp with some new flowers in his hat and a little piece of fir bough in his buttonhole.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44611983)

we're so spiritually impoverished compared to our forefathers. my goodness.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44639370)

"Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44639232)

God's glory hiding in plain sight all around us tp

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5121879&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#44643610)