Overland Monthly in 1875. "A Geologist's Winter Walk" is an extract
from a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary
quality, took the responsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly
without the author's knowledge. The concluding chapter on "The Grand
Canyon of the Colorado" was published in the Century Magazine in 1902,
and exhibits Muir's powers of description at their maturity.

Some of these papers were revised by the author during the later years
of his life, and these revisions are a part of the form in which they
now appear. The chapters on Mount Shasta, Oregon, and Washington will
be found to contain occasional sentences and a few paragraphs that
were included, more or less verbatim, in The Mountains of California
and Our National Parks. Being an important part of their present
context, these paragraphs could not be omitted without impairing the
unity of the author's descriptions.

The editor feels confident that this volume will meet, in every way,
the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his
experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will
take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His
observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering
their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has
left few traces in American literature. Many, too, will read with
pensive interest the author's glowing description of what was one time
called the New Northwest. Almost inconceivably great have been the
changes wrought in that region during the past generation. Henceforth
the landscapes that Muir saw there will live in good part only in his
writings, for fire, axe, plough, and gunpowder have made away with the
supposedly boundless forest wildernesses and their teeming life.