A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, credited to John Muir, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir. Read in English by MaryAnn Spiegel. Muir was a preservationist and naturalist. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. In early March 1867, Muir was injured while working as a sawyer in a factory that made wagon wheels: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye. This accident changed the course of his life. He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks, worried whether he’d ever regain his sight. When he did, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light," writes Marquis. Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." From that point on, he determined to "be true to myself" and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants. A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf recounts Muir's walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find." This journal is the earliest of Muir's writings and autobiographically bridges the period between The Story of my Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra. (Summary from Wikipedia and Introduction)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf
• Author credits: John Muir
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 10
• Listed recording duration: 4:06:12

Catalogue topics

• nature
• plants
• Cuba
• Tennessee
• naturalist
• Florida
• Kentucky
• walk

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 20:52
2. 01 - Kentucky Forests and Caves — 18:05
3. 02 - Crossing the Cumberland Mountains — 31:16
4. 03 - Through the River Country of Georgia — 20:07
5. 04 - Camping among the Tombs — 16:34
6. 05 - Through Florida Swamps and Forests — 43:34
7. 06 - Cedar Keys — 20:23
8. 07 - A Sojourn in Cuba — 26:51
9. 08 - By a Crooked Route to California — 24:43
10. 09 - Twenty Hill Hollow — 23:47

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.