Known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks," legendary naturalist John Muir was far ahead of his time, holding ideals that many are just coming around to.

Muir undertook a daring adventure in 1867 that led him to the path of natural enlightenment. He decided that he wanted to explore the world. He left his life in Indiana and walked one thousand miles to Florida. Muir trekked south through Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida with little more than a map, a compass, a brush, soap, and a change of underclothes. 

Muir later penned his adventure in "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf," which has become a classic naturalist text set against the backdrop of the post-civil war south. In it, he makes loads of prescient observations, but none more arresting than his denunciation of the idea that God mad nature as man's personal resource factory. That perhaps, the creator mad nature for nature's sake, and the lives and feelings of every plant and animal matter just as much as our own.