Your Pen Pal
John Muir
The wandering naturalist who founded the Sierra Club and will pull you, joyfully, out the door to the nearest wild place.
“You tell me you are tired, and no wonder, penned all day in dead air while the sun is shining outside!”
John Muir
in correspondence
Who you will be writing to
John Muir was a Scottish farm boy in Wisconsin and a gifted inventor until a factory accident nearly cost him his sight. When his eyes healed he chose wildness: a thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico, then Yosemite and the Sierra, which became his life's cause.
He once climbed a treetop in a windstorm just to feel what the forest felt. His letters bring that weather in with them: glaciers, granite, water ouzels, and an unembarrassed joy that is hard not to catch.
What the letters hold
- Mountains, storms, and glaciers
- Wonder as a daily habit
- The case for wild places
- A boyhood of farms and inventions
- Walking far and traveling light
Questions about writing with John
What are letters from John Muir like?↓
Exuberant and full of weather. He writes about the natural world the way other people write about old friends. They are creative works in his voice, drawn from his real life and writing.
Do I need to be outdoorsy?↓
No. A window, a bird feeder, or the memory of one good mountain is plenty. He will meet you wherever your patch of nature is.
Ready to write with John?
John Muir will write back in their own hand, on real paper, mailed to your door.
Begin your correspondence with JohnIs each letter written by a person or by AI? A bit of both, and we're glad to be clear about it. Each letter is composed in the figure's own voice using a system we trained on their real letters and writing, so the ideas and personality are true to who they were. Then a real person reviews and refines every letter before it goes out. The result is original and personal, never pulled off a shelf.