Now for one that means a lot to my children, and by association it means a lot to me too. In 2018 we had a holiday in California, including a couple of nights in San Francisco. The City Lights Bookstore stayed open until midnight at that time (its website suggests the opening hours have changed since then) so one night, once my wife and our three daughters were in bed, I walked for 45 minutes across the city to visit the literary landmark founded in 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. (That journey is a whole different story, one that revealed to me the severity of San Francisco’s homelessness problem, and that I told here if anyone’s interested) I picked up a copy of Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World, and a couple of books for my daughters: The Wonderful Oby James Thurber, and this little story by John Muir.
Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, adventurer and author who was responsible for preserving great swathes of American wilderness that became national parks. In 1880 he undertook an expedition to Alaska. As he and his Native American crew prepared to depart, they were joined by a missionary reverend and then by his “little black dog that immediately made himself at home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage”. Muir was a dog-lover but thought this one “so small and worthless that I objected to his going”, given that they were likely to spend weeks out in the cold rain and snow. “But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he was a perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a bear, swim like a seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making out a list of virtues to show he might be the most interesting member of the party.”
I read the story to my girls when we got back home to Norwich, and we were all swept up into the perilous adventure. I won’t say more than that when faced with arduous weather and terrifying crevasses, little Stickeen – named after the Native American tribe – proved braver and bolder than most humans and became an inspiration: to those on the Alaskan adventure, and to those of us who read about him in the comfort of our homes today.
First published in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September 1897; expanded into book form in 1909, with many subsequent editions
A Personal Anthology 