April 25, 2016
Marquette County, Wisconsin is going to be a hot bed of activity this summer all centered around John Muir and the 100th Anniversary of the National Parks. John Muir grew up in Marquette County on the little kettle lake he grew to love. The land where the Muir family settled is truly the spark of land preservation for John, the great naturalist. As an adult, he tried to buy his boyhood home land three times to preserve its beauty. For more information about all of the following events, click here.
Five kid's saunters will take place this summer in Marquette County where kids grades three to eight will be able to make a saunter stick and earn a medallion at each saunter they complete.
The Wisconsin Historical Society travelling John Muir exhibit will be in Montello from June 7-21.
The Scottish Diaspora Tapestry will be in Montello from July 16 through the 31 as part of the sister relationship Marquette County has with Dunbar, John Muir's birthplace, and as an ongoing exchange of cultural activities with Scotland. A Scottish Festival will be held July 16 to open the exhibit which includes tea with Mary, Queen of Scots.
A special acoustic guitar concert with Jeff Bianchi featuring Scottish lute tunes will take place July 23 at Vaughn Hall in Montello. The culmination of these special events will be an August 6 day long celebration at John Muir Park, pre-registration required with special guest speakers including Mark Stoll, author of Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism and Bryan Sharp speaking on Alexander Wilson, father of American Ornithology and author of the book on American birds that Muir read before travelling to America. There will also be a youth art exhibit and more.
New this year in Marquette County is the Marquette County John Muir Nature and History Route, a mobile app also accessible on your PC, that takes you to John Muir sites as well as landscapes as the Muirs would have seen them and historical sites relevant to early settlers of Muir's time. Immerse yourself in Muir's Marquette County. The app features pdfs that can be downloaded and printed out before you visit like children's activity sheets and other history tours of Marquette County. You'll find 22 signs around Marquette County that help you learn about the glacier, passenger pigeons, trees, Muir's boyhood homes, early schools and more.
To find out more, visit: http://johnmuir.org/wisconsin/