42. John Burroughs the "Sage of Slabsides"

John Burroughs (1837 – 1921) was an American essayist, philosopher, and naturalist in the style of Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Born on a farm in the Catskills Mountains of New York, Burroughs spent his boyhood exploring the flora and fauna of the region and developed a life-long love of the region and the natural world. But when his father refused to support his higher education, Burroughs left home at 17 to fund periods of study with periods of teaching.   

The Atlantic Monthly published Burroughs first essay in 1860, but during the American Civil War, he moved to Washington D.C. in search of steady work (he joined the U.S. Treasury Department and later worked as a bank examiner into the 1880s). There Burroughs made the acquaintance of his hero, Walt Whitman and Whitman became his close friend and literary mentor (Burroughs published the first biography of Whitman in 1867 and a second in 1896). Burroughs’ first collection of essays on nature, Wake Robin, was published in 1871 and in 1874 he purchased a farm near his boyhood home in New York, where in 1895 he constructed a rugged cabin on the banks of the Hudson River he named “Slabsides.” 

From “Slabsides,” and his second home, “Woodchuck Lodge,” Burroughs fully dedicated his time to writing. During the next several decades, Burroughs’ 23 volumes of essays drew admirers such as naturalists and conservationists John Muir and Theordore Roosevelt and industrialists and inventors Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Thomas Edison, all of whom were guests at “Slabsides.” Burroughs traveled widely, joining Muir in Yosemite, Roosevelt in Yellowstone, and on an Alaska expedition with E.H. Harriman. He continued to travel and write until his death while returning by train to his beloved Catskills from California in 1921.