John Muir (1838–1914) has been described as “the spiritual father of American environmentalism,” as “the father of our [United States’] national parks and forest reservations,” and as “a patriarch of the National Park system.” Muir’s ideas about national parks and the gender politics of his views of nature are paradoxical. For Muir nature in general is sacralized, yet his views on where and how nature is sacralized depend on the aspect or site under discussion. For Muir nature in mountains and forests was aestheticized and sublimated, especially if such areas were ‘set aside’ and preserved in the sanctuaries or ‘modern cathedrals’ of national parks, whereas nature for him could also be inhabited, invigorated, and enlivened by all living things, including rock and stone, and even human beings (but not indigenous peoples). The American conservation movement has largely been concerned with conserving sanctuaries, those special places for plants and animals and those aesthetic landscapes for seeking solace and taking refuge from the depredations of modern urban industrial capitalism. American conservationism has often been more precisely ‘sanctuarism.’ It has been concerned with giving sanctuary and preserving sanctuaries, rather than with caring for the earthly household as a whole in sacrality.