John Burroughs was born on the family farm in Roxbury, New York on April 3, 1837 and died on a train while returning from California on March 29, 1921. He was buried on the farm on his eighty-fourth birthday, April 3, 1921, at the foot of Boyhood rock on which he had played as a child. In his time he was an immensely popular nature writer. His popularity resided in the fact that readers appreciated the way of life he wrote about and came to exemplify -- the tantalizingly elusive yet universally accessible -- simple values, simple means, simple ends.
