20161026

John Muir 20160912 I am sitting here in a little shanty made of sugar pine shingles this Sabbath evening. I have not been a church a single time since leaving home. Yet this glorious Valley might well be called a church, for every lover of the great Creator who comes with in the broad overwhelming influences of the place fails not to worship as they never did before. The glory of the Lord is upon call God's works; it is written plainly upon all the fields of every climb, and upon every sky, but here in this place of ever passing glory the Lord has written in capitals. I hope that one day you will see and read with your own eyes. The only sounds that strike me tonight are the ticking of the clock, the flickering of the fire and the love songs of a host of peaceful frogs that sing out in the matter up to the throats and slush. And the deep waving roar of the falls like breakers on a rocky Coast... Two lovers of the wild, these mountains are not 100 miles away. They're spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, has a circle of friends. You cannot see yourself out of doors semicolon playing, sky, and mountains or a beauty which you feel. You babe in the spirit beans, turning around and around, as if warming had a campfire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence colon you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature. 20160908 You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend. I don't envy you. You'll have a hard time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of this crowd of madman. Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these Poor, deluded, self burdened people. Keep close to nature's heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean from the earth stains of this sorted, gold seeking crowd in God's pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring these people something better than gold. Don't lose your freedom and your love of the earth as God made it. Man, man; you ought to have been with me. You'll never make up what you have lost today. I've been wondering through a thousand rooms of God's crystal temple. I've been a thousand feet down in the crevices, with matchless domes and sculpture figures and carved ice work all about me. Solomons marble and ivory Palace is nothing to it. Such purity, such color, such delicate beauty! I was tempted to stay there and feast my soul, and swiftly freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What a great death that would be! The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the great story dome. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so finely blended they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper silence. And how grandly do the great logs and branches of your campfire give forth the heat and light that during their long century lives they have so slowly gathered from the Sun, storing it away in beautiful dotted cells and beads of amber gum! 20160808 A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord. But to get all this into words is a hopeless task the leanest sketch of each feature would need a whole chapter. Nor would any amount of space, however industriously scribbled, be of much avail. To defraud town toilers, parks in magazine articles are like pictures of bread to the hungry. I can write only hints to incite good wanderers to come to the feast. The forests , to, seem kindly familiar, and the lakes and the meadows and glad singing streams. I should like to do well with them forever. Here with bread and water I should be content. Even have not allowed to Rome and climb, tethered to a steak or tree in some metal or Grove, even the then I should be content forever. Paved in such beauty, watching the expressions have her varying on the faces of the Mountains kama watching the stars, which here have a glory that deal oleander never dreams of, watching the circling seasons, listening to the songs of the waters and the winds and birds, would be and less pleasure. After I had passed the tall Groves that stretch hey my lab of mirror Lake, and scrambled around the Tenaya fall, which is just at the head of the lake Groves, I kept through the dance and spine me chaparral that plus is the roots of the mountains here for miles in warm green, and was a sending a purse if it is rock front Comus moved by girl glacial action, when I suddenly fell - for the first time since I touched foot to Sierra rocks. After several summer salts, I'd became in sensible from the shock, and when consciousness return I found myself wedged among short, stiff, bushes, trembling has if cold, not injured in the slightest. Judging by the Sun, I could not have been in sensible very long semicolon probably not a minute, possibly and our semi colon and I could not remember what made me fall, or where I had fallen from semicolon but I saw that if I had rolled a little further, my Mountain climbing would have been finished. I had not yet reached the most difficult portion of the canyon, but I determined to guide my fumbled body over the most nerve trying places I could find semicolon 4i was now awake, and felt confident that the last of the town fog have been shaking from both head and feet. When the Avalanche started I threw myself on my back and spread my arms to keep from sinking. Fortunately, though the grade of the canyon is very steep, it is not interrupted by presa passes large enough to cause out pounding or free plunge in. On no part of the rush was I buried. I was only moderately embedded on the surface or at times a little below it, and covered with a veil of back streaming dust particles semi colon and as the whole mass beneath and about me joint in the flight there was no friction, though I was just here in there and alert from side to side. When the Avalanche sweat and came to rest I found myself on top of the crumpled pile without a bruise or scar. This was a fine experience... This flight and what might be called a Milky Way of snow stars was the most spiritual and exhilarating of all the modes of motion I have ever experienced. He lies is flight and a cherry at the fire could hardly have been more glorious Lee exciting. *** So abundant and novel are the objects of interest in a pure wilderness that... wherever you chance to be always seems at the moment of all places the best; and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or any other for those who may not be happy here. We are over paid 1000 times for all our toil, & a single day in so divine an atmosphere of beauty and love would well would be well worth living for.. and at its close, should to death come, without any hope of another life, we could still say, quote thank you, God, for this glorious gift! And quote and pass on. So much and need is there were change of seen, new points of view,. How many notice so glorious a phenomenon a as the Rising of the Sun over hey familiar landscape? All that his necessary to make any landscape visible and there - 4 impressive is to regard it from a new point of view, or from the old one with art heads up side down. Then we be hold hey knew heaven and earth and our born again, as if we had gone on a pilgrimage to some far off holy Land and had become new creatures with bodies inverted some my colon the scales fall from our eyes come, and in like Manor we are made to see when we go on excursions into fields and pastures new