Your friend, JOHN MUIR. My love to Doctor and all the boys. Yosemite Valley, August 5th, 1872. Your letter telling me to catch my best glacier birds and come to you and the coast mountains only makes me the more anxious to see you, and if you cannot come up, I will have to come down, if only for a talk. My birds are flying everywhere,--into all mountains and plains, of all climes and times,--and some are ducks in the sea, and I scarce know what to do about it. I must see the coast ranges and the coast, but I was thinking that a month or so might answer for the present, and then, instead of spending the winter in town, I would hide in Yosemite and write; or I thought I would pack up some meal and dried plums to some deep wind-sheltered cañon back among the glaciers of the summits, and write there, and be ready to catch any whisper of ice and snow in these highest storms. You anticipate all the bends and falls and rapids and cascades of my mountain life, and I know that you say truly about my companions being those who live with me in the same sky, whether in reach of hand or only of spiritual contact, which is the most real contact of all. I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine. [Part of letter missing.] the valley was vouchsafed a single drop. After the splendid blessing, the afternoon was veiled in calm clouds, and one of intensely beautiful pattern and gorgeously _irised_ was stationed over Eagle Rock at the sunset. Farewell. I’ll see you with my common eyes, and touch you with these very writing fingers ere long. Remember me cordially to Mrs. Moore and Mr. and all your family, and I am as ever Your friend, JOHN MUIR. Yosemite Valley, September 13, 1872. Yours of Aug. 23rd is received. Le Conte writes me that Agassiz will not come to the valley. I just got down last evening from a fifteen-day ramble in the basins of Illilouette and Pohono, and start again in an hour for the summit glaciers to see some cañons and to examine the stakes I planted in the ice a month ago. I would like to come down to see Agassiz, but now is my harvest of rocks and I cannot spare the time. I shall work in the outer mountains incessantly until the coming of the snow [rest of letter missing]. Yosemite Valley, October 8th, 1872.