Letters to a Friend, Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879Muir, John
History
Letters to a Friend, Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879
Muir, John
Natural history -- California; Naturalists -- United States -- Correspondence; Yosemite National Park (Calif.) -- Description and travel
The grand Upper Yosemite Fall is at this moment (7 A.M.) coming
with all its glorious array of fleecy comets out of a cloud that is laid
along the top of the cliff, and going into a cloud that is drawn along
the face of the wall about half way up. These clouds are shot through and
through with sunshine, forming, with the snowy waters and fresh-washed
walls, one of the most openly glorious scenes I ever beheld. A lady on
Black’s piazza is quietly looking at it, sitting with arms folded in
her chair. A gentleman is pointing at it with his cane, while another
gentleman is speaking loudly and businessly about his “baggage.” “Eyes
have they but they see not.”
Looking up the valley, the cloud effects are yet more lavishly glorious.
Tissiack is mantled with silvery burning mists, her gray rocks appearing
dimly where thinly veiled. Over the top of Washington Column the clouds
are descending in a continuous stream and rising again suddenly from the
bottom like spray from a waterfall. O dear! I wish you were here. I may
write this cloud glory forevermore but never be able to picture it for
you.
Doctor and Priest in Yosemite. Emerson prophesies in similar dialect that
I will one day go to him and “_better men_” in New England, or something
to that effect. I feel like objecting in popular slang that I can’t see
it. I shall indeed go gladly to the “Atlantic Coast,” as he prophesies,
but only to see him and the Glacier Ghosts of the north. Runkle wants
to make a teacher of me, but I have been too long wild, too befogged and
befogged to burn well in their patent high-heated educational furnaces.
[A portion missing.]
I had a good letter from Le Conte. He evidently doesn’t know what to
think of the huge lumps of ice that I sent him. I don’t wonder at his
cautious withholding of judgment. When my mountain mother first told me
the tale, I could hardly dare to believe either, and kept saying “What?”
like a child half awake. Farewell. My love to the Doctor and the boys.
I hope the Doctor will run away from his enormous bundles of duty and
rest a summer with the mountains. I have a great deal to ask him. I have
begun to build my cabin. You will have a _home_ in Yosemite.
Ever thine,
J. MUIR.
[1873.]
My horse and bread, etc., are ready for upward. I returned three days ago
from Mts. Lyell, McClure, and Hoffman. I spent three days on a glacier
up there, planting stakes, etc. This time I go to the Merced group, one
of whose mountains shelters a glacier. I will go over all the lakes and
moraines, etc., there. Will be gone a week or two or so.
Hutchings wants to go with me to “help me,” but I will, etc., etc.
Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to
the mountains. I feel strong to leap Yosemite walls at a bound. Hotels
and human impurity will be far below. I will fuse in spirit skies.
Farewell, or come meet in ghost between Red Mountain and Black on the
star-sparkled ice.
Love to all thine and to Moores and Stoddard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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