Most cordially yours,
JOHN MUIR.
Yosemite via Big Oak Flat.
Yosemite, Sunday, May 29th, 1870.
I received your “apology” two days ago and ran my eyes hastily over it
three or four lines at a time to find the place that would say you were
coming, but you “_fear_” that you cannot come at all, and only “hope”
that the Doctor may; but I shall continue to look for you nevertheless.
The Chicago party you speak of were here and away again before your
letter arrived. All sorts of human stuff is being poured into our valley
this year, and the blank, fleshly apathy with which most of it comes in
contact with the rock and water spirits of the place is most amazing.
I do not wonder that the thought of such people being here, Mrs. Carr,
makes you “mad,” but after all, Mrs. Carr, they are about harmless.
They climb sprawlingly to their saddles like overgrown frogs pulling
themselves up a stream-bank through the bent sedges, ride up the valley
with about as much emotion as the horses they ride upon, and comfortable
when they have “done it all,” and long for the safety and flatness of
their proper homes.
In your first letter to the valley you complain of the desecrating
influences of the fashionable hordes about to visit here, and say that
you mean to come only once more and “into the beyond.” I am pretty sure
that you are wrong in saying and feeling so, for the tide of visitors
will float slowly about the _bottom_ of the valley as a harmless scum,
collecting in hotel and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls
eloquent as ever and instinct with imperishable beauty and greatness.
And recollect that the top of the valley is more than half way to real
heaven, and the Lord has many mansions away in the Sierra equal in power
and glory to Yosemite, though not quite so open, and I venture to say
that you will yet see the valley many times both in and out of the body.
I am glad you are going to the coast mountains to sleep on Diablo,--Angelo
ere this. I am sure that you will be lifted above all the effects of
your material work. There is a precious natural charm in sleeping under
the open starry sky. You will have a very perfect view of the Joaquin
Valley and the snowy, pearly wall of the Sierra Nevada. I lay for weeks
last summer upon a bed of pine leaves at the edge of a [ ] gentian
meadow in full view of Mt. Dana.
Mrs. Hutchings says that the lily bulbs were so far advanced in their
growth when she dug some to send you that they could not be packed without
being broken, but I am going to be here all summer, and I know where the
grandest plantation of these lilies grow, and I will box up as many of
them as you wish, together with as many other Yosemite things as you may
ask for and send them out to you before the pack train makes its last
trip. I know the _Spiræa_ you speak of. It is abundant all around the top
of the valley and on the rocks at Lake Tenaya and reaches almost to the
very summit about Mt. Dana. There is also a purple one very abundant on
the fringe meadows of Yosemite Creek, a mile or two back from the brink
of the Falls. Of course it will be a source of keen pleasure to me to
procure you anything you may desire. I should like to see that ground
again. I saw some in Cuba but they did not exceed twenty-five or thirty
feet in height.
I have thought of a walk in the wild gardens of Honolulu, and now that
you speak of my going there it becomes very probable, as you seem to
understand me better than I do myself. I have no square idea about the
time I shall get myself away from here. I shall at least stay till you
come. I fear that the agave will be in the spirit world ere that time.
You say that I ought to have such a place as you saw in the gardens of
that mile and a half of climate. Well, I think those lemon and orange
groves would do, perhaps, to make a living, but for a garden I should
not have anything less than a piece of pure nature. I was reading
Thoreau’s “Maine Woods” a short time ago. As described by him, these
woods are exactly like those of Canada West. How I long to meet Linnæa
and _Chiogenes hispidula_ once more! I would rather see these two
children of the evergreen woods than all the twenty-seven species of
palm that Agassiz met on the Amazons.
These summer days “go on” calmly and evenly. Scarce a mark of the frost
and snow of the 15th is visible. The brackens are four or five feet
high already. The earliest azaleas have opened, and the whole crop of
bulbs is ready to burst. The river does not overflow its banks now, but
it is exactly brim-full. The thermometer averages about 75 degrees at
noon. We have sunshine every morning from a bright blue sky. Ranges of
cumuli appear towards the summits with neat regularity every day about
11 o’clock, making a splendid background for the South Dome. In a few
hours these clouds disappear and give up the sky to sunny evening.
Mr. Hutchings arrived here from Washington a week ago. There are sixty
or seventy visitors here at present.
I have received only two letters from you this winter and spring, dated
Jan. 22nd and May 7th.
I kissed your untamed one for you. She wishes that she knew the way to
Oakland that she might come to you.
Remember me to the Doctor and all your boys and to your little Allie.
I remain ever
Yours most cordially,
J. MUIR.
[1870.]
I am very, very blessed. The valley is full of people but they do not
annoy me. I revolve in pathless places and in higher rocks than _the
world_ and his ribbony wife can reach. Had I not been blunted by hard
work in the mill and crazed by Sabbath raids among the high places of
this heaven, I would have written you long since. I have spent every
Sabbath for the last two months in the spirit world, screaming among the
peaks and outside meadows like a negro Methodist in revival time, and
every intervening clump of week-days in trying to fix down and assimilate
my shapeless harvests of revealed glory into the spirit and into the
common earth of my existence; and I am rich, rich beyond measure, not in
rectangular blocks of sifted knowledge or in thin sheets of beauty hung
picture-like about “the walls of memory,” but in unselected atmospheres
of terrestrial glory diffused evenly throughout my whole substance.
Your Brooksian letters I have read with a great deal of interest, they
are so full of the spice and poetry of unmingled nature, and in many
places they express my own present feelings very fully. Quoting from
your Forest Glen, “without anxiety and without expectation all my days
come and go _mixed_ with such sweetness to every sense,” and again, “I
don’t know anything of time and but little of space.” “My whole being
seemed to open to the sun.” All this I do most comprehensively appreciate
and am just beginning to know how fully congenial you are. Would that
you could share my mountain enjoyments! In all my wanderings through
Nature’s beauty, whether it be among the ferns at my cabin door or in
the high meadows and peaks or amid the spray and music of waterfalls,
you are the first to meet me and I often speak to you as verily present
in the flesh.
Last Sabbath I was baptized in the irised foam of the Vernal and in the
divine snow of Nevada, and you were there also and stood in real presence
by the sheet of joyous rapids below the bridge.
I am glad to know that McClure and McChesney have told you of our night
with upper Yosemite. Oh, what a world is there I passed! No, I _had_
another night there two weeks ago, entering as far within the veil amid
equal glory, together with Mr. Frank Shapleigh of Boston. Mr. Shapleigh
is an artist and I like him. He has been here six weeks and has just
left for home. I told him to see you and to show you his paintings. He
is acquainted with Charles Sanderson and Mrs. Waterston. Mrs. Waterston
left the valley before your letter reached me, but one morning about
sunrise an old lady came to the mill and asked me if I was the man who
was so fond of flowers, and we had a very earnest, unceremonious chat
about the valley and about “the beyond.” She is made of better stuff
than most of the people of that heathen town of Boston, and so also is
Shapleigh.
Mrs. Yelverton is here and is going to stop a good while. Mrs. Waterston
told her to find me, and we are pretty well acquainted now. She told me
the other day she was going to write a Yosemite novel and that Squirrel
and I were going into it. I was glad to find that she knew you. I have
not seen Prof. Le Conte. Perhaps he is stopping at one of the other
hotels.
Has Mrs. Rapley or Mr. Colby told you about our camping in the spruce
woods on the south rim of the valley and of our walk at daybreak to the
top of the Sentinel Dome to see the sun rise out of the crown peaks of
beyond?
About a week ago at daybreak I started up the mountain near Glacier
Point to see Pohono in its upper woods and to study the kind of life it
lived up there. I had a glorious day and reached my cabin at daylight
by walking all night. Oh, what a night among those moon shadows! It was
seven o’clock A.M., when I reached the top of the Cathedral
Rocks,--a most glorious twenty-two hours of life amid nameless peaks
and meadows and the upper cataracts of Pohono.
Mr. Hutchings told me next morning that I had done two or three days’
climbing in one and that I was shortening my life, but I had a whole
lifetime of enjoyment and I care but little for the arithmetical length
of days. I can hardly realize that I have not yet seen you here.
I thank you for sending me so many friends, but I am waiting for you.
I am going up the mountain soon to see your lily garden at the top of
Indian Cañon.
“Let the Pacific islands lie.”
My love to Allie and all your boys and to the Doctor. Tell him that I
have been tracing glaciers in all the principal cañons towards the summit.
Ever thine,
J. MUIR.