OUT OF DOOR RADIANCIES
I want to radiate a constant, never-failing love for God's great out of
doors at all times, in all seasons, under all conditions, in all moods.
I want to understand Nature, to be one with her, to feel with her,
expand with her, be reserved with her, be exuberant with her. I want to
realize and radiate my kinship with everything that exists in Nature; I
am a part of this great whole, all of which is an expression of a great
thought of the great God. By making myself a part of Nature I am able to
make allies of all the forces of Nature, and this fact I want to radiate
with power and emphasis. I would teach both by word, influence, and
unconscious radiation that we are able to ally ourselves with all the
powers of God as manifested in the world around us. I have learned that,
no matter for whom else the sun may shine, it shines expressly for me. I
would have you learn that it shines expressly for you. Whatever its
power it belongs to you. Claim it! And so with all the forces. The winds
blow for you, the flowers bloom for you, the stars glisten for you, the
fruits grow for you, the trees clothe themselves in beauty for you, the
birds sing for you, the sunsets are glorious for you, and the sunrises
gild the mountain tops with reddish gold for you, the grass grows for
you, the creeks sing, the rivers flow, and the seas roar for you; the
forces of good are all yours, you are allies with them, and what they
are you are, what power they possess, you possess.
What marvelous vivification comes into the body, mind, and soul of man
when he realizes this stupendous fact. He no longer stands alone on the
earth. God, to many men and women, is far away, unseen, unknowable, but
through His world in Nature we can touch Him, realize Him, learn to know
Him, and while we are learning this greatest of great facts we are
becoming stronger, more self-reliant, more full of power, more
optimistic, more sure of our own footing on earth.
A man may not say of a palace, a house, a garden, a yacht, a fortune,
this, these, are mine, but we may each and all--the vilest drunkard, the
most wretched harlot, the near-suicide, and the nigh-insane, as well as
the poverty-stricken and the oppressed--say and know "the sun is mine,
the stars, the rain, the sweetness of the flowers, the blessedness of
God's great gift of life. Therefore, I am not poor, I am not forsaken, I
am not forgotten. I own much. I will take and utilize these for my
eternal blessing."
And as you utilize what you have you become both capable and worthy of
larger things. Only those who use receive more. "To him that hath shall
be given," and these are the things that all may have and that bless
more abundantly than any other things mankind may possess.
Most of us go through life missing what Nature has for us.
In one of Sienkiewicz's books he makes one of his characters say of his
betrothed,
I gaze on Nature, too, and feel it; but she shows me things which I
should not notice myself. A couple of days ago, we all went into the
forest, where she showed me ferns in the sun, for instance. They are
so delicate! She taught me also that the trunks of pine-trees,
especially in the evening light, have a violet tone. She opens my
eyes to colors which I have not seen hitherto, and, like a kind of
enchantress going through the forest, discloses new worlds to me.
Reread these two sentences: "She shows me things which I should not
notice myself," and "She opens my eyes and discloses new worlds to me."
The world's beauty is so common to us that we forget it. Nothing is
commoner than the stars, yet nothing more mysterious, wonderful, and
attractive; the grass is so common that we trample it under foot, yet
its beauty, its varied features will repay long hours of study, and it
is a joy unspeakable to those who have learned to love it. It is in the
common things that we should look for beauty, for lessons in color, in
art, in criticism. One of the great students and teachers of art of our
country once wrote a book entitled _The Gate Beautiful_. It was the
result of a life of concentrated study upon true art. Whence comes true
art? What is it? How shall one know it when he sees it? The result of
all Dr. Stimson's study, placed in that wonderful book, summed up in
short is--study Nature, and you will there learn more than all the books
and teachers of art can tell you in a thousand years. The author shows
by remarkable illustrations spiral vibrations made by the voice, the
natural forms of mineralogy, mechanics, astronomy, seeds, fruit,
vegetables, fish, reptiles, insects, birds, beasts, flowers, and
humanity. He shows the exquisite beauty of snow crystals, and of the
minute forms of earliest life, found in the diatoms. He sets forth the
beauty of leaf and stem in the commonest trees, in shells, etc., until
one wonders where his eyes have been, where his appreciation of beauty,
in all the years that these things have not appealed to him. Nature is
so flooded with beauty that more than one lifetime will be necessary for
any one man to discover the half of it. So because of its beauty I want
the men and women who come in contact with me to feel in me a pulsing,
living, active, irresistible love for Nature which will draw them out
into it; arouse in them an insatiable longing to see and know, to feel
and comprehend more of the rich beauty so freely exposed out of doors.
The out-of-doors, too, is full of beauty of color as well as beauty in
form. Oh, the sunrises and sunsets at sea, and on the desert, and in the
canyons, and on the mountain heights, and on the great plains of Arizona
and New Mexico and Utah. What colorist of earth can ever equal them?
Titian? Tintoretto? Velasquez? Turner? La Farge? Reid? Why waste words
asking the questions? How tame is Titian's greatest color-effects side
by side with a sunrise on the ocean, or a sunset on the desert!
Bostonians are proud of Reid's magnificent paintings in the State House.
I enjoy them myself and do not wonder that visitors are struck by the
powerful color-handling of the interesting historical subjects. But Mr.
Reid himself is not so foolish as to imagine that his greatest paintings
are more than futile attempts to put on canvas the colors his eyes have
seen, his soul has felt, out in the open. So, for color I would radiate
a love for out-of-doors.
And I would radiate a love for all of out-of-doors at all times. Winter,
Summer, Spring, Autumn, in rain and sunshine, in storm and calm, there
is something in every condition, every mood for the men and women who
are receptive. When I see newly born infants shut out from the pure
air, their faces covered, "lest they take cold," I am filled with
amazement at people's fear of out-of-doors. My babies were put to sleep
out-of-doors half an hour after they were born. The latest and most
approved methods of treating tuberculosis is to make those afflicted
with it sleep out of doors. There are camps in Michigan and in the snowy
regions of New York, in the Adirondacks, where, throughout the Winter,
patients sleep out of doors with the best of results. Be not afraid. Go
out of doors as does the Indian. Learn of him and be wise. He is a
believer in the virtue of the outdoor life, not as an occasional thing,
but as his regular, uniform habit. He _lives_ out of doors; and not only
does his body remain in the open, but his mind, his soul, are ever also
there. Except in the very cold weather his house is free to every breeze
that blows. He laughs at "drafts." "Catching cold" is something of which
he knows absolutely nothing. When he learns of white people shutting
themselves up in houses into which the fresh, pure, free air of the
plains and deserts, often laden with the healthful odors of the pines,
firs, and balsams of the forest, cannot come, he shakes his head at the
folly, and feels as one would if he saw a man slamming his door in the
face of his best friend. Virtually he sleeps out of doors, eats out of
doors, works out of doors. When the women make their baskets and
pottery, it is always out of doors, and their best beadwork is always
done in the open. The men make their bows and arrows, dress their
buckskin, make their moccasins and buckskin clothes, and perform nearly
all their ceremonials out-of-doors.
I wish I could radiate to every human soul what I mean by having one's
mind, one's soul, live in the open. Words fail to convey what I mean.
The sense of largeness, of expansion, of breadth, depth, width, and
height are as tangible in soul-results as in those of body. None can
live in the open all the time and become sordid money-grubbers. If they
are to become rich they do it in a large, expansive, virile way that
commands respect. It is only the shut-in man that can add to his
millions by cheese-paring methods, by grinding the face of the poor, by
counting up cents and nickels and dimes wrung from the labor of the
children of the poor.
Read these lines from a wonderful poem of the out-of-doors by Edwin
Markham, and see how much you can make it mean to yourself:
I ride on the mountain tops, I ride;
I have found my life and am satisfied.
* * * * *
I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget
Life's hoard of regret--
All the terror and pain
Of the chafing chain.
Grind on, O cities, grind;
I leave you a blur behind.
I am lifted elate--the skies expand;
Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand.
Let them weary and work in their narrow walls;
I ride with the voices of waterfalls!
* * * * *
I swing on as one in a dream--I swing
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!
The world is gone like an empty word!
My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird!
Never in a thousand years can one get such pure, sweet, pulsing, living
and stay-long-with-you delights as these, in a city. Granted there are
pleasures in the ballroom, and they are doubtless great, but can they
begin to compare with the delights of out-of-doors? Languor next day,
ennui, jealousies, heart-burnings, gossiping, cruel slandering,
ruination of health, too often come with these city pleasures. Then,
too, the ballroom in its desirable form is only for the rich, while the
poor may enjoy everything good of the great out-of-doors. The city has
its theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, and the like, but they are
generally at night, compelling people to be out when they should be in
bed, turning day into night, and reversing the natural order of things.
And the artificial is never equal to the real, the unnatural to the
natural.
Then, too, the out-of-doors is such a teacher; and not a teacher of the
arid, formal, dry, embalmed knowledge, but the real living facts. As
Robert Louis, the well-beloved, says:
There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon
the summits of formal and laborious science, but it is all round
about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the
warm and palpitating facts of life.
Book knowledge can never equal living knowledge. He whose mind is stored
with what he has read too often only thinks he knows, while the one
whose facts are gained at first hand from the real objects themselves
knows that he knows. A man in a factory as a rule, in these days of
specialization, is only a cog in a wheel, a part of a great machine. Be
he a woodworker, he does not make any complete piece of furniture. He
saws on one part; another on another; a third on still another; a
fourth, who knows nothing of shaping the parts, assembles the whole, and
a fifth puts them together; a sixth sandpapers; a seventh stains or
varnishes; and an eighth polishes and finishes. So with watchmaking and
everything used by human hands. Nobody, nowadays, has the joy of "doing
it all."
But in the country a man plows, harrows, sows the seed and cultivates,
and during it all he is in the open, seeing all the wonderful phenomena
of Nature pass before him in everchanging panorama each hour. That is,
of course, providing he has not been ground down by too many hours of
hard physical labor until he has become a mere "brother to the ox," and
the stolid and stunned creature so powerfully described by Edwin Markham
in his _Man with the Hoe_.
Every man needs something both of the city and the country. Rubbing up
against his kind sharpens his wits; often makes him more selfish and
indifferent to the rights and needs of others; and again prepares him
more thoroughly to enjoy what the country offers. So, city man, with all
your senses sharpened by contact with mankind, go out into the country
to get your soul enlarged. For Nature is the great soul expander.
Read John Muir's _Mountains of California_, and see how the
out-door-life enlarged him, made him bigger, grander, nobler than he
could ever have been had he stayed in the narrow confines of a city's
walls. In one chapter he tells of his experience in a storm in a Sierra
forest. Perched high on the mountains a great storm swept over the
range. Most men would have remained indoors, afraid of the fierceness of
the wind and the beating of the rain. Not so he! There were experiences
to be had out there that could come to him in no other way; so out he
went. After scrambling through underbrush, climbing hilly slopes, until
his blood was fairly a-tingle in response to the power of the storm,
watching the swaying of the trees, hearing the crash, every few
moments, of a falling tree, he finally decided to see the whole thing
from the top of a tree. So selecting a suitable tree he climbed to its
topmost branches, and there, swaying to and fro like "a bobolink on a
reed," he watched the wind playing with the gigantic trees and the tiny
leaves, and listened to such an æolian concert as few men have ever
dreamed of.
John Muir's experiences and development are not peculiar to him. Most
men who live the larger out-of-door life, who engage in out-of-door
occupations have a largeness and expansion about them that is
stimulating and inspiring. Read the life of the fishermen--the
Gloucester Folk, and the Folk of all the shores of the sea, who gain
their livelihood by battling with storms and circumventing them. What
brawny arms and shoulders and backs; what tremendous power; what deep
breaths in powerful lungs! See the pilots who come out to meet the
transoceanic steamers; what brave, powerful, massive men they are!
Ordinary men are dwarfed in their presence--not merely physically, but
mentally and spiritually. See the captains of these same great steamers,
and all sea-going vessels, and the very sailors; there is a strength of
body and a largeness, an openness of disposition, that is good to come
in contact with. Who that has climbed the Swiss mountains with an
Alpine guide but has felt the strength and power developed by ages of
conflict with snowstorms, avalanches, and other great Nature forces.
Even the loggers in the forest swing their axes or handle the huge logs
with an ease and power that stagger the ordinary city man. Think how the
old time stage-drivers used to handle their six- and eight-horse teams
with ease and elegance, guiding and directing their movements as
gracefully as a _grande dame_ promenades in her ballroom. Who has not
been thrilled with the doings of the live-saving service, and the
lighthouse keepers? What city girl could have dared do as did Grace
Darling, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, who insisted upon her father
rowing with her to rescue a shipwrecked crew in the face of a howling
storm? What delights I myself have enjoyed out on the plains, prairies,
and foot-hills, riding with the cowboys. Well do I remember several
_rodeos_ I united with in Nevada, where we rode madly after the wild
cattle and horses, over and through the sagebrush at break-neck speed,
now dodging to the right, now to the left, now jumping a piece of brush
that could not be dodged. We went up hill like the wind, and then
started down hill at equal or greater speed, and once, getting into a
grove of trees, I had to learn to bend down flat on the horse's back to
avoid being swept off. "Let your horse go where he will. He understands
his business, and you don't," were the instructions I had received, and
well it was that I was not required to guide my animal. I had enough to
do to keep my seat. Talk about rough-riders! I was soon a rough-rider,
indeed. And how tired out and weary I was that night, but how I slept! I
had been dyspeptic, sleepless, and anæmic. Three weeks of this shook me
up so that my liver worked as it had never worked in my history before.
I got until I could eat and digest anything, and my sleep was sweet,
sound, dreamless, and refreshing. Would that I had had sense enough then
and there to resign the pastorate of my church; quit being an
indifferent and unhealthy parson; become a cowboy and gain health, vim,
vigor, strength, life.
I suppose I had to come to it slowly, but come I did to the most
important facts, viz.: that I could never be healthy indoors, and that I
must live in the open. And as I got out more my intellect and spirit
expanded as my body grew healthier, and I began to learn more from the
objects around me than I had from all my schooling, all my books, and
all my theological training and study.
Nowadays there is no out-of-door occupation that does not appeal to me;
a ditch-digger, a navvy on a railroad, a roustabout on a dock, a
deck-hand on a steamer, a brakeman, a road mender, a plowman, a carter,
a teamster--even these, the lowliest of the out-of-door callings, show
to me men of rugged strength that delight and appeal to me.
How one's very soul thrills in sympathy as he thinks of the marvelous
achievements of the great explorers--all of them men of the
out-of-doors; Columbus, Magellan, Capt. Cook, Kane, Sir John Franklin,
Peary, Sven Hedin, Capt. Burnaby, Burton, Livingstone, Stanley, Major
Powell, and a host of others. How the mere thought of them and their
lives radiates the very spirit of energy, strength, courage, daring,
independence, self-reliance! In their physical or spiritual presence you
feel you are in contact with an entirely different set of earth's
mortals than ordinary men, for they radiate unconsciously the largeness,
the expansiveness, the majesty and strength of the vast out-of-doors.
Rudyard Kipling in his _Captains Courageous_ fully explains what I mean
about this largeness and nobleness of soul that come from the
out-of-door life, in telling of the fishermen of the New England coast.
In his vivid English he pictures their daily life, what their work is,
how they have to brave the perils of the deep, the dangerous fogs, the
uncertain storms, the sudden death that comes when a great vessel looms
through the fog and cuts them down. Yet they go ahead as a matter of
course. Their life enlarges their faith and trust; either it is that or
they become used to looking in the face of danger and death and then
calmly continue in their work. No man does this without deepening and
broadening his life.
When it comes to gardeners I fairly envy them. Think of the wondrous
life that is theirs. To learn and know the life-habits of plants and
flowers, and to see them growing from tiny seeds, or slips, or cuttings
into all their rich and perfect beauty. I never knew a despondent
gardener. His profession forbids it; his experience rebukes it. So of
late years, in my crude way, I have been trying to become a gardener,
when I am at home and have time.
What an unspeakable joy there is in all this work. How it occupies one's
brain and body, and drives away all despondency, care, blue-devils, and
worry. Out in the garden I am a king, a proud monarch, robed in blue
flannel shirt and overalls, my scepter a spade, and my right to rule
demonstrable by my strong muscles, steady nerves, strong lungs, healthy
skin, and clear eyes. Who would not reign in such a realm?
More than all else I feel when living this life that I am lifted above
all the petty meannesses of men and women. I am dealing with creative
forces--things direct from the hands of God--sunshine, air, water, soil,
growth, development, life. And how such feelings expand the soul!
Then I begin to think of the wonderful work in flowers, fruits, and
plants performed by Hugo de Vries and our own Luther Burbank, and as I
recall their achievements I feel the opening up of a new realm before
me. Never can I forget the joy of a couple of days with Burbank at his
home at Santa Rosa, and his "proving grounds," at Sebastopol. I there
saw his winter rhubarb, and as we walked along we came to his cactus
patch. The first section was of the rude, prickly leaves I was so
familiar with on the desert; the next section less prickly and so on,
until at last, with a frolic, Mr. Burbank "dived" into the cactus,
rubbed his face and ears against the great leaves and demonstrated them
free from every vestige of a thorn.
Then we saw flowers that he had completely changed, in size, color,
form, and odor, and when you ask how it was all done he declares that
any man or woman with the necessary patience and skill (and skill comes
with patience) can produce results as apparently marvelous as his own.
For the marvel is apparent and not real; it is nothing but the
understanding and application of natural laws; laws that Darwin and
others have well understood and enunciated.
At Sebastopol I had the joy of seeing him work in the selection of plum
trees. Row after row of young bearing plum trees stood before us. With
two men following him, one with black strings, and the other with white,
he began. Picking a plum from the first tree, he bit into it. I did
likewise. To me it seemed a good plum. He rapidly commented upon: 1, its
appearance, shape, etc.; 2, color; 3, firmness of texture; 4, flavor; 5,
sweetness. Then he did the same with the tree: its extent of foliage,
shapeliness, etc. All these things had to be considered. The first few
trees he took very slowly and deliberately in order that I might clearly
comprehend what he was after. Then, almost as quickly as his eye fell
upon a tree, he had put his teeth into the fruit, his trained intellect
had decided whether the tree was worth keeping or killing, and as he
said "keep" or "kill," the attendants tied on the corresponding white or
black strings. To produce the plum he wanted he assured me he has
destroyed over a million trees.
His apple trees are perfect marvels. Some of them bear upwards of two
hundred different kinds of apples, and he says it is comparatively easy
to produce an apple of any color, texture, size, flavor, and sweetness
desired.
Think what Nature has taught to such a man. He is not what you would
call a supereducated man in books; but he has read Nature as few men in
the history of the world have done, and she has revealed many of her
most intimate secrets to him. And as you talk with him you find in this
quiet, unassuming, sweet-spirited, gentle-hearted man a breadth, a
largeness, a sweep of soul that are rare.
And Nature gives this same largeness to a woman as well as a man. Women
who get into the bigness of the out-of-doors get away from feminine
pettinesses just as surely as men do from their narrownesses and
prejudices. I have two women friends in California (or had, until one
passed on), both of them expert and scientific florists. One lived at
San Buena Ventura, and the other at San Diego. The names of Mrs.
Theodosia Shepard and Miss Kate Sessions are known throughout the world.
Both women determined to devote their lives to a scientific study, _out
in the garden_, of plant life, and each has therefore done things,
achieved results that have made her world-famed. How much better this,
than to live the narrow, contracted life of most women.
Another woman friend, Mrs. Sarah Plummer Lemmon, wife of the well-known
botanist, and herself a botanist known to the whole scientific world,
for years accompanied her husband in his expeditions throughout the
wildest parts of Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Mexico. I doubt
whether there is a person living who has so real and intimate a
knowledge of all this country as has this brave and intrepid woman, who,
when Apaches were on the warpath, calmly and steadfastly sustained her
husband in his scientific work. In storms and perils, in danger from
wild animals and wilder men, away from all luxuries and comforts and
often deprived of what most people call necessities, this woman communed
with Nature and has thereby grown into a large, commanding, powerful,
all-embracing soul, as much above the average woman in intellect as an
athlete is above a baby.
I am no technical botanist, yet I have had pleasure untold when
wandering in canyon, mountain, plain, forest, seaside, and desert in
seeking to learn all I could of the flora of the region. When botanists
said that the _cereus giganteus_--the giant suahuaro--was not to be
found in California and I knew I had seen it growing on the California
side of the Colorado River, there was great pleasure in photographing
the few specimens I knew in this habitat and then in hunting for more.
How well I remember one day climbing up hill and down, over rocky ridges
and dangerous trails and places where there were no trails at all, every
now and again seeing fresh specimens, _in California_, of this cactus
"that did not grow in California." And when, at last, I stood on a
ridge, looking down into a secluded canyon, where there were a dozen or
more (which I photographed), I felt as if, humbly though it was, I were
being used as an instrument for increasing the botanical knowledge of
the world.