"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." -John MuirWhen John Muir came to California in the 1860s, he went directly to Yosemite just to look around. When Dorris Welch moved to California in the 1960s, she did the same thing. It would be nice to report that she replicated the pioneering naturalist's style by taking a ferry across the bay and then walking the rest of the way to the High Sierra in hobnail boots.
Also, in this San Francisco Datebook article, is this entry Muir made into his journal as he describes how he hiked into a ledge behind Yosemite Falls in 1873:
"I went out on the narrow bench close alongside the wild rushing waters and began to admire the rare beauty of the thin gauzy waters...which formed the edge of the fall. I could see the most delicate threads of its fairy tissue by noting the moon behind it. Wishing to look at the moon through the meshes of some of the denser portions of the fall I crept farther behind it while it was gently wind-swayed without taking thought about the consequences of its returning when the wind would change. The effect was enchanting. Wild music above, beneath, around the moon apparently in the very midst of the wild waters flashing. Out in, among the denser waters now darkened by a rush of comets. I was in fairyland between the black wall and the well illumined waters but suffered sudden disenchantment for I was stricken by a hissing down rush of water that felt hard as hailstones shot from a gun.
- By that instinct that we call ... presence of mind I dropped on my knees, laid hold of an angel of the rock, rolled myself like a ball with my face against my bosom and submitted to the my terrible baptism." [Reprinted by permission of John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library.]
A Walk in the Wild: Continuing John Muir's Journey: Sat.-Jan. 22 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. (510) 238-2200. www.museumca.org.
E-mail Sam Whiting at swhiting@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page P - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle
No comments:
Post a Comment