 Section 6 of Letters to a Friend by John Muir. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Paul Fleishman. Letters from 1871. Yosemite, 1871. The spirit has again led me into the wilderness in opposition to all counter-attractions and I am once more in the glory of the Yosemite. Your very cordial invitation to your home reached me as I was preparing to ascend and my whole being was possessed with visions of snowy forests of the pine and spruce and of mountain spires beyond, pearly and half-transparent, reaching into heavens blue, not pureer than themselves. In company with another young fellow whom I persuaded to walk, I left the plains just as the first gold sheets were being outspread. My first plan was to follow the Tuolumne upward as I had followed the Merced downward and after reaching the Hetchatchee Valley which has about the same altitude as Yosemite and spending a week or so in sketching and examining its falls and rocks to cross the high mountains past the west end of the Hoffman Range and go down into Yosemite by Indian Canyon passing thus a glorious month with the mountains and all their snows in crystal brightness and all the nameless glories of their magnificent winter. But my plan went aglee. I lost a week's sleep by the pain of a sore hand and I became unconfident in my strength when measured against weeks of wading in snow up to my neck. Therefore, I reluctantly concluded to push directly for the valley and Tamarack. Our journey was just a week in length including one day of rest in the Crane's Flat Cabin. Some of our nights were cold and we were hungry once or twice. We crossed the snow line on the flank of Pilot Peak Ridge six or eight miles below Crane's Flat. From Crane's Flat to Brim of the Valley the snow was about five feet in depth and as it was not frozen or compacted in any way we of course had a splendid season of wading. I wish that you could have seen the edge of the snow cloud which hovered oh so soothingly down to the Grand Pilot Peak Browse discharging its heaven-begotten snows with such unmistakable gentleness and moving perhaps with conscious love from pine to pine showing separate and independent blessings upon each. In a few hours we climbed under and into this glorious storm cloud with a harvest of crystal flowers and what wind songs were gathered from the spirey furs and the long fringy arms of the Lambert Pine. We could not see far before us in the storm which lasted until some time in the night but as I was familiar with the general map of the mountain we had no difficulty in finding our way. Crane's Flat cabin was buried and we had to grope about for the door after making a fire with some cedar rails I went out to watch the coming on of the darkness which was most impressively sublime. Next morning was every way the purest creation I ever beheld. The little flat, spot-like in the massive spiring woods was in splendid vesture of universal white upon which the grand forest edge was minutely repeated and covered with the close sheet of snow flowers. Some mosses grow luxuriously upon the dead generations of their own species. The common snow flowers belong to the sky and in storms are blown about like ripe petals in an orchard. They settle on the ground, the bottom of the atmospheric sea like mud or leaves in a lake and upon the soil this field of broken sky flowers grows a luxuriant carpet of crystal vegetation complete and ripe in a single night. I never before knew that these mountain snow plants were so variable and abundant forming such bushy clumps and thickets and palmy-ferny groves. Waiting waist-deep I had a fine opportunity for observing them but they shrink from human breath not the only flowers which do so. Evidently not made for man neither the flowers composing the snow which came drifting down to us broken and dead nor the more beautiful crystals which vegetate upon them. A great many storms have come to these mountains since I passed them and they can hardly be less than ten feet and the solitude of Tamarack still more. The weather here is balmy now and the falls are glorious. Three weeks ago the thermometer at sunrise stood at twelve degrees. I have repaired the mill and dam and the stream is in no danger of drying up and is more dammed than ever. Today has been cloudy and rainy. Tissac and Star King are grandly dipped in a white cloud. I sent you my plants by express. I am sorry that my Yosemite specimens are not with the others. I left a few notes with Mrs. Yelverton when I left the valley in the fall. I wish that you would ask her if you should see her where she left them as Mrs. Hutchings does not know. I shall be happy to join Stoddard in anything whatever. Mrs. H had a letter from him lately part of which she read to me. And now Mrs. Carr you must see the upper mountains and meadows back of Yosemite. You have seen nothing as yet and I will guide you a whole summer if you wish. I am very happy here and cannot break for the Andes just yet. Squirrel is at my knee. She says tell Mrs. Carr to come here tomorrow and tell her to bring her little boy when she comes. If you will come she says that she will guide you to the falls and give you lots of flowers. Mrs. H tells me to say that she has received a very kind letter from you which she will answer. Sends thus her kindest regards. If she can find a chance she will send bulbs of lily by mail. I have been nearly blind since I crossed the snow. Give my kindest regards to all your homeful and to my friends. I am always yours most cordially, J. M. Yosemite, August 13, 1871. I was so stunned and dazed by your last that I have not been able to write anything. I was sure that you were coming and you cannot come and Mr. King, the artist, left me the other day and I am done with Hutchings and I am lonely. Well it must be wait for although there is no common human reason why I should not see you and civilization in Oakland I cannot escape from the powers of the mountains. I shall tie some flower and a blanket behind my saddle and return to the Mono region and try to decide some questions that require undisturbed thought. There I will stalk about on the summit slates of Dana and Gibbs and Lyle reading new chapters of glacial manuscript and more if I can. Then perhaps I will follow the twalamy down to the Hetch Hetch Yosemite then perhaps follow the Yosemite stream back to its smallest source in the mountains of the Lyle group and the Cathedral group and the Obelisk and Mount Hoffman. This will perhaps be my work until the coming of the winter snows when I will probably find a sheltered rock nook where I can make a nest of leaves and mosses and doze until spring. I expect to be entirely alone in these mountain walks and notwithstanding the glorious portion of daily bread which my soul will receive in these fields where only the footprints of God are seen. The glomen will be lonely but I will cheerfully pay the price of friendship and all besides. I suppose that you have seen Mr. King who kindly carried some flies for Mr. Edwards. I thought you would easily see him or let him know that you had his specimens. I collected most of them upon Mount Hoffman but was so busy in assisting Riley that I could not do much in butterflies. Hereafter I shall be entirely free. The purples and yellows begin to come in the green of our groves and the rocks have the autumn haze and the water songs are at their lowest hushings. Young birds are big as old ones and is it true that these are Bryant's melancholy days? I don't know, I will not think but I will go above these brooding days to the higher, brighter mountains. Farewell, cordially ever yours, John Muir. I shall hope to hear from you soon. I will come down some of the valley canyons occasionally for letters. I am sorry that you are so laden with university cares. I think that you and the doctor do more than your share. Do you know anything about this Liebig's extract of meat? I would like to carry a year's provisions in the form of condensed bread and meat and I have been thinking perhaps all that I want is in the market. Yosemite, September 8th, 1871. I am sorry that King made you uneasy about me. He does not understand me as you do and you must not heed him so much. He thinks that I am melancholy and above all that I require polishing. I feel sure that if you were here to see how happy I am and how ardently I am seeking a knowledge of the rocks, you could not call me away but would gladly let me go with only God and His written rocks to guide me. You would not think of calling me to make machines or a home or of rubbing me against other minds or of setting me up for measurement. No, dear friend, you would say, keep your mind untrammeled and pure. Go unfrictioned, unmeasured and God give you the true meaning and interpretation of His mountains. You know that for the last three years I have been ploddingly making observations about this valley and the high mountain region to the east of it, drifting broodingly about and taking in every natural lesson that I was fitted to absorb. In particular, the great valley has always kept a place in my mind. What tools did he use? How did he apply them and when? I considered the sky above it and all of its opening canyons and studied the forces that came in by every door that I saw standing open but I could get no light. Then I said, you are attempting what is not possible for you to accomplish. Yosemite is the end of a grand chapter. If you would learn to read it, go commence at the beginning. Then I went above to the alphabet valleys of the summits, comparing canyon with canyon, with all their varieties of rock structure and cleavage and the comparative size and slope of the glaciers and waters which they contained. Also, the grand congregations of rock creations was present to me and I studied their forms and sculpture. I soon had a key to every Yosemite rock and perpendicular and sloping wall. The grandeur of these forces and their glorious results overpower me and inhabit my whole being. Waking or sleeping I have no rest. In dreams I read blurred sheets of glacial writing or follow lines of cleavage or struggle with the difficulties of some extraordinary rock form. Now it is clear that woe is me if I do not drown this tendency towards nervous prostration by constant labor and working up the details of this whole question. I have been down from the upper rocks only three days and am hungry for exercise already. Professor Runkel, president of the Boston Institute of Technology, was here last week and preached my glacial theory to him for five days, taking him into the canyon of the valley and up among the grand glacier wounds and pathways of the summit. He was fully convinced of the truth of my readings and urged me to write out the glacial system of Yosemite and its tributaries for the Boston Academy of Science. I told him that I meant to write my thoughts for my own use and that I would send him the manuscript of his wise scientific brothers thought it of sufficient interest they might publish it. He is going to send me some instruments and I mean to go over all the glacier basins carefully working until driven down by the snow. In winter I can make my drawings and maps and write out notes so you see that for a year or two I will be very busy. I have settled with Hutchings and have no dealings with him now. I think that next spring I will have to guide a month or two for pocket money although I do not like the work. I suppose I might live for one or two seasons without work. I have five hundred dollars a year and I have been sending home money to my sisters and brothers perhaps about twelve or fifteen hundred dollars and a man in Canada owes me three or four hundred dollars more which I suppose I could get if I was in need but you know that the Scots do not like to spend their last dollar. Some of my friends are badgering me to write for some of the magazines and I am almost tempted to try it. Only I am afraid that this would distract my mind from my work more than the distasteful and depressing labor of the mill or of guiding. What do you think about it? Suppose I should give some of the journals my first thoughts about this glacier work as I go along and afterwards gather them and press them for the Boston Wise or will it be better to hold work and say it all at a breath. You see how practical I have become and how fully I have burdened you with my little affairs. Perhaps you will ask what plan are you going to pursue in your work? Well here it is the only book I ever have invented first I will describe each glacier with its tributary then describe the rocks and hills and mountains over which they have flowed or past which they have flowed endeavoring to prove that all of the various forms which those rocks now have are the necessary result of the ice action in connection with their structure and cleavage etc. Also the different kinds of canyons and lake basins and meadows which they have made then armed with this data I come down to the ossemity where all my ice has come and prove that each dome and brow and wall and every grace and spire and brother is the necessary result of the delicately balanced blows of well directed and combined glaciers against the parent rocks which contained them only thinly carved and molded in some instances by the subsequent action of water etc. Libby sent me Tindall's new book and I have looked hastily over it it is an alpine mixture a very pleasant taste and I wish I could enjoy reading and talking it with you I expect Mrs. H will accompany her husband to the east this winter and there will not be one left with whom I can exchange a thought Mrs. H is going to leave me out all the books I want and Runkle is going to send me Darwin these with my notes and maps will fill my winter hours if my eyes do not fail and now that you see my whole position I think that you would not call me to the excitements and distracting novelties of civilization the bread question is very troublesome I will eat anything you think will suit me send up either by express to big oak flat or by any other chance I will remit the money required in any way you like my love to all and more thanks than I can write for your constant kindness End of Section 6 Section 7 of Letters to a Friend by John Muir this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Paul Fleischmann Letters from 1872 Yosemite Valley, February 13th, 1872 your latest letter is dated December 31st I see that some of our letters are missing I received the box and ate the berries and Libig's extract long ago and told you all about it but Mrs. Yelverton's book and magazine articles I have not yet seen perhaps they may come next mail how did you send them I sympathize with your face and your great sorrows but you will bathe in the fountain of light, life and love of our mountains and be healed and here I wish to say that when you and Al and the doctor come I wish to be completely free therefore let me know that you will certainly come and win I will gladly cut off a slice of my season's time however thick the thicker the better and lay it aside for you I am in the habit of asking so many to come, come to the mountain baptisms that there is danger of having others on my hands when you come which must not be I will mark off one or two or three months of bare, dutyless time for our blessed selves or the few good and loyal ones that you may choose therefore at the expense even of breaking a dozen of civilizations laws and fences I want you to come for the high Sierra the months of July, August and September are best as for your Asiatic sayings I would gladly creep into the veil of Kashmir or any other grove upon our blessed star I feel my poverty in general knowledge and will travel someday you need not think that I feel Yosemite to be all in all but more of this when you come I am going to send you with this some facts and thoughts that I gathered concerning 20 Hill Hollow which I want to publish if you think you can mend them and make them into a lawful article fit for outsiders Plant Gold is fading from California faster than did her Placer Gold and I wanted to save the memory of that which is laid upon 20 Hills also I will send you some thoughts that I happen to get for poor, persecuted twice-damned coyote if you think anybody will believe them have them published last mail I sent you some manuscript about bears and storms which you will believe if no one else will an account of my preliminary rambles among the glacier beds was published in the Daily Tribune of New York December 9th have you seen it if you have call old Mr. Steben's attention to it he will read with pleasure where is the old friend I have not heard from him for a long time remember me to the doctor and the boys and all my old friends yours et cetera John Muir New Sentinel Hotel Yosemite Valley April 23rd, 1872 yours of April 9th and 15th containing Ned's canoe and colonization adventure came to night I feel that you are coming and I will not hear any words of preparatory consolation for the unsupposable case of your non-appearance come by way of clerks and spend a whole day or two in the sequoias thence to Sentinel Dome and Glacier Point from thence swoop to our meadows and groves direct by a trail now in course of construction which will be completed by the time the snow melts this new trail will be best in scenery and safety of five which enter the valley it leads from Glacier Point down the face of the mountain by an easy grade to a point back of Lightig's hotel and has over half a dozen inspiration points I hear that Mr. Paragoy intends building a hotel at Glacier Point if he does you should halt there if not then stop at the present Paragoy's five or six miles south of the valley at the Westfall Meadows built since your visit you might then easily ride from clerks to the valley in a day but a day among the silver furs and another about the glories of the valley rim and settings is a small request the snow is deep this year and the regular Mariposa trail leading to Glacier Point etc will not be open before June the Mariposa travel of May and perhaps a week or so of June will enter the valley from clerks by a sort of sneaking trail along the river canyon below the snow but you must not come that way you may also enter the valley via Little Eosimity and Nevada and Vernal Falls by a trail constructed last season also by Indian Falls on the west side of the valley by a trail now nearly completed this last is a noble entrance but perhaps not equal to the first whatever way you come we will travel all those up and down and bear in mind that you must go among the summits in July or August bring no friends that will not go to these fountains beyond or are uncast offable calm thinkers like your doctor who first led me with science and Lacante are the kinds of souls fit for the formation of human clouds adapted to this mountain sky nevertheless I will rejoice beyond measure though you come as a comet tailed by a whole misty town Ned is a brave fellow God bless him unspeakably and feed him with his own South American self I shall be most happy to know your doggits or anything that you call dear good night and love to all I have not seen any of my tribune letters though I have written five or six send copy if you can J. Muir 1872 beginning of letter missing farewell I'm glad you are to get your Ned again the fever will soon cool out from his veins in the breath of California the valley is full of sun but glorious sierras are piled above the south dome and star king I mean the bossy cumuli that are daily up heaved at this season making a cloud period yet grander than the rock sculpturing Yosemite making forest planting glacial period yesterday we had our first midday shower the pines waved gloriously at its approach the woodpeckers beat about as if alarmed but the hummingbird moths thought the cloud shadows belonged to evening and came down to eat among the mints all the fire and rocks of star king were bathily dripped before 1872 beginning of letter missing they will go on monoword for Tahoe I mean to set some stakes in a dozen glaciers I'm arithmetic for clothing my thoughts I hope you will not allow old H or his picture agent houseworth to sow gobble and be wool poor Agassi that I will not see him remember me always to the doctor and the boys and a mrs. Moore and I am ever yours John Muir I will return to the valley in about a week if I don't get over deep in a crevasse later yours of Monday evening has just come I am glad your boy is so soon to feel mother home and its blessings I hope to meet Tory although I will push Iceward as before but make it back in time I will enjoy Agassi and Tyndall even more I'm sorry for poor Stoddard tell him to come I'll see mrs. H perhaps this evening and deliver your message farewell New Sentinel Hotel Yosemite Valley May 31st 1872 yours announcing the Joaquin and the doggits and Moore is here I care not when you come so that you come calm and time full I will try to compel myself down to you in August but these years and ages among snows and rocks have made me far more unfit than you appreciate my nerves, strings shrink at the prospect even at this distance but if by diving to that slimy town sea bottom I can touch Huxley and Tyndall and mount again with you to calm months in the Sierras I will draw a long breath and splash into your fearful muds I would rather have you in September and October than at any other time a few weeks of this white water would be very glorious Meryl Moores who was with me in Wisconsin and at your Madison home will be here soon to spend a good big block of a while with me why can't you let Ali join him for the last week our valley has been a lake and my shanty is in flood but the walls about us are white this morning with snow which has checked the free life of Florence and the meadows will soon be walkable again the snow fell last night and this morning the falls will sing loud and long this year and the mountains are fat and thick snow that the sun will find hard to fry midnight oh Mrs. Carr that you could be here to mingle in this night moon glory I am in the upper Yosemite Falls and can hardly calm to write but from my thick baptism an hour ago you have been so present that I must try to fix you a written thought in the afternoon I came up the mountain here with a blanket and a piece of bread to spend the night in prayer among the spouts of the fall but now what can I say more than wish again that you might expose your soul to the rays of this heaven silver from the moon glorious creation which we term falls and has laid a magnificent double prismatic bow at its base the tissue of the falls is delicately filmed on the outside like the substance of spent clouds and the stars shine dimly through it in the solid shafted body of the falls is a vast number of passing caves black and deep with close white convolving spray for sills and shooting comet shoots above and down their sides like lime crystals in the cave and every atom of the magnificent being from the thin silvery crest that does not dim the stars to the inner arrowy hardened shafts that strike onward like thunderbolts in sound and energy all is life and spirit every bolt and spray feels the hand of God oh the music that is blessing me now the sun of last week has given the grandest notes of all the yearly anthem and they echo in every fiber of me I said that I was going to stop here until morning and pray a whole blessed night with the falls and the moon but I am too wet and must go down an hour or two ago I went out somehow on a little scene that extends along the wall behind the falls I suppose I was in a trance but I can positively say that I was in the body for it is sorely battered and wedded as I was gazing past the thin edge of the fall and away through beneath the column to the brow of the rock some heavy splashes of water struck me driven hard against the wall suddenly I was darkened down came a section of the outside tissue composed of spent comets I crouched low holding my breath and anchored to some angular flakes of rocks took my baptism with moderately good faith when I dared to look up after the swaying column admitted light I pounced behind a piece of ice which was wedged tight in the wall and I no longer feared being washed off and steady moonbeams slanting past the arching meteors gave me confidence to escape to this snug place where McChesney and I slept one night where I had a fire to dry my socks this rock shelf extending behind the falls is about 500 feet above the base of the fall on the perpendicular rock face how little do we know of ourselves of our profoundest attractions and repulsions of our spiritual affinities how interesting does man become considered in his relations to the spirit of this rock and water how significant does every atom of our world become amid the influences of those beings unseen, spiritual angelic mountaineers that so throng these pure mansions of crystal foam and purple granite I cannot refrain from speaking to this little bush at my side and to the spray drops that come to my paper and to the individual sands of the slope I am sitting upon Ruskin says that the idea of foulness is essentially connected with what he calls dead unorganized matter how cordially I disbelieve him tonight and were he to dwell a while among the powers of these mountains he would forget all dictionary differences between the clean and the unclean and he would lose all memory and meaning of the diabolical sin in the Latin term foulness well I must go down I am disregarding all of the doctor's physiology in sitting here in this universal moisture farewell to you and to all the beings about us I shall have a glorious walk down the mountains in this thin white light over the open brows grade with seligenla and through the thick black five oaks all stuck full of snowy lances of moonlight New Sentinel Hotel Yosemite Valley July 6th, 1872 yours of Tuesday evening telling of our doggits and Ned and Meryl Moors has come and so has the lamp and book I have not yet tried the lamp but it is splendid in shape and shines grand as gold the lile is just what I wanted I think that your measure of the doggits is exactly right as good as civilized people can be they have grown to the top of town culture and have sent out some shoots half gropingly into the spirit sky I am very glad to know that Ned is growing strong perhaps we may see South America together yet I hope to see you come to your own of mountain fountains soon perhaps Mrs. Hutchings may go with us you live so fully in my own life that I cannot realize that I have not seen you here a year or two of waiting seems nothing possibly I may be down on your coast this fall or next for I want to see what relations the coast and coast mountains have to the Sierras also I want to go north and south along the range and then among the basins and ranges eastward my subject is expanding at a most unfollowable pace I could write something with data already harvested but I am not satisfied I have just returned from Hechechi with Mrs. Moore of course we had a glory and a fun the two articles in about parallel columns of equal size meadows grasped and lilies head high spangled river reaches and currentless pools cascades countless and unpainable the storm and whiteness grows that heaven all the valley you were with us in all our joy and you will come again I am a little weary and half inclined to truantism from mobs however blessed in some unfindable grove I start in a few minutes for clouds rest with Mr. and Mrs. Moore I like Mrs. Moore and Mr. First Drake my love to the doctor and all the boys I am ever your friend J. Muir new Sentinel hotel Yosemite July 14th 1872 yours announcing Dr. Gray is received I have great longing for Gray whom I feel to be a great progressive unlimited man like Darwin and Huxley and Tyndall I will be most glad to meet him you are unwearable in your kindness to me my fate more than all the world beside. I am approaching a kind of fruiting time in this mountain work, and I want very much to see you. I'll say right, but I don't know how or what, and besides, I want to see north and south and the Midland basins and the seacoast and all the lake basins and the canyons, also the Alps of every country and the continental glaciers of Greenland, before I write the book we have been speaking of, and all this will require a dozen years or twenty and money. The question is, what will I write now, etc. I have learned the alphabet of ice and mountain structure here, and I think I can read fast in other countries. I would let others write what I have read here, but that they make so damnable a hash of it and ruin so glorious a unit. I miss the Moors because they were so cordial and kind to me. Mrs. Moore believes in ice and can preach it too. I wish you could bring Whitney and her together and tell me the fight. Mrs. M made the most sensible visit to our mountains of all the comers I have known. Mr. Moore is a man who thinks and he took to this mountain structure like a pointer to partridges. I am glad your Ned is growing strong. Then we will yet meet this summer in Yosemite places. Talk to Mrs. Moore about Hechechi, etc. She knows it all from hog branch to highest sea wave cascades and higher, yet higher. I ought not to fun away letter space in speaking to you. I am weary and impractical and fit for nothing serious until I am tuned and toned by a few weeks of calm. Farewell. I will see you and we will plan work and ease and days of holy mountain rest. Remember me to Ned and all the boys and to the doctor who ought to come hither with you. Ever your friend, John Muir. Yosemite Valley, July 27th, 1872. I want to see you. I want to speak about my studies which are growing broader and broader and spreading away to all countries without any clear horizon anywhere. I will go over all this Yosemite region this fall and write it up in some form or other. Will you be here to accompany me in my easier excursions? I have a good horse for you and will get a tub and plenty of meal and tea and you will keep house in very old style and you can bring whom you please. I have had a very noble time with Gray who though rooted and breaded by Hutchings gave most of his time to me. I was sorry that his time was so meanly measured and bounded. He is the most cordial lover of purity and truth but the angular factiness of his pursuits has kept him at too cold a distance from the spirit world. I know that Mrs. Moore has given you ice in abundance though even Yosemite glaciers might melt in the warmth of her laughter and sunshine. She handles glacier periods like an Agassi and has discovered a Hetch Hetchy period that is her own. Don't you believe all she tells you about the walk and the dark and the dust of Indian canyon? I want to get Doggit's address. I will begin my long mountain excursion soon for the snow is mostly gone from the high meadows. I have been guiding a few parties and will take a few more if they are of the right kind but I want my mind kept free and sensitive to all influences accepting human business. I need to talk with you more than ever before. Mrs. Hutchings is always kind to me and the clearness of her views on all spiritual things is very extraordinary. She appreciates your friendship very keenly and I am glad to think you will soon know each other better. Her little Casey, Gertrude, is as pure a piece of sunbeam as ever was condensed to human form. Hoping that Ned will be able to come here to the mountain waters for perfect healing and that you will also find leisure for the satisfying of your thirst for beauty. I remain ever 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 climbs 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 canyon back among the glaciers of the summits and right 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 and calm clouds and one of intensely beautiful pattern and gorgeously iris 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 13th 1872 yours of august 23rd is received Laconte writes me that Agassiz will not come to the valley I just got down last evening from a 15-day ramble in the basins of Ile-de-la-ouet and Pogono and start again in an hour for the summit glaciers to see some canyons 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 here we are again and here is your letter of September 24th I got down last evening and boo was I not weary after pushing through the rough upper half of the great Tuolumne Canyon I have climbed more than 24,000 feet in these 10 days three times to the top of the Glacierette of Mount Hoffman and once to Mount Slile and McClure I have bagged a quantity of Tuolumne rocks sufficient to build a dozen Yosemites stripes of Cascades longer than ever lacy or smooth and white as pressed snow a glacier basin with 10 glassy lakes set all near together like eggs in a nest then El Capitan and a couple of Tissiacs canyons glorious with yellows and reds of mountain maple and aspen and honeysuckle and ash and new indescribable music immeasurable from strange waters and winds and glaciers too flowing and grinding alive as any on earth shall I pull you out some here as a clean white skin glacier from the back of McClure with glassy emerald flesh and singing crystal blood all bright and pure as the sky yet handling mud and stone like a navvy building moraines like a plodding Irishman here is a cascade 200 feet wide half a mile long glancing this way and that filled with bounce and dance and joyous hurrah yet earnest as tempest and singing like angels loose on a frolic from heaven and here are more cascades and more broad and flat like clouds and fringe like flowing hair with occasional falls erect as pines and lakes like glowing eyes and here are visions and dreams and a splendid set of ghosts too many for ink and narrow paper I have not heard anything concerning Lacan's glacier lecture but he seems to have drawn all he knows of Sierra glaciers and new theories concerning them so directly from here that I cannot think that he will claim discovery etc if he does I will not be made poorer professor Nieland secretary Boston Institute of Technology gathered some letters I sent to Runkel and that Tribune letter and hashed them into a compost called a paper for the Boston Historical Society and gave me credit for all of the smaller sayings and doings and stole the broadest truth to himself I have the proof sheets of the paper and will show them to you sometime but all of such meanness can work no permanent evil to anyone except the dealer as for the living glaciers of the sierras here is what I have learned concerning them you will have the first chance to steal for I have just concluded my experiments on them for the season and have not yet cast them at any of the great professors or presidents one of the yellow days of last October when I was among the mountains of the Merced group following the footprints of the ancient glaciers that once flowed grandly from their ample fountains reading what I could of their history as written in moraines and canyons and lakes and carved rocks I came upon a small stream that was carrying mud I had not before seen in a calm place where the stream widened I collected some of this mud and observed that it was entirely mineral in composition and fine as flower like the mud from a fine grit grindstone before I had time to reason I said glacier mud mountain meal then I observed that this muddy stream issued from a bank of fresh quarried stones and dirt that was 60 or 70 feet in height this I at once took to be a moraine in climbing to the top of it I was struck with the steepness of its slope and with its raw unsettled plantless newborn appearance the slightest touch started blocks of red and black slate followed by a rattling train of smaller stones and sand and a cloud of the dry dust of mud the whole moraine being as free from lichens and weather stains as if dug from the mountain that very day when I had scrambled to the top of the moraine I saw what seemed a huge snowbank four or five hundred yards in length by half a mile in width embedded in its stained and furrowed surface were stones and dirt like that of which the moraine was built dirt stained lines curved across the snowbank from side to side and when I observed that these curved lines coincided with the curved moraine and that the stones and dirt were most abundant near the bottom of the bank I shouted a living glacier these bent dirt lines show that the ice is flowing in its different parts with unequal velocity and these embedded stones are journeying down to be built into the moraine and they gradually become more abundant as they approach the moraine because there the motion is slower on traversing my new found glacier I came to a crevasse down a wide and jagged portion of which I succeeded in making my way and discovered that my so-called snowbank was clear green ice and comparing the form of the basin which had occupied with similar adjacent basins that were empty I was led to the opinion that this glacier was several hundred feet in depth then I went to the snow banks of Mount Lyle and McClure and believed that they also were true glaciers and that a dozen other snow banks seen from the summit of Mount Lyle crouching in shadow were glaciers living as any in the world and busily engaged in completing that fast work of mountain making accomplished by their giant relatives now dead which united and continuous covered all the range from summit to sea like a sky I'm going to take your painter boys with me into one of my best sanctums on your recommendation for holiness Emerson has sent me a profound little book styled the growth of the mind by Reed do you know it it is full of the fountain truth I'm glad your boys are safely back perhaps Ned and I may try that Andy's field together I would write to Mrs. Moore but we'll wait until she is better tell her the cascades and mountains of upper Hechechi portion of letter missing I hope I may see you a few days soon I had a pretty letter from old Dr. Tory and from gray I have heard three or four times I am ever cordially Yosemite October 14th 1872 I cannot hear from you there are some souls perhaps that are never tired that ever go steadily glad always tuneful and songful like mountain water not so weary hungry me the second time I come from the rocks for fresh supplies of the two breads but I find but one I cannot hear from you my last weeks were spent among the canyons of the Hoffman range and the cathedral peak group east of Lake Tenaya all gloriously rich in the written truths which I am seeking I will now go to the wide ragged tributaries of illa the wet and a pohono after which I will mope about among the rim canyons and rock forms of the valley as the weather permits perhaps I have not yet answered all of your last long pages here's a quotation from Tyndall concerning the nature and origin of his intense mountain enjoyments he reaches far and near for a theory of his delight in the mountains going among the accidents of his own boyhood and those of his remotest fathers but surely this must be all wrong and instead of groping away backwards among the various grades of grandfathers he should explore the most primary properties of man perhaps we owe the pleasurable emotions which fine landscape makes in us to a cause as radical as that which makes a magnet pulse to the two poles I think that one of the properties of that compound which we call man is that when exposed to the rays of mountain beauty it close with joy I don't know who of all my ancestry are to blame but my attractions and repulsions are badly balanced tonight and I will not try to say anymore accepting farewell and love to you all john mur 1872 or 1873 beginning of letter missing although I was myself fully satisfied concerning the real nature of these ice masses I found that my friends regarded my deductions and statements with distrust therefore I determined to collect proofs of the common measured erythmetical kind on the 21st of august last I planted five stakes in the glacier of mount mclure which is situated east of yosemite valley near the summit of the range four of these stakes were extended across the middle of the glacier the first stake was planted about 25 yards from the east bank of the glacier the second 94 yards the third 152 and the fourth 223 yards the positions of these stakes were determined by sighting across from bank to bank past a plum line made of a stone and a black horsehair on observing my stakes on the 6th of october or in 46 days after being planted I found that stake number one had been carried downstream 11 inches number two 18 inches number three 34 number four 47 inches as stake number four was near the middle of the glacier perhaps it was not far from the point of maximum velocity 47 inches in 46 days or one inch per day stake number five was planted about midway between the head of the glacier and stake number number missing its motion I found to be in 46 days 40 inches thus these ice masses are seen to possess the true glacial motion their surfaces are striped with bent dirt bands their surfaces are bulged and undulated by inequalities in the bottom of their basins causing an upward and downward swedging corresponding to the horizontal swedging as indicated by the curved dirt bands the mclure glacier is about half a mile in length and about the same in width at the broadest place it is crevasse on the southeast corner the crevasse runs about southwest and northeast and is several hundred yards in length its width is nowhere more than one foot the Mount Lyle glacier separated from that of mclure by a narrow crest is about a mile in width by a mile in length I have planted stakes in the glacier of red mountains also but have not yet observed them no date beginning of letter missing in going up any of the principal Yosemite streams lakes in all stages of decay are found in great abundance regularly becoming younger until we reach the almost countless gyms of the summits with scarce an inch of car wrecks upon their shallow sandy borders and with their bottoms still bright with a polish of ice upon the Nevada and its branches there are not fewer than a hundred of these glacial lakes from a mile to a hundred yards in diameter with countless glistening pondlets not much larger than moons all of the grand fur forests about the valley are planted upon moraines and for many of the mountaintops the shape and extent of the neighboring moraines may always be surely determined by the fur is growing upon them some pines will grow upon shallow sand and crumbling granite but those luxuriant forests of the silver furs are always upon a generous bed of glacial drift I discovered a moraine with smooth pebbles upon a shoulder of the south dome and upon every part of the Yosemite upper and lower walls I am surprised to find that water has had so little to do with mountain structure here Whitney says that there is no proof that glaciers ever flowed in this valley yet its walls have not been eroded to the depth of an inch since the ice left it and glacial action is glaringly apparent many miles below the valley the bottom portion of the foregoing section with perpendicular sides is here about two feet in depth and was cut by the water the Nevada here never was more than four or five feet deep and all of the bank records of all the upper streams say the same thing of the absence of great floods the entire region above Yosemite and as far down as the bottoms of Yosemite has scarcely been touched by any other inundation than that of ice perhaps all of the past glacial inundation of every kind would not average an inch in depth for the whole region Yosemite and Hechechi are lake basins filled with sand and the matter of moraines washed from the upper canyons the Yosemite ice and escaping from the Yosemite basin was compelled to flow upward a considerable height on both sides of the bottom walls of the valley the canyon below the valley is very crooked and very narrow and the Yosemite glacier flowed across all of its crooks and high above its walls without paying any compliance to it thus drawing here the light lines show the direction of the ice current end of section seven section eight of letters to a friend by John Muir this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Paul Fleischman letters from 1873 and 1874 Yosemite Valley March 30th 1873 your two last are received the package of letters was picked up by a man in the valley there was none for thee I have Hechechi about ready I did not intend that Tenaya ramble for publication but you know what is better I mean to write and send all kinds of game to you with hides and feathers on for if I wait until all become one it may be too long as for the cons glaciers they will not hurt mine but hereafter I will say my thoughts to the public in any kind of words I chance to command for I am sure that they will be better expressed in this way than in any second hand hash however able oftentimes when I am free in the wilds I discover some rare beauty in lake or cataract or mountain form and instantly seek to sketch it with my pencil but the drawing is always enormously unlike the reality so also in word sketches of the same beauties that are so living so loving so filled with warm god there is the same infinite shortcoming the few hard words make but a skeleton fleshless heartless and when you read the dead bony words rattle in one's teeth yet I will not the less endeavor to do my poor best believing that even these dead bone heaps called articles will occasionally contain hints to some living souls who know how to find them I have not received dr. Stebbins letter give him and all my friends love from me I sent harry edwards the butterflies I had lost did he get them farewell dear dear spiritual mother heaven repay your everlasting love john mere april first 1873 yours containing dr. Stebbins was received today some of our letters come in by mariposa some by colterville and some by oak flat causing large delays I expect to be able to send this out next sunday and with it hechechi which is about ready and from this time you will receive about one article a month this letter of yours is a very delightful one I shall look eagerly for the rural homes when I know dr. Stebbins summer address I will write to him he is a dear young soul though an old man I am not to write therefore farewell with love I will sometimes send you big twalamy canyon ascent of mount ridder formation of yosemite valley yosemite lake other yosemite valleys one two three four or more the lake district transformation of lakes to meadows wet to meadows dry to sandy flats treeless or to sandy flats forested the glacial period formation of simple canyons of compound canyons description of each glacier of region origin of seara forest distribution of seara forests a description of each of the yosemite falls and of the basins from once derived yosemite shadows as related to groves meadows and bins of the river avalanches earthquakes birds bear etc and monimer yosemite valley april 13th 1873 indian tom goes out of the valley tomorrow with this I send you hechechi last year I wrote a description of hechechi and sent it to professor runkle not having heard of it since I thought it lost in some wastebasket but today I received a boston letter stating that a hedge from my pen appeared in the boston transcript of about march 12th 1873 which may possibly be the article in question if so this present hh will be found to contain a page or two of the same but this is about three times as large and all rewritten etc that twalamy song of five cantos nature loves the number five may perhaps be better out if you think it unfit for the public keep it to thyself I never can keep my pen perfectly sober when it gets into the bounce and hurrah of cascades but it never has broken into rhyme before love to all and fare ye well my ain gene the kerchiefs have come from bintons and a package of books from dockets yosemite valley april 19th 1873 the bearer of this is my friend mr black proprietor of blacks hotel yosemite he will give you tidings of all our valley affairs I sent off a letter an article for you a week ago I find this literary business very irksome yet I will try to learn it the falls respond gloriously to the ripe sunshine of these days so do the flowers I hope that you will be able to send me word when you will come so that I may arrange accordingly mr black will give all particulars of trails times etc if moors have not gone ranching send mr black over to their house it will do her good I fondly hope she is growing better love to all john murr yosemite valley may 15th 1873 the robins have eaten too much breakfast this morning and there is a grossness in their throats that will require a good deal of sunshine for its cure the leaves of many of the plants are badly disarranged showing that they have had a poor night's sleep the reason of all this trouble is a snowstorm that overloaded the flowers and benumbed the butterflies upon which the birds have breakfasted too heartily 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 halfway 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 they have but they see not looking up the valley the cloud effects are yet more lavishly glorious tisiak is mantled with silvery burning mists her gray rocks appearing dimly were 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 oh 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 ronkel wants to make a teacher of me but I have been too long wild to be fogged and be fogged to burn well and their patent high-heated educational furnaces a portion missing I had a good letter from the conch 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've begun to build my cabin you will have a home in Yosemite ever thine jay mirror 1873 my horse and bread etc are ready for upward I returned three days ago from Mount Lyle 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 marines 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 that abound 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 moors and stoddard Yosemite Valley June 7th 1873 I came down last night from the Lyle Glacier weary with walking in the snow but I forgot my weariness and the pain of my sun blistered face in the news of your coming I would like you to bring me a pair or two of green spectacles to save my eyes as I have some weeks of hard work and exposure among the glaciers this fall they are sore with my last journey all of the upper mountains are yet deeply snow-clad and the view from the top of Lyle was infinitely glorious thanking god for thee I say a short farewell Kellogg has not yet appeared nor any of the other friends you speak of Yosemite September 17th 1873 I am again at the bottom meadow of Yosemite after most intensely interesting bath among the outer mountains I've been exploring the upper tributaries of the Cascade and Tamarack streams and in particular all of the basin of the Yosemite Creek the present basin of every stream which enters the valley on the north side was formerly filled with ice which also flowed into the valley although the ancient ice basins did not always correspond with the present water basins because glaciers can flow uphill the whole of the north wall of the valley was covered with an unbroken flow of ice with perhaps the single exception of the crest of Eagle Cliff I know the book of glaciers gradually dims as we go lower on the range yet I fully believe that future investigation will show that in the earlier ages of Sierra Nevada ice fast glaciers flow to the foot of the range east of Yosemite and also north and south had an elevation of 9 000 feet the glacier basins are almost unchanged and I believe that ice was the agent by which all of the present rocks received their special forms more of this some other day would that I could have you here or in any wild place where I can think and speak would you not be thoroughly iced you would not find in me one unglacial thought come and I will tell you how El Capitan and Tisiak were fashioned I will most likely live at black's hotel this winter in charge of the premises and before next spring I will have an independent cabin built with a special car corner where you and the doctor can come and stay all summer also I will have a tent so that we can camp and receive night blessings when we choose and then I will have horses enough so that we can go to the upper temples also I wish you could see Lake Tenaya it is one of the most perfectly and richly spiritual places in the mountains and I would like to preempt there somehow I should feel like leaving home and going to Hatchatchee besides there is room there for many other claims and it soon will fill with coarse homesteads but as the winter is so severe at Lake Tenaya very few will care to live there Hatchatchee is about 4,000 feet above sea while Lake Tenaya is eight I have been living in these mountains and so haunting soaring floating away that it seems strange to cast any kind of an anchor all the so equal and glory so ocean like that to choose one place above another is like drawing dividing lines in the sky I think I answered your last with respect to remaining here in the winter I can do much of this ice work in the quiet and the whole subject is purely physical so that I can get but little from books all depends upon the goodness of one's eyes no scientific book in the world can tell me how this Yosemite granite is put together or how it has been taken down patient observation and constant brooding above the rocks lying upon them for years as the ice did is the way to arrive at the truths which are graven so lavishly upon them would that I knew what good prayers I could say or good deeds I could do so that Ravens would bring me bread and venison for the next two years then would I get some tough gray clothes the color of granite so no one could see or find me words missing would I reproduce the ancient ice rivers and words missing and dwell with them I go again to my lessons tomorrow morning some snow fell and by and by I must tell you about it if poor good melancholia copper had been here yesterday morning here is just what he would have sung the rocks have been washed just washed in a shower which winds in their faces conveyed the plentiful cloudlets be muffled their brows or lay on their beautiful heads but cold side the winds and the fir trees above and down on the pine trees below for the rain that came leaving and washing in love was followed alas by a snow which being unmetafored and posed into sense means that yesterday morning a strong southeast wind cooled among the highest snows of the sierra drove back the warm northwest winds from the hot sand walking plains and burning foothill woods and piled up a jagged cloud addition to our valley walls soon those white clouds began to darken and to reach out long filmy edges which uniting over the valley made a close dark ceiling then came rain and steady at first now a heavy gush then a sprinkling halt as if the clouds so long out of practice had forgotten something but after half an hour of experimental pouring and sprinkling there came an earnest steady well controlled rain on the mountain the rain soon turned to snow and some half melted flakes reached the bottom of the valley this morning star king and tisiak and all the upper valley are white 1873 beginning of letter missing i had a grand ramble in the deep snow outside the valley and discovered one beautiful truth concerning snow structure and three concerning the forms of forest trees these earthquakes have made me immensely rich i had long been aware of the life and gentle tenderness of the rocks and instead of walking upon them as unfeeling surfaces began to regard them as a transparent sky now they have spoken with audible voice and pulsed with common motion this very instant just as my pen reached and on the third line above my cabin creaked with a sharp shock and the oil waved in my lamp we had several shocks last night i would like to go somewhere on the west south american coast to study earthquakes i think i could invent some experimental apparatus whereby their complicated phenomena could be separated and read but i have some years of ice on hand it is most ennobling to find and feel that we are constructed with reference to these noble storms so as to draw unspeakable enjoyment from them are we not rich when our six foot column of substance sponges up heaven above and earth beneath into its pores i we have chambers in us the right shape for earthquakes churches and the schools lisp limpingly painfully of man's capabilities possibilities and fussy developing nostrums of duties but if the human flock together with their reverence and double ld shepherds would go wild themselves they would discover without euclid that the solid contents of a human soul is the whole world our streams are fast obtaining their highest power warm nights and days are making the high mountain snow into snow avalanches and snow falls violets blue white and yellow abound butterflies flip through the meadows and mirror shadows reveal new heavens and new earths everywhere remember me to the doctor and all the boys and to mcchesney and the brotherhood gorgeley j mirror independence october 16th 1873 all of my season's mountain work is done i've just come down from out whitney and the newly discovered mountain five miles northwest of whitney and now our journey is a simple saunter along the base of the range to tahoe where we will arrive about the end of the month or a few days earlier i have seen a good deal more of the high mountain region about the head of kings and current rivers than i expected to do in so short and so late a time two weeks ago i left the doctor and billy in the king's river yosemite and set out for mount tindall and adjacent mountains and canyons i ascended tindall and ran down into the current river canyon and climbed some nameless mountains between tindall and whitney and thus gained a pretty good general idea of the region after crossing the range by the kiers arch pass i again left the doctor and bill and pushed southward along the range and northward and up cottonwood creek to mount whitney then over to the current canyons again and up to the new highest peak which i did not ascend as there was no one to attend to my horse thus you see i have rambled this highest portion of the sierra pretty thoroughly though hastily i spent a night without fire or food in a very icy wind storm on one of the spires of the new highest peak by something called fisherman's peak that i am already quite recovered from the tremendous exposure proves that i cannot be killed in any such manner on the day previous i climbed two mountains making over 10 000 feet of altitude i saw no mountains in all this grand region that appeared at all inaccessible to a mountaineer give me a summer and a bunch of matches and a sack of meal and i will climb every mountain in the region i have passed through the lone pine and noted the yosemite and local subsidences accomplished by the earthquake the bunchy bush composites of owens valley are intensely glorious i got back from whitney this pm how i shall sleep my life rose wave-like with those lofty granite waves now it may weirdly float for a time along the smooth flowery plain it seems that this new fisherman's peak is causing some stir in the newspapers if i feel rightful i will send you a sketch of the region for the overland love to all my friends ever cordially yours john murah 1873 after clark's departure a week ago we climbed the divide between the south fork of the san waltine and king's river i scanned the vast landscape on which the ice had written wondrous things after a short scientific feast i decided to attempt entering the valley of the west branch of the north fork which we did following the bottom of the valley for about 10 miles then we were compelled to ascend the west side of the canyon into the forest about six miles farther down we made out to re-enter the canyon where there is a yosemite valley and by hard efforts succeeded in getting out on the opposite side and reaching the divide between the east fork and the middle fork we then followed the top of the divide nearly to the confluence of the east fork where the trunk and crossed the main river yesterday and are now in the pines again over all the wildest and most impracticable portions of our journey in descending the divide of the main king's river we made a descent of near 7 000 feet down clear down with a vengeance to the hot pineless foothills we rose again and it was a most grateful resurrection last night i watched the writing of the spiery pines on the sky gray with stars and if you had been there i would have said look etc last night when the doctor and i were bedbuilding discussing as usual the goodnesses and badnesses of bowie mountain beds we were astounded by the appearance of two prospectors coming through the mountain rye by them i send this note today we will reach some of the sequoias near thomas's mill v day map of geological survey and in two or three more days will be in the canyon of the south fork of king's river if the weather appears tranquil when we reach the summit of the range i may set out among the glaciers for a few days but if otherwise i shall push hastily for the owens river plains and then sub to tahoe etc i am working hard and shall not feel easy until i am on the other side beyond the reach of early snowstorms not that i fear snowstorms for myself but the poor animals would die or suffer the doctors duster and fly net are safe and therefore he billy is in good spirits apt to teach drawing in and out of season remember me to the doctor and the boys and morris and keith etc ever yours truly john mere tahoe city november 3rd 1873 my dear friends doctor and mrs car i received the news of your terrible bereavement a few moments ago and can only say that you have my heart sympathy and prayer that our father may sustain and soothe you doctor kellogg and billy sims left me a week ago at mono going directly to yosemite i reached this queen of lakes two days ago and rode down around the shore on the east side will continue on around up the west coast homeward through lake and hope valleys and over the seara to yosemite by the virginia creek trail or sonora road if much snow should fall will reach yosemite in about a week somehow i had no hopes of meeting you here i could not hear you or see you yet you shared all of my highest pleasures as i sauntered through the piney woods pausing countless times to absorb the blue glimpses of the lake all so heavenly clean so terrestrial yet so openly spiritual i wish my dear dear friends that you could share this divine day with me here the soul of indian summer is brooding this blue water and it enters one's being as nothing else does tahoe is surely not one but many as i curve around its heads and bays and look far out on its level sky fairly tinted and fading in pence of air i am reminded of all the mountain lakes i ever knew as if this were a kind of water heaven to which they all had come yosemite valley october 7th 1874 i expected to have been among the foothill drift long ago but the mountains fairly seized me and ere i knew i was up the merced canyon where we were last year past shadow and merced lakes and our soda springs etc i returned last night had a glorious storm and a thousand sacred beauties that seemed yet more and more divine i camped four nights at shadow lake at the old place in the pine thickets i have oozle tales to tell i was alone and during the whole excursion or period rather was in the kind of calm uncurable ecstasy i am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer how glorious my studies seem and how simple i found out a noble truth concerning the merced moraines that escaped me hitherto civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooded at me has not dimmed my glacial eyes and i care to live only to entice people to look at nature's loveliness my own special self is nothing my feet have recovered their cunning i feel myself again tell keep the colors are coming to the groves i leave yosemite for over the mountains to mono and like tahoe in a week thence anywhere shaster word etc i think i may be at brownsville yuba county where i may get a letter from you i promise to call on emily pelton there farewell john murr sisan station november 1st 1874 here is icy shasta 15 miles away yet at the very door it is all close wrapped in clean young snow down to the very base one mass of white from the dense black forest girdle had an elevation of five or six thousand feet to the very summit the extent of its individuality is perfectly wonderful when i first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the sacramental valley i was 50 miles away and a foot alone and weary yet all my blood turned to wine and i have not been weary since stone was to have accompanied me but has failed of course the last storm was severe and all the mountains shake their heads and say impossible etc but you know i will meet all its icy snows lovingly i set out in a few minutes for the edge of the timber line then upwards if i'm stormy in the early morning if the snow proves to be mealy and loose it is barely possible that i may be unable to urge my way through so many upward miles as there is no intermediate camping ground yet i am feverless and strong now and can spend two days with their intermediate nights in one deliberate unrestrained effort i am the more eager to ascend to study the mechanical conditions of the fresh snow at so great an elevation also to obtain clear views of the comparative quantities of lava inundation northward and southward also general views of the channels of the ancient shasta glaciers etc many other lesser problems besides the fountains of the rivers here and the living glaciers i would like to remain a week or two and may have to return next year in summer i wrote a short letter a few days ago which was printed in the evening bulletin which i suppose you have seen i wonder how you all are faring in your wilderness educational departmental institutional etc write me a line here in care of sissen i think it will reach me on my return from icy shasta farewell ever cordially yours john mir love to all keith and the boys and mcchesney etc don't forward any letters from the oakland office i want only mountains until my return to civilization sissen's station december 9th 1874 coming in for a sleep and rest i was glad to receive your card i seemed to be more than married to icy shasta one yellow mellow morning six days ago when shasta snows were looming and blooming i slept outside the bar room door to gaze and was instantly drawn up over the meadows over the forests to the main shasta glacier in one rushing comedic whiz then swooping to shasta valley rolled off around the base like a satellite of the grand icy sun i have just completed my first revolution length of orbit 100 miles time one shasta day for two days and a half i had nothing in the way of food yet suffered nothing and was finally nervous for the most delicate work of mountaineering both among crevasses and lava cliffs now i am sleeping and eating i found some geological facts that are perfectly glorious and botanical ones too i wish i could make the public be kind to keith and his paint and so you contemplate vines and oranges among the warm california angels i wish you would all go agranging among oranges and bananas and all such blazing red hot fruits for you are a species of hindu sunfruit yourself for me i like better the huckleberries of cool glacial bogs and acid currents and benevolent rosy beaming apples and common indian summer pumpkins i wish you could see the holy morning's alpine glow of shasta farewell i'll be down into gray oakland sometime i'm glad you are so essentially independent of those commonplace plotters that have so marred your peace eat oranges and hear the larks and wait on the sun ever cordially john mir love to all the letter you sent here is also received emily's i will get by and by love to color keith sysons station december 21st 1874 i've just returned from a fourth shasta excursion and find yours of the 17th i wish you could have been with me on shasta's shoulder last evening in the sun glow i was over on the headwaters of the mccloud and what a head think of a spring giving rise to a river i fairly quiver with joyous exaltation when i think of it the infinity of nature's glory and rock cloud and water as soon as i beheld the mccloud upon its lower course i knew that there must be something extraordinary in its alpine fountains and i shouted oh where my glorious river do you come from think of a spring 50 yards wide at the mouth issuing from the base of a lava bluff with wild songs not gloomily from a dark cavey mouth but from a world of ferns and mosses gold and green i broke my way through chaparral tangle in eager vigor utterly unwearable the dark blue stream sang solemnly with a deep voice pooling and boulder dashing and an eyeing in white flashing rapids when suddenly i heard water notes i never had heard before they came from that mysterious spring and then the elk forest and the alpine glow and the sunset poor pin cannot tell it the sun this morning is at work with its blessings as if it had never blessed before he never worries of revealing himself on shasta but in a few hours i leave this altar and all its well to my father i say thank you and go willingly i go by stage and rail to brownsville to see emily and the rocks there and yuba then perhaps a few days among a riferous drifts on the toalamy and then to oakland and that book walking across the coast range on the way either through one of the passes or over mount diablo i feel a sort of nervous fear of another period of town dark but i don't want to be silly about it the sun glow will all fade out of me and i will be deathly as shasta in the dark but mornings will come dawnings of some kind and if not i have lived more than a common eternity already farewell don't overwork that is not the work your father wants i wish you could come a being in the shasta honey lands love to the boys end of section eight section nine of letters to a friend by john murr this lieber vox recording is in the public domain recording by paul fleishman letters from 1875 to 1879 brownsville yuba county california january 19th 1875 my dear mrs mother car here are some of the dearest and bonniest of our fathers bairns the little ones that so few care to see i never saw such enthusiasm in the care and breeding of mosses as nature manifests among these northern sierras i have studied a big fruitful week among the canyons and ridges of the feather and another along the yuba river living and dead i have seen a dead river a sight worth going around the world to see the dead rivers and dead gravels wherein lie the gold form magnificent problems and i feel wild and unmanageable with the intense interest they excite but i will choke myself off and finish my glacial work and that little book of studies i've been spending a few fine social days with emily but now work how gloriously it storms the pines are in ecstasy and i feel it and must go out to them i must borrow a big coat and mingle in the storm and make some studies farewell love to all emily and mrs nox sin love how are ned and keith i wish keith had been with us these shasta and feather river days i have gained a thousandfold more than i hoped heaven sent him light and the good blessing of wildness how the rain splash and roar and how the pines wave and pray 1419 taylor street may 4th 1875 here i am safe in the arms of daddy's sweat home again from icy shasta and richer than ever in dead river gravel and in snow storms and snow the upper end of the main sacramental valley is entirely covered with ancient river drift and i wandered over many square miles of it in every pebble i could hear the sound of running water the whole deposit is a poem whose many books and chapters form the geological Vedas of our glorious state i discovered a new species of hail on the summit of shasta and experienced one of the most beautiful and most violent snow storms imaginable i would have been with you air this to tell you about it and to give you some lilies and pine tassels that i brought for you and mrs mcchezney and ena coolworth but a lack i am battered and scarred like a log that has come down the toalamy in flood time and i am also lame with frost nipping nothing serious however and i will be well and better than before in a few days i was caught in a violent snowstorm and held up on the summit of the mountain all night in my shirt sleeves the intense cold and the want of food and sleep made the fire of life smolder and burn low nevertheless in company with another strong mountaineer i broke through six miles of frosty snow down into the timber and reached fire and food and sleep and and better than ever with all the valuable experiences altogether i have had a very instructive and delightful trip the brianthus you wanted was snow buried and i was too lame to dig it out for you but i will probably be back air long i'll be over in a few days or so old yosemite home november 3rd 1875 i'm delighted in coming out of the woods to learn that the doctor is elected to do the work he is so well fitted for i've had a glorious season of forest grace notwithstanding the hundred canyons i've crossed and the innumerable gorges sculptures and avalanche corrugations a day or two of resting and lingering in my dear old haunts and then downtown work i'm sorry about keith's stocks though if scarce any real consequence they yet serve to perturb and spoil his best moods and works it seems a whole round season since i saw you but have i not seen the king sequoia in forest glory love to all john mir 1418 taylor street san francisco april 3rd 1876 we will all be glad to see you we all heard of the outrage committed on johnny and hope it might not be so serious as made to appear in the press mr sweat told me the other day that he met a friend downtown who was acquainted with the white sentimentally who gave it as his opinion that mr white was insane had a brother in the asylum and he was as jealous of a half dozen other persons as of johnny if i knew ned sporting house i would visit him for i know he must feel terribly agitated the last time i saw him he was rejoicing over johnny's steady manly development like an old fawn father over some reformed son as for the stranded sapless condition of political geology i care only for the fruitless work expended upon it by friends the glaciers are not affected thereby neither am i nor kasiope the first meeting i had with mr moore was at the lecture the other night he seemed immeasurably astonished to find me in so anti sequestered a condition but in the meanwhile he is more changed than i for he seems semi crazy on literature as mrs m is wholly doubly so on paint i will show your letters to mr sweat when he comes in who will doubtless be able to decipher the meaning of heads and tails of your bodyless sentences i'm sorry most of all for the destruction of the teachers thus cutting off the only adequate outlet for your own thought that hang it let them decapitate and hang they cannot hang kasiope ever yours cordially john mur 1419 taylor street san francisco january 12th 1877 john sweat told me how heavy a burden you were carrying of work and sickness i hope air this that the doctor has recovered from his severe attack of rheumatism and that you have had sleep and rest your description of the orange lands makes me more than ever eager to see them in particular the phenomenon of a real lover of nature such as you mentioned for one does feel so wholly alone in the midst of this metallic money clinking crowd and so you are going to dwell down there and how rosely you will write about it well i hope you may realize it all independence and quiet life must be delightful indeed after the battles and the burdens of these heavy years in any case it is a fine thing for old people who have worked and fought through all kinds of strenuous experiences to have thoughts and schemes so fresh and young as yours we all hope to see you soon cordially yours john mir july 23rd 1877 i made only a short dash into the dear old highlands above yosemite but all was so full of everything i love every day seemed a measureless period i never enjoyed the twalamy cataracts so much coming out of the sun land the gray salt deserts of utah these wild ice water sang themselves into my soul more enthusiastically than ever and the forest breath was sweeter and kasiapy fairer than in all my first fresh contacts but i'm not going to tell here i only write to say that next saturday i will sail to los angeles and spend a few weeks in getting some general views of the adjacent region then work northward and begin a careful study of the redwoods i will at least have time this season for the lower portion of the belt that is for all south of here if you have any messages you have time to write me i sail at 10 am or if not you may direct to los angeles i hope to see conger and also the spot you have selected for home i wish you could be there in your grown fruitful groves all rooted and grounded in the fine garden nook that i know you will make it must be a great consolation in the midst of the fires you were compassed with to look forward to a tranquil seclusion in the south of which you are so fond john says he may not move to berkeley and if not i may be here this winter though i still feel some tendency towards another winter and some mountain ice it is long indeed since i had anything like a quiet talk with you you have been going like an avalanche for many a year and i sometimes fear you will not be able to settle into rest even in the orange groves i'm glad to know that the doctor is so well you must be pained by the shameful attacks made upon your tried friend the grange farewell ever cordially yours john mir los angeles california august 12th 1877 pico house i've seen your sunny pasadena and the patch called yours everything about here pleases me and i felt sorely tempted to take doctor congress advice and invest in an orange patch myself i feel sure you will be happy here with a doctor in alley amongst a richer luxuriance of sunny vegetation how you will dig and dibble in that mellow loam i cannot think of you standing erect for a single moment unless it be and looking away out into the dreamy west i made a fine shaggy little five days excursion back in the heart of the san gabriel mountains and then a week of real pleasure with conger resurrecting the past about madison he has a fine little farm fine little family and fine cozy home i felt at home with conger and it once took possession of his premises and all that in them is we drove down through the settlements eastward and saw the best orange groves and vineyards but the mountains i as usual met alone although so gray and silent and i'm promising they are full of wild gardens and fernaries and lilaries some specimens 10 feet high with 20 lilies big enough for bonnets the main results i will tell you some other time should you ever have an hour's leisure i go north today by rail to new hall then by stage to soledad and on to monterey where i will take to the woods and feel my way in free study to san francisco may reach the city about the middle of next month heard through your factor here that miss powell is worse and that you would not be down soon i received your letter and postal also the letters you thought i had lost via one from salt lake for which i sent and one from yosemite which black forwarded it would love to all i am ever yours cordially j m 1419 taylor street san francisco september 3rd 1877 i've just been over at alameda with poor dear old gibbons you have seen him and i need give no particulars the only thing i'm afraid of john he said looking up with his old child face is that i shall never be able to climb the oakland hills again but he is so healthy and so well cared for we will be strong and hope that he will he spoke for an hour with characteristic unselfishness on the injustice done dr kelog and failing to recognize his long continued devotion to science at the botanical love feast held here the other night he threatens to write up a whole discreditable affair and is very anxious to obtain from you a copy of that gray letter to kelog which was not delivered i had a glorious ramble in the sanitary's woods and found out one very interesting and picturesque fact concerning the growth of this sequoia i mean to devote many a long week to its study what the upshot may be i cannot guess but you know i am never sent away empty i made an excursion to the summit of mount hamilton in extraordinary style accompanied by alan norton brawley and all the lady professors and their friends a curious contrast to my ordinary still hunting spent a week at san jose enjoyed my visit with alan very much lectured to the faculty on methods of study without undergoing any very great scare i believe i wrote you from los angeles about my pasadena week i've sent a couple of letters to the bulletin from there not yet published i have no inflexible plans as yet for the remaining months of the season but yosemite seems to place itself as the most persistent candidate for my winter i shall soon be in flight to the sierras or oregon i seem to give a pope of ever seeing you calm again don't grind too hard at those sacramento mills remember me to the doctor and alley ever yours gorgeley john murr 1419 taylor street june 5th 1878 i'm sorry i did not see you when last in the city i went over to oakland thence to alameda to spend a week and finish an article with our good old gibbons but the house was full then i went to dr stritzel's where i remained a week working a little resting a good deal and eating many fine cherries i enjoyed most the white bed in which first i rested after rocking so long in the rushes of the stockton slew they all were as kind as ever they could possibly be and wanted me to stop longer but i could not find a conscientious excuse for so doing and came away somewhat sore with obligations for stopping so long met mr and mrs allen there smith is gone this morning to shasta taking helen and i'm terribly lonesome and homesick and will not try to stand it we'll go to the woods tomorrow how great are your trials i wish i could help you may the doctor be speedily restored to health cordially yours john murr 920 valencia street april 9th 1879 i did not send the pine book to you because i was using it in rewriting a portion of the california forest article which will appear in scribiners may or june and because before it could have reached you you were according to your letter to be in san francisco and could then take it with you it is entitled gordon's pine item published by henry g bone henry out of street coven garden simkin marshal and company stationers hall court 1875 second edition it is an exhaustive work very exhausting anyhow and contains a fine big much of little the summit pine of our sierra is p albacolus of engelman and the p flexilis tori given in this work as a synonym is a very different tree growing sparsely on the eastern flank of the sierra from bloody canyon southward but very abundant on all the higher basin ranges and on the wasatch rocky mountains the orange book is it seems another exhaustive work there is something admirable in the scientific nerve and aplomb manifested in the titles of these swollen volumes how a tree book can be exhaustive when every species is ever on the wing from one form to another with infinite variety it is not easy to see i haven't the least idea who mr rexford is but if connected with a bulletin i can probably get the title of his citrus book through mr williams we'll probably see him next sunday the sunday convention manager offered me a hundred dollars for two lectures on the usemite rocks in june i have not yet agreed to do so though i probably shall as i'm not going into colorado this summer accepting a day at san jose with alan i have hardly been out of my room for weeks pegging away with my quill and accomplishing little my last efforts were on the preservation of the sierra forests and the wild and trampled conditions of our flora from a bee's point of view i want to spend the greater portion of the season up the coast observing ice and may possibly find my way home in the fall to see my mother i wonder if he will really go quietly away south when your office term expires and rest in the afternoon of your life among your kin and orange leaves or unable to get full absolution from official women's rights unrest you will fight and squirm till sundown i've seen nothing of you all these fighting years i suppose nothing less than an exhaustive miniature of all the leafy creatures of the globe will satisfy your pasadena aspirations you know how little real sympathy i can give in such play garden schemes still if so inappreciative and unavailable a man as i may be of use at all let me know ever cordially yours john murr san francisco june 19th 1879 good bye i'm going home going to my summer in the snow and ice and forests of the north coast will sail tomorrow at noon on the dakota for victoria and olympia will then push inland and a long land may visit alaska i hope you and the doctor may not suffer yourselves to be drawn away into the stream of politics again you will be far happier on your land i was at the valley how beautiful it was fresh and full of cool crystal streams and blooms was not scared in my lectures after the first one with kind regards to the doctor and the boys farewell john murr end of section nine end of letters to a friend by john murr