sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows. The majestic form of Ritter was full in sight, and I pushed rapidly on over rounded rock-bosses and pavements, my iron-shod shoes making a clanking sound, suddenly hushed now and then in rugs of bryanthus [red heather], and sedgy lake-margins soft as moss. Here, too, in this so-called “land of desolation,” I met cassiope [mountain heather], growing in fringes among the battered rocks. Her blossoms had faded long ago, but they were still clinging with happy memories to the evergreen sprays, and still so beautiful as to thrill every fiber of one’s being. Winter and summer, you may hear her voice, the low, sweet melody of her purple bells. No evangel among all the mountain plants speaks Nature’s love more plainly than cassiope. Where she dwells, the redemption of the coldest solitude is complete. The very rocks and glaciers seem to feel her presence, and become imbued with her own fountain sweetness. All things were warming and awakening. Frozen rills began to flow, the marmots came out of their nests in boulder-piles and climbed sunny rocks to bask, and the dun-headed sparrows were flitting about seeking their breakfasts. The lakes seen from every ridge-top were brilliantly rippled and spangled, shimmering like the thickets of the low Dwarf Pines. The rocks, too, seemed responsive to the vital heat—rock-crystals and snow-crystals thrilling alike. I strode on exhilarated, as if never more to feel fatigue, limbs moving of themselves, every sense unfolding like the thawing flowers, to take part in the new day harmony.
Now came the solemn, silent evening. Long, blue, spiky shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout worshipers. Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, rendering the sublime scene yet more impressive; then came darkness and the stars.
—The Mountains of California
Deep Summer Joy
EVERY MOMENT IS AN OPPORTUNITY to be awake to the overpowering beauty of nature.
Go where you may, you everywhere find the lawn divinely beautiful, as if Nature had fingered and adjusted every plant this very day. The floating grass panicles are scarcely felt in brushing through their midst.… Parting the grasses and looking more closely you may trace the branching of their shining stems, and note the marvelous beauty of their mist of flowers, the glumes and pales exquisitely penciled, the yellow dangling stamens, and feathery pistils. Beneath the lowest leaves you discover a fairy realm of mosses,…their precious spore-cups poised daintily on polished shafts, curiously hooded, or open, showing the richly ornate peristomas worn like royal crowns. Creeping liverworts are here also in abundance, and several rare species of fungi, exceedingly small, and frail, and delicate, as if made only for beauty. Caterpillars, black beetles, and ants roam the wilds of this lower world, making their way through miniature groves and thickets like bears in a thick wood.
And how rich, too, is the life of the sunny air! Every leaf and flower seems to have its winged representative overhead. Dragon-flies shoot in vigorous zigzags through the dancing swarms, and a rich profusion of butterflies…make a fine addition to the general show.… Humming-birds, too, are quite common here, and the robin is always found along the margin of the stream, or out in the shallowest portions of the sod, and sometimes the grouse and mountain quail, with their broods of precious fluffy chickens. Swallows skim the grassy lake from end to end, fly-catchers come and go in fitful flights from the tops of dead spars, while woodpeckers swing across from side to side in graceful festoon curves—birds, insects, and flowers all in their own way telling a deep summer joy.
—The Mountains of California
In the Morning
JOHN MUIR MAY HAVE CARRIED in his mind the hymn, written in 1848, by the Irish poet, Cecil Frances Alexander, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Her words resonant with those of John Muir, “All things bright and beautiful,/all creatures great and small,/all things wise and wonderful: the Lord God made them all./Each little flower that opens,/each little bird that sings,/God made their glowing colors, and made their tiny wings./The purple-headed mountains,/the river running by,/the sunset and the morning that brightens up the sky.… ”
In the morning everything is joyous and bright, the delicious purple of the dawn changes softly to daffodil yellow and white; while the sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks give a margin of gold to each of them. Then the spires of the firs in the hollows of the middle region catch the glow, and your camp grove is filled with light. The birds begin to stir, seeking sunny branches on the edge of the meadow for sun-baths after the cold night, and looking for their breakfasts, every one of them as fresh as a lily and as charmingly arrayed. Innumerable insects begin to dance, the deer withdraw from the open glades and ridge-tops to their leafy hiding-places in the chaparral, the flowers open and straighten their petals as the dew vanishes, every pulse beats high, every life-cell rejoices, the very rocks seem to tingle with life, and God is felt brooding over everything great and small.
—The Mountains of California
In the Cool of the Evening
BY THE TIME JOHN MUIR wrote this letter, he had been discovered as a writer, and he spent several months each year in Oakland and San Francisco writing for various journals. He felt neither comfortable nor healthy living in the city and pined for the mountains. This extract from a long letter records his joyful return. Still, he had a presentiment that the intense Yosemite phase of his life might be over, for he wrote in the same letter, “No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done.”
In the cool of evening, I caught Brownie [his mule] and cantered across to the Tuolumne; the whole way being fragrant and golden with hemizonia [sunflower-like wildflowers of the Sierra foothills].… Few nights of my mountain nights have been more eventful than that of my ride in the woods from Coulterville, when I made my reunion with the winds and pines. It was eleven o’clock when we reached Black’s ranch. I was weary and soon died in sleep. How cool and vital, and re-creative was the hale young mountain air! On, higher, higher, up into the holy of holies of the woods. Pure, white, lustrous clouds overshadowed the massive congregations of silver fir and pine. We entered, and a thousand living arms were waved in solemn blessing. An affinity of mountain life. How complete is the absorption of one’s life into the spirit of mountain woods!
—LETTER TO JEANNE C. CARR, SEPTEMBER, 1874
An Evening under the Stars and Moon
HERE IS AN ACCOUNT of an evening spent at the foot of Upper Yosemite Falls. Although Muir was thoroughly drenched in the spray, he was captivated by the beauty of the night, the waterfalls, and the stars.
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.… Silver from the moon illumines this glorious creation which we term falls and has laid a magnificent double prismatic bow at its base. This 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 a 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. O the music that is blessing me now! …. The notes of
