JOHN MUIR IN LATER LIFE JOHN MUIR He lived aloft, exultant, unafraid.
All things were good to him. The mountain old Stretched gnarled hands to help him climb. The peak Waved blithe snow-banner greeting; and for him The rav'ning storm, aprowl for human life, Purred like the lion at his trainer's feet. The grizzly met him on the narrow ledge, Gave gruff "good morning" — and the right of way. The blue-veined glacier, cold of heart and pale, Warmed, at his gaze, to amethystine blush, And murmured deep, fond undertones of love. He walked apart from men, yet loved his kind, And brought them treasures from his larger store. For them he delved in mines of richer gold. Earth's messenger he was to human hearts. The starry moss flower from its dizzy shelf, The ouzel, shaking forth its spray of song, The glacial runlet, tinkling its clear bell, The rose-of-morn, abloom on snowy heights — Each sent by him a jewel-word of cheer. Blind eyes he opened and deaf ears unstopped. He lived aloft, apart. He talked with God In all the myriad tongues of God's sweet world; But still he came anear and talked with us, Interpreting for God to listn'ing men. THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE THE friendship between
John Muir and myself was of that fine
sort which grows and deepens with absence almost as well as with
companionship.
Occasional letters passed from one to the other. When I felt like
writing to
Muir I obeyed the impulse without asking whether I "owed" him a
letter, and he followed the same rule — or rather lack of rule.
Sometimes answers
to these letters came quickly; sometimes they were long delayed, so
long that
they were not answers at all. When I sent him "news of his mountains
and
glaciers" that contained items really novel to him his replies were
immediate and enthusiastic. When he had found in his great outdoor
museum some
peculiar treasure he talked over his find with me by letter. Muir's letters were never
commonplace and sometimes they
were long and rich. I preserved them all; and when, a few years ago, an
Alaska
steamboat sank to the bottom of the Yukon, carrying with it my library
and all
my literary possessions, the loss of these letters from my friend
caused me
more sorrow than the loss of almost any other of my many priceless
treasures. The summer of 1881, the
year following that of our second
canoe voyage, Muir went, as scientific and literary expert, with the
U. S.
revenue cutter Rogers, which was sent by the Government into the Arctic
Ocean
in search of the ill-fated De Long exploring party. His published
articles
written on the revenue cutter were of great interest; but in his more
intimate
letters to me there was a note of disappointment. "There have been no
mountains to climb," he wrote,
"although I have had entrancing long-distance views of many. I have not
had a chance to visit any glaciers. There were no trees in those arctic
regions, and but few flowers. Of God's process of modeling the world I
saw but
little — nothing for days but that limitless, relentless ice-pack. I
was
confined within the narrow prison of the ship; I had no freedom, I went
at the
will of other men; not of my own. It was very different from those
glorious
canoe voyages with you in your beautiful, fruitful wilderness." A very brief visit at
Muir's home near Martinez, California,
in the spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very
distasteful
work — managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and
making his
orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills and
woods.
Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress" of the
glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips he had
seen
nothing for two years of his beloved wilds. Passionately he voiced
his discontent: "I am losing
the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I
am
learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and
get out
into the mountains to learn the news." In 1888 the ten years'
limit which I had set for service in
Alaska expired. The educational necessities of my children and the
feeling
that was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained
much
longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
English,
drove me from the Northwest to find a temporary home in Southern
California. I had not notified Muir
of my coming, but suddenly appeared
in his orchard at Martinez one day in early summer. It was
cherry-picking time
and he was out among his trees superintending a large force of workmen.
He saw
me as soon as I discovered him, and dropping the basket he was carrying
came
running to greet me with both hands outstretched. "Ah! my friend," he
cried, "I have been
longing mightily for you. You have come to take me on a canoe trip to
the
countries beyond — to Lituya and Yakutat
bays and Prince William Sound; have you not? My weariness of this
humdrum,
work-a-day life has grown so, heavy it is like to crush me. I'm ready
to break
away and go with you whenever you say." "No," I replied, "I am
leaving Alaska." "Man, man!" protested
Muir, "how can you do
it? You'll never carry out such a notion as that in the world. Your
heart will
cry every day for the North like a lost child; and in your sleep the
snow-banners of your white peaks will beckon to you. "Why, look at me," he
said, "and take
warning. I'm a horrible example. I, who have breathed the mountain
air — who
have really lived a life of freedom — condemned to penal servitude with
these
miserable little bald-heads ! " (holding up a bunch of cherries). "
Boxing them up; putting them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like
to die of
the shame of it. "And then you're not safe
a day in this sordid world of
money-grubbing men. I came near dying a mean, civilized death, the
other day.
A Chinaman emptied a bucket of phosphorus over me and almost burned me
up. How
different that would have been from a nice white death in the crevasse
of a
glacier! "Gin it were na for my
bairnies I'd rin awa' frae a'
this tribble an' hale ye back north wi' me." So Muir would run on, now
in English, now in broad Scotch;
but through all his raillery there ran a note of longing for the
wilderness.
"I want to see what is going on," he said. "So many great events
are happening, and I'm not there to see them. I'm learning nothing here
that
will do me any good." I spent the night with
him, and we talked till long after
midnight, sailing anew our voyages of enchantment. He had just
completed his
work of editing "Picturesque California" and gave me a set of the
beautiful volumes. Our paths did not
converge again for nine years; but I was
to have, after all, a few more Alaska days with John Muir. The itch of
the
wanderlust in my feet had become a wearisome, nervous ache, increasing
with the
years, and the call of the wild more imperative, until the fierce
yearning for
the North was at times more than I could bear. The first of the great
northward gold stampedes — that of
1897 to the Klondyke in Northwestern Canada on the borders of Alaska —
afforded
me the opportunity for which I was longing to return to the land of my
heart.
The latter part of August saw me on The Queen, the largest of that
great fleet
of passenger boats that were traversing the thousand miles of wonder
and
beauty between Seattle and Skagway. These steamboats were all laden
with gold
seekers and their goods. Seattle sprang into prominence and wealth,
doubling
her population in a few months. From every community in the United
States,
from all Canada and from many lands across the oceans came that strange
mob of
lawyers, doctors, clerks, merchants, farmers, mechanics, engineers,
reporters, sharpers — all gold-struck — all mad with excitement — all
rushing
pell-mell into a thousand new and hard experiences. As I stood on the upper
deck of the vessel, watching the
strange scene on the dock, who should come up the gang-plank but John
Muir,
wearing the same old gray ulster and Scotch cap! It was the last place
in the
world I would have looked for him. But he was not stampeding to the
Klondyke.
His being there at that time was really an accident. In company with
two other
eminent "tree-men" he had been spending the summer in the study of
the forests of Canada and the three were "climaxing," as they said,
in the forests of Alaska. Five pleasurable days we
had together on board The Queen.
Muir was vastly amused by the motley crowd of excited men, their
various
outfits, their queer equipment, their ridiculous notions of camping and
life in
the wilderness. " A nest of ants," he called them, "taken to a
strange country and stirred up with a stick." As our steamboat touched
at Port Townsend, Muir received a
long telegram from a San Francisco newspaper, offering him a large sum
if he
would go over the mountains and down the Yukon to the Klondyke, and
write them
letters about conditions there. He brought the telegram to me, laughing
heartily at the absurdity of anybody making him such a proposition. "Do they think I'm daft,"
he asked, "like a'
the lave o' thae puir bodies? When I go into that wild it will not be
in a
crowd like this or on such a sordid mission. Ah! my old friend, they'll
be
spoiling our grand Alaska." He offered to secure for
me the reporter's job tendered to
him. I refused, urging my lack of training for such work and my more
important and responsible position. "Why, that same paper has
a host of reporters on the
way to the Klondyke now," I said. "There is —
" (naming a noted poet and author of
the Coast). "He must be half-way down to Dawson by this time." "— doesn't count,"
replied Muir, "for the
patent reason that everybody knows he can't tell the truth. The poor
fellow is
not to blame for it. He was just made that way. Everybody will read
with delight
his wonderful tales of the trail, but nobody will believe him. We all
know him
too well." Muir contracted a hard
cold the first night out from
Seattle. The hot, close stateroom and a cold blast through the narrow
window
were the cause. A distressing cough racked his whole frame. When he
refused to
go to a physician who was on the boat I brought the doctor to him.
After the
usual examination the physician asked, "What do you generally do for a
cold?" "Oh," said Muir, "I
shiver it away." "Explain yourself," said
the puzzled doctor. "We-ll," drawled Muir,
"two or three years
ago I camped by the Muir Glacier for a week. I had caught just such a
cold as
this from the same cause — a stuffy stateroom. So I made me a little
sled out
of spruce boughs, put a blanket and some sea biscuit on it and set out
up the
glacier. I got into a labyrinth of crevasses and a driving snowstorm,
and had
to spend the night on the ice ten miles from land. I sat on the sled
all night
or thrashed about it, and had a dickens of a time; I shivered so hard I
shook
the sled to pieces. When morning came my cold was all gone. That is my
prescription, Doctor. You are welcome to use it in your practice." "Well," laughed the
doctor, "if I had such
patients as you in such a country as this I might try your heroic
remedy, but I
am afraid it would hardly serve in general practice." Muir and I made the most
of these few days together, and
walked the decks till late each night, for he had much to tell me. He
had at
last written his story of Stickeen; and was working on books treating
of the
Big Trees, the National Parks and the glaciers of Alaska. At Wrangell, as we went
ashore, we were greeted by joyful
exclamations from the little company of old Stickeen Indians we found
on the
dock. That sharp intaking of the breath which is the Thlinget's note of
surprise and delight, and the words Nuknate Ankow ka
Glate Ankow (Priest Chief and Ice
Chief) passed along the line. Death had made many gaps in the old
circle of
friends, both white and native, but the welcome from those who
remained warmed
our hearts. From Wrangell northward
the steamboat followed the route of
our canoe voyage of 1880 through Wrangell Narrows into Prince
Frederick
Sound, past Norris Glacier and Holkham Bay into Stevens Passage, past
Taku Bay
to Juneau and on to Lynn Canal — then on the track of our voyage of
1879 up to
Haines and beyond fifteen miles to that new, chaotic camp in the woods
called
Skagway. The two or three days
which it took The Queen to discharge
her load of passengers and cargo of their outfits were spent by Muir
and his
scientific companions in roaming the forests and mountains about
Skagway and
examining the flora of that region. They kept mostly off the trail of
the
struggling, straggling army of Cheechakoes (newcomers) who were
blunderingly
trying to get their goods and themselves across the rugged, jagged
mountains on
their way to the promised land of gold; but Muir found time to spend
some hours
with me in my camp under a hemlock, where he ate again of my cooking
over a
campfire. "You are going on a
strange journey this time, my
friend," he admonished me. "I don't envy you. You'll have a hard
time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of this crowd of
madmen.
Instead of the music of the wind among the spruce-tops and the tinkling
of the
waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these
poor,
deluded, self-burdened men. Keep close to Nature's heart, yourself;
and break
clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in
the woods.
Wash your spirit clean from the earth-stains of this sordid,
gold-seeking crowd
in God's pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring to these
men
something better than gold. Don't lose your freedom and your love of
the Earth
as God made it." In 1899 it was my good
fortune to have one more Alaska day
with John Muir at Skagway. After a year in the Klondyke I had spent the
winter
of 1898-99 in the Eastern States arousing the Christian public to the
needs of
this newly discovered Empire of the North; and was returning with
other
ministers to interior and western Alaska. The White Pass Railroad was
completed
only to the summit; and it was a laborious task, requiring a month of
very hard
work, to get our goods from Skagway over the thirty miles of mountains
to Lake
Bennett, where we could load them on our open boat for the voyage of
two
thousand miles down the Yukon. While I was engaged in
this task there came to Skagway the
steamship George IF. Elder, carrying one of the most remarkable
companies of
scientific men ever gathered together in one expedition. Mr.
Harriman, the
great railroad magnate, had chartered the steamer, and had invited as
his
guests many men of world reputation in various branches of natural
science.
Among them were John Burroughs, Drs. Merriam and Dahl of the
Smithsonian Institute,
and, not least, John Muir. Indeed he was called the Nestor of the
expedition
and his advice followed as that of no other. The enticing proposition
was made me by Muir, and backed by
Mr. Harriman's personal invitation, that I should join this
distinguished
company, share Muir's stateroom and spend the summer cruising along the
southern and western coasts of Alaska. However, the new mining camps
were
calling with a still more imperative voice, and I had to turn my back
to the
Coast and face the great, sun-bathed Interior. But what a joy and
inspiration
it would have been to climb Muir, Geicke and Taylor glaciers again with
Muir,
note the rapid progress God was making in His work of landscape
gardening by means
of these great tools, make at last our deferred visits to Lituya and
Yakutat
bays and the fine glaciers of Prince William's Sound, and renew my
studies of
this good world under my great Master. A letter from Muir about
his summer's cruise, written in
November, 1899, reached me at Nome in June, 1900; for those of us who
had
reached that bleak, exposed northwestern coast and wintered there did
not get
any mail for six months. We were fifteen hundred miles from a
post-office. In his letter Muir wrote:
"The voyage was a grand one,
and I saw much that was new to me and packed full of interest and
instruction.
But, do you know, I longed to break away from the steamboat and its
splendid
company, get a dugout canoe and a crew of Indians, and, with you as my
companion, poke into the nooks and crannies of the mountains and
glaciers which
we could not reach from the steamer. What great days we have had
together, you
and I!" This day at Skagway, in
1899, was the last of my Alaska days
with John Muir, except as I bring them back and live them over in my
thoughts.
How often in my long voyages, by canoe or steamer, among the thousand
islands
of southeastern Alaska, the intricate channels of Prince William's
Sound, the
great rivers. and multitudinous lakes of the Interior, and the
treeless,
windswept coasts of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean; or in my tramps in
the
summer over the mountains and plains of Alaska, or in the winter with
my dogs
over the frozen wilderness fighting the great battle with the fierce
cold or
spellbound under the magic of the Aurora — how often have I longed for
the
presence of Muir to heighten my enjoyment by his higher ecstasy, or
reveal to
me what I was too dull to see or understand. I have had inspiring
companions,
and my life has been blessed by many friendships inestimably precious
and
rich; but for me the world has produced but one John Muir; and to no
other man
do I feel that I owe so much; for I was blind and he made me see! Only once since 1899 did
I meet him, and then but for an
hour at his temporary home in Los Angeles in 1910. He was putting the
finishing
touches on his rich volume, "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth." I
submitted for his review and correction the article which forms the
first two
chapters of this book. With that nice regard for absolute verity which
always
characterized him he pointed out two or three passages in which his
recollection clashed with mine, and I at once made the changes he
suggested. Muir never grew old.
After he was sixty years of age (as men
count age) some of his most daring feats of mountain climbing and some
of his
longest journeys into the wilds were undertaken. When he was past
seventy he
was still tramping and camping in the forests and among the hills. When
he was
seventy-three he made long trips to South America and Africa, and to
the very
end he was exploring, studying, working and enjoying. All his writings exult
with the spirit of immortal youth.
There is in his books an intimate companionship with the trees, the
mountains,
the flowers and the animals, that is altogether fine. Surely no such
books of
mountains and forests were ever written as his "Mountains of
California," "My First Summer in the Sierra," "The
Yosemite" and "Our National Parks." His brooks and trees are the
abode of dryads and hamadryads — they
live and talk. And when he writes of the
animals he has met in his
rambles, without any attempt to put into their characters anything that
does
not belong to them, without "manufacturing his data," he somehow
manages to do much more than introduce them to you; he makes you their
intimate and admiring friends, as he was. His ouzel bobs you a cheery
good
morning and sprays you with its "ripple of song"; his Douglas
squirrel scolds and swears at you with rough good-nature; and his
big-horn
gazes at you with frank and friendly eyes and challenges you to follow
to its
splendid heights, not as a hunter but as a companion. You love them
all, as
Muir did. As an instance of this
power in his writings, when I
returned from the Klondyke in 1898 the story of Stickeen had been
published in
a magazine a few months before. I met in New York a daughter of the
great Field
family, who when a child had heard me tell of Muir's exploit in
rescuing me
from the mountain top, and who had shouted with delight when I told of
our
sliding down the mountain in the moraine gravel. She asked me eagerly
if I was
the Mr. Young mentioned in Muir's story. When I said that I was she
called to
her companions and introduced me as the Owner of Stickeen; and I was
content to
have as my claim to an earthly immortality my ownership of an
immortalized
dog. I cannot think of John
Muir as dead, or as much changed from
the man with whom I canoed and camped. He was too much a part of nature
— too
natural — to be separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers.
Somewhere, I
am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other natural
problems,
using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect; and some time
again I
shall hear him unfold anew, with still clearer insight and more
eloquent
words, fresh secrets of his "mountains of God." The Thlingets have a
Happy Hunting Ground in the Spirit Land
for dogs as well as for men; and Muir used to contend that they were
right —
that the so-called lower animals have as much right to a Heaven as
humans. I
wonder if he has found a still more beautiful — a glorified — Stickeen;
and if
the little fellow still follows and frisks about him as in those great,
old
days. I like to think so; and when I too cross the Great Divide — and
it can't
be long now — I shall look eagerly for them both to he my companions in
fresh
adventures. In the meantime I am lonely for them and think of them
often, and
say, with The Harvester, "What a dog! — and what a MAN!!" |