Emerson,
Agassiz, Gray -- these men influenced me more than any others. Yes, the
most of my years were spent on the wild side of the continent, invisible,
in the forests and mountains. These men were the first to find me
and hail me as a brother.
First of all, and greatest of all, came
Emerson. I was then living in Yosemite Valley as a convenient and
grand vestibule of the Sierra from which I could make excursions
into the adjacent mountains. I had not much money and was then running
a mill that I had built to saw fallen timber for cottages. When he
came into the Valley I heard the hotel people saying with solemn
emphasis, "Emerson
is here." I was
excited as I had never been excited before, and my heart throbbed as if
an angel direct from heaven had alighted on the Sierran rocks. But so great
was my awe and reverence, I did not dare to go to him or speak to him.
I hovered on the outside of the crowd of people that were pressing forward
to be introduced to him and shaking hands with him. Then I heard that in
three or four days he was going away, and in the course of sheer desperation
I wrote him a note and carried it to his hotel telling him that E1 Capitan
and Tissiack demanded him to stay longer.
The next day he inquired for
the writer and was directed to the little sawmill. He came to the mill
on horseback attended by Mr. Thayer[James Bradley Thayer, a member
of Emerson's party, who, in 1884, published a little volume of reminiscences
under the title of A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson.] and inquired
for me. I stepped out and said, "I am Mr. Muir." "Then Mr. Muir must
have brought his own letter," said Mr. Thayer and Emerson said, "Why
did you not make yourself known last evening? I should have been very glad
to have seen you." Then he dismounted and came into the mill. I had a
study attached to the gable of the mill, overhanging the stream, into which
I invited him, but it was not easy of access, being reached only by a series
of sloping planks roughened by slats like a hen ladder; but he bravely climbed
up and I showed him my collection of plants and sketches drawn from the surrounding
mountains which seemed to interest him greatly, and he asked many questions,
pumping unconscionably.
He came again and again, and I saw him every day while
he remained in the valley, and on leaving I was invited to accompany
him as far as the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. I said, "I'll go, Mr. Emerson,
if you will promise to camp with me in the Grove. I'll build a glorious campfire,
and the great brown boles of the giant Sequoias will be most impressively lighted
up, and the night will be glorious." At this he became enthusiastic like
a boy, his sweet perennial smile became still deeper and sweeter, and he said, "Yes,
yes, we will camp out, camp out"; and so next day we left Yosemite and
rode twenty five miles through the Sierra forests, the noblest on the face
of the earth, and he kept me talking all the time, but said little himself.
The colossal silver firs, Douglas spruce, Libocedrus and sugar pine, the
kings and priests of the conifers of the earth, filled him with awe and delight.
When we stopped to eat luncheon he called on different members of the party
to tell stories or recite poems, etc., and spoke, as he reclined on the carpet
of pine needles, of his student days at Harvard. But when in the afternoon
we came to the Wawona Tavern . . . .
There the memorandum ends, but the continuation is found in his volume Our
National Parks at the conclusion of the chapter on "The Forests of the
Yosemite":
Early in the afternoon, when we reached Clark's Station, I was surprised to
see the party dismount And when I asked if we were not going up into the grove
to camp they said: "No; it would never do to lie out in the night air.
Mr. Emerson might take cold; and you know, Mr. Muir, that would be a dreadful
thing." In vain I urged, that only in homes and hotels were colds caught,
that nobody ever was known to take cold camping in these woods, that there
was not a single cough or sneeze in all the Sierra. Then I pictured the big
climate changing, inspiring fire I would make, praised the beauty and fragrance
of Sequoia flame, told how the great trees would stand about us transfigured
in purple light, while the stars looked between the great domes; ending by
urging them to come on and make an immortal Emerson night of it. But the house
habit was not to be overcome, nor the strange dread of pure night air, though
it is only cooled day air with a little dew in it. So the carpet dust and unknowable
reeks were preferred. And to think of this being a Boston choice. Sad commentary
on culture and the glorious transcendentalism.
Accustomed to reach whatever place I started for, I was going up the mountain
alone to camp, and wait the coming of the party next day. But since Emerson
was so soon to vanish, I concluded to stop with him. He hardly spoke a word
all evening, yet it was a great pleasure simply to be with him, warming in
the light of his face as at a fire. In the morning we rode up the trail through
a noble forest of pine and fir into the famous Mariposa Grove, and stayed an
hour or two, mostly in ordinary tourist fashion,--looking at the biggest giants,
measuring them with a tape line, riding through prostrate fire-bored trunks
etc., though Mr. Emerson was alone occasionally, sauntering about as if under
a spell. As we walked through a fine group, he quoted, "There were giants
in those days," recognizing the antiquity of the race. To commemorate
his visit, Mr. Galen Clark, the guardian of the grove, selected the finest
of the unnamed trees and requested him to give it a name. He named it Samoset,
after the New England sachem, as the best that occurred to him.
The poor bit of measured time was soon spent, and while the saddles were
being adjusted I again urged Emerson to stay. "You are yourself a Sequoia," I
said. "Stop and get acquainted with your big brethren." But he was
past his prime, and was now a child in the hands of his affectionate but sadly
civilized friends, who seemed as full of old-fashioned conformity as of bold
intellectual independence. It was the afternoon of the day and the afternoon
of his life, and his course was now westward down all the mountains into the
sunset. The party mounted and rode away in wondrous contentment apparently,
tracing the trail through ceanothus and dogwood bushes, around the bases of
the big trees, up the slope of the sequoia basin, and over the divide. I followed
to the edge of the grove. Emerson lingered in the rear of the train, and when
he reached the top of the ridge, after all the rest of the party were over
and out of sight, he turned his horse, took off his hat and waved me a last
good-bye. I felt lonely, so sure had I been that Emerson of all men would be
the quickest to see the mountains and sing them. Gazing awhile on the spot
where he vanished, I sauntered back into the heart of the grove, made a bed
of sequoia plumes and ferns by the side of the stream, gathered a store of
firewood, and then walked about until sundown. The birds, robins, thrushes,
warblers, etc., that had kept out of sight, came about me, now that all was
quiet, and made cheer. After sundown I built a great fire, and as usual had
it all to myself. And though lonesome for the first time in these forests,
I quickly took heart again--the trees had not gone to Boston, nor the birds;
and as I sat by the fire, Emerson was still with me in spiry, though I never
again saw him in the flesh.
But there remained many a forest to wander through, many a mountain and glacier
to cross, before I was to see his Wachusett and Monadnock, Boston and Concord.
It was seventeen years after our parting on the Wawona ridge that I stood beside
his grave under a pine tree on the hill above Sleepy Hollow. He had gone to
higher Sierras, and, as I fancied, was again waving his hand in friendly recognition.
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