Rambles of a Botanist Among the Plants and Climates of California

Authors

John Muir

Files

Kimes Entry Number

012

Original Date

6-1-1872

William and Maymie Kimes Annotation

Following comments on how little tourists see due to their speed of travel, and how they almost never see the Great Central Plain in ''flower-time"" Muir relates his first crossing of the San Joaquin Valley on his way to Yosemite: ""On the second of April, 1868, I left San Francisco .... We had plenty of time, and proposed drifting leisurely mountain-ward ... by any road that we chanced to find, enjoying the flowers and light, 'camping out' wherever overtaken by night .... ""Upon reaching the Great Plains, he writes: "" ... never were mortal eyes more thronged with beauty. When I walked, more than a hundred flowers touched my feet, at every step closing above them, as if wading in water. Go where I would, east or west, north or south, I still plashed and rippled in flower-gems .... But all this beauty of life is fast fading year by year,-foundering in the grossness of modern refinement.""

Publication

Old and New [Boston] v. 5, no. 6

Page/Column

p. 767-772

See also Kimes Entry Number

See also: nos. 439-441; no. 447.

Recommended Citation

Muir, John, "Rambles of a Botanist Among the Plants and Climates of California" (1872). John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes (Muir articles 1866-1986). 16.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/16