Creator

John Muir

Recipient

[Jeanne C.] Carr

Preview

image preview

Transcription

[4]in the last week of May all the plain flowers so lately fresh in the power of full beauty were dead their parched leaves crisped & fell to ponder beneath my feet as though they had been "cast into the oven" & they had not like the plants of our west, weeks & months to grow old in, but they died ere they could fade, standing together holding out their branches erect & green as life, but they did not die too soon they liked a whole life & stored away abundance of future life principle in the seed After riding for two days in this Autumn I found summer again in the higher foothills, flower petals were spread confidingly open the grasses waved their [illegible] all bright & gay in the colors of healthy prime & the winds & streams were cool, forty or fifty miles further into the mountains I came to spring the leaves of the oak were 00461[1]#18 At a sheep ranch between the Tuolumne & Stanislaus rivers Nov 1st [1868]Dear friend Mrs Carr, I was extremely glad to receive yet one more of your ever welcome letters it found me two weeks ago. I rode over to Hopeton to seek for letters. I had to pass through a bed of co[illegible] two or three miles in diameter, they were in the glow of full prime forming a lake of the purest composited gold I ever behold. Some emjlo plants had upwards of three thousand heads their petal surface exceeded their leaf surface thirty or forty times, because of the constancy of the winds all these flowers faced in one direction (SE) & I thought as I gazed upon

Location

…between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers

Date Original

[1868] Nov 1

Source

Original letter dimensions: 20.5 x 25.0 cm

Resource Identifier

muir01_1270-let.tif

File Identifier

Reel 01, Image 1270

Copyright Statement

The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html

Owning Institution

University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.

Copyright Holder

Muir-Hanna Trust

Copyright Date

1984

Page Number

Page 1

Keywords

John Muir, correspondence, letters, author, writing, naturalist, California, correspondent, mail, message, post, exchange of letters, missive, notes, epistle

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