Creator

John Muir

Recipient

[Jeanne C.] Carr

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Transcription

alighted he invariably stood watching me with his legs set ready for another jump in case of danger. Nevertheless I soon made sure that he was my man for I found that in jumping he mad the shallow pits I had observed at the termination of the pattern I was studying. but no matter how patiently I waited he wouldn’t [underline: walk] while I was sufficiently near to observe they are so nearly the color of the sand I therefore caught one & lifted his wing covers & cut off about half of each wing with my pen knife, & carried him to a favorable place on the sand. At first he did nothing but jump & make dimples but soon became weary & [underlined: walked] in common rhythm with all his six legs. & my interest you may guess while I watche the embroidery – the written music laid down in a beautiful ribbon-like strip behind [illegible] 00691 9I glowed with wild joy as if I had found a new glacier – copied specimens of the precious fabric into my note book & strode away with my own feet sinking with a dull craunch craunch craunch in the hot gray sand glad to believe that the dark & cloudy vicissitudes of the Oakland period had not dimmed my vision in the least Surely Mother Nature pitied the poor boy & showed him pictures Happen what would [deleted: my] fever thirst, or sun stroke my joy for that day was complete. yet I was to receive still more, A train of curving tracks with a line in the middle next fixed my attention & almost before I had time to make a guess concerning this author, a small hawk came shooting down vertically out of the sky a few steps ahead of me & picked up something in his talons, after rising thirty or forty feet over head, he dropped it by the roadside as if to show me what it was. I ran forward

Location

Yosemite Valley

Date Original

[1874 Sep]

Source

Original letter dimensions: 25 x 40 cm.

Resource Identifier

muir03_0189-let.tif

File Identifier

Reel 03, Image 0189

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The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust.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 6

Keywords

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

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