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Circa Date
circa 1887
Transcription
112
while in [nooks] under projecting ledges they are out of the way of trampling feet [come down with their fruit of snow & hail & rain but it is all celestial love & we] therefore are safest here just where they are most nakedly exposed to what are called cruel [heartless] destroying storm they perhaps are the safest. A grand foundational lesson [this & I climbed higher & higher gaining calm sure faith from everything I saw.] Gloomy wintry desolation at once in this divine light changed to tender love [and in the shadowy north sides of the mountains the treasures of the snow & ice I looked for & found the finest warmest words of divine love] just as frail flowers of human kind [may sometimes be found] (protected by the hand of God) be found blooming [sweetly joyously] in stormy [through long calm lives in] places & times [assailed by the deadliest storms] strewn with the wrecks of the strong[est] giants. [It is just where the heaviest storms falls that the finest tenderest life & beauty is found. & it is in these savage forbidding storm stricken summits of] ¶ Over all the world the mountains are [that] the fountains of wealth of the lowlands are [lie]. The water & soil for the bread of humanity drawn from [the] cold snowy silent summits [of the glorious Sierra] & so also in great part is our spiritual bread. Ever since I was allowed entrance into these holy mountains I have been looking for Cassiope, said to be the most charmingly beautiful heatherworts loved by all the Anglo-Saxon races. [heatherworts. Every mountain I climbed I thought of her][it] Yet strange to say I have not yet found
113
[sketch removed]
it [searched & longed for it. Every hope & m… wish that I brought from the lowlands had been …& [ ] more except finding the romantic cassiope [ ] that I had read about in the state Geological Survey. I had found far more that I looked for but this hardy Alpine plant I had not yet found, & I began to brood over it & waking [ ] sleeping kept] I keep muttering [ ] [C]assiop, Cassiope. This name as Calvinists say way driven in upon me notwithstanding the glorious host of plants that had come about [to] me uncalled as soon as I showed myself. It seems[ed] the highest name of all the small mountain heath [plant] people & I must find it soon if at all this year. & as if conscious of her worth kept out of my way. I know from what Mr. Delaney said that we must soon leave these mountains & unless I from devout self-sacrifice could command the attention of the best of the plant people Cassiope would remain withdrawn & hidden silent & [ ] alone me.
Sept [September] 3) Clouds none [at all] warm, calm [sun] bright one mass of sunshine. My dog Carlo chased a lot of young ducks born in these
Date Occurred
1869
Resource Identifier
MuirReel31 Notebook 009 Img049.jpg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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