Creator

John Muir

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Circa Date

1887

Transcription

1

Crevasses

Giddy. Dizzy chasms. The deep gloom of these perilous gulf associated with idea of terror an emotion which we are apt to imagine only man with a soul & frail body can feel but Stickeen felt it as keenly as I.

Like huge mouths gaping for victims

Pleasures as well as sermons break seasons & reposing hours

The wild sweep of the winds at midnight over the hummocky crevassed glacier gurgling

Gloomy depths in which no sunshine ever settles

The gl [glacier] is [was] a noble revelations of the making of order & beauty of sunbeams on the ice cascades

Beneath the main roar of storm I heard the gentle rustling of the bottom of the wind flood glinting severely among the small crystal & wells & hummocks of the icy prisms

The dazzling splendor

When I see a gl [glacier] outspread & at work in serene power I also see the unweariable immeasurable sun, floods faithfully pouring on outspread oceans – the ascending vapors uplifted entering the cool mountain heavens & taking places in six-rayed daisies of snow going to appointed places each ice daisy a small glacier [making] haste amid boom of avas [avalanches] to get close together to form gls [glaciers] joining ray to ray then serenely gliding over going the [prepared] landscapes back to the sea leaving beauty & life in their paths

2

Advance of gls [glaciers] & recession responding corresponding owing to cycles of colder & warmer seasons or season of less & greater snowfill are by no means rare. Traces records are to be seen everywhere but seldom in characters & results as striking as here in severe & terrible grandeur. Century old conifers bending falling before the thrust of the gl [glacier] like feeble blades of grass before the plow. Mossy lichen-stained aboriginal forest mowed down & ground to pulp.

Gl [Glacier]

The gl [glacier] stretching away in the [stormy] gloom his huge & forbidding in the storm, like a load on the weary eye a place where no men have dwelt nor son of man passed through.

A huge malevolent creature crawling over the landscapes & blasting crushing them overthrowing forests damming up salmon streams etc.

(the mind shall banquet though the body pine)

(every landing & adventure on a foreign shore

06474

Resource Identifier

MuirReel33 Notebook01 Img003.Jpeg

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library

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