Recipient
Wolfe, Linnie Marsh
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Transcription
#6 - John Muir song, and tho hills back of the cultivated fields were covered with bloom, naking bright masses of color side by side and Interblending blue and purple and yellow from many species of giliae, lupines, eojnpoaitae, etc., now mostly lost* Of course with such an advertisement of plant wealth, 1 was soon on those hills, and the glowing days went by uncounted. "Inquiring the way to Yosesiite, 1 was directed through the PaGheco Pass, and frojvj the sttmm.it of this pass 1 gained ay first view of the Sierra with its belt of forests, and of the great San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. It was one of those perfectly pure, rich, ripe days of California sun-gold, where distant views seemed as close as near ones, and I have always thanked the Lord that I came here before the dust and sraok© of civilisation had dimaed the sky, and before the wild bloom had vanished from the plain, descending the pass?, I waded out Into the marvelous bloom of the San Joaquin when it was in Its prise, it was all one sea of golden and purple bloom, so deep una dense that in walking through it you would press more than a hundred biooas at every step. In this flower-bed, five hundred sailes long, I used to camp by just lying down wherever night overtook me, as if I had sunk beneath the waters of a lake; the radiant heads of eompositae touching each other, ray i;o ray, shone ?vbove me like the thickest star-clusters of the sky, and, in the morning, 1 S023©tis?ies found plants that were new looking ioe in the face, so that ay botanical studies would begin before I was up. "At Crane Plat I reached the main forest belt, und there for the first tine I saw the giants of the Sierra woods in all their glory: sugar pines more than two hundred feet high, with their long arms outstretched over the spiry silver firs, and yellow pine, libocedrus and '/ouglas spruce. This was in 1868. I was perfectly free, and 1 soon saw it would be long ere I could get out of those woods, and, as you know, I ars not out of them yet. Then the sugar pine seeraed to me the priest of the woods, ever addressing the surrounding trees, - and calling upon 090
Location
unknown
Circa Date
[1941-1945]
Page Number
6
Resource Identifier
MSS048 Vb.7
Copyright Status
Copyright status unknown
Copyright Statement
Some material related to John Muir may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
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.
Keywords
John Muir, biography, reminiscence, colleagues, contemporaries, archives, special collections, University of the Pacific, California, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, history, naturalist
