Creator
[John Muir]
Recipient
[Jeanne C.] Carr
Transcription
[1] Squirrelville [Autumn, 1870] Sequoia Co Nut time
Dear Mrs Carr Do behold the king in his glory, King Sequoia. Behold! Behold! seems all I can say Sometime ago I left all for Sequoia & have been & am at his feet fasting & praying for light, for is he not the greatest light in the woods ; in the world. Where is such columns of sunshine, tangible, accessible, terrestrialized. Well may I fast, not from bread but from business, bookmaking, duty doing & other trifles, & great is my reward already for the manly treely sacrifice. What giant truths since coming to gigantean, What magnificent clusters of Sequoic becauses From here I cannot recite you one, for you are down a thousand fathoms deep in dark political quagg, not a burr length less. But I'm in the woods woods woods, & they are in me-ee-ee. The King tree & me have sworn eternal love - sworn it without swearing & Ive taken the sacrament with Douglass Squirrell drank Sequoia wine, Sequoia blood, & with
[2]
its rosy purple dress I am writing this woody gospel letter. I never before knew the virtues of Sequoia juice. [Seen?] with sun- =beams in it, its color is the most royal of all royal purples No wonder the Indians instinctively drink it for they know not what . I wish I was so drunk & Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the juiceless world, descending from this divine wilderness like a John Baptist eating Douglass Squirrels & wild honey or wild anything, saying, Repent for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand. There is balm in these leafy Gileads; [for deleted] pungent burrs & living King-juice for all defrauded civilization; for sick grangers & politicians, no need of Salt Riales, sick or successful. Come suck Sequoia & be saved. Douglas Squirrel is so pervaded with rosin & burr juice his flesh can scarce be eaten even by mountaineers no wonder he is so charged with magnetism one of the little lions ran across my feet the other day as I lay resting under a fir & the effect
#9189
[3]
was a thrill like a battery shock. I would eat him no matter how rosing for the light[illegible] he holds. I wish I could eat wilder things, think of the grouse with balsam scented crop stored with spruce buds. The wild sheep full of glacier meadow grass, & daisies [illegible] & the bear burly & brown as Sequoia, eating pine-burs & wasps stings & all - then think of the soft lighteningless poulice-like pop reeking upon town tables. No wonder cheeks & legs become flably & fungoid. I wish I were wilder & so bless Sequoia I will be. There is at least a punky Spark in my heart & it may blaze in this Autumn gold. fanned by the King. Some of my grandfathers must have been born on a muirland for there is heather in me, & tinctures of log juices, that send me to [Cassippe?], & ooz through all my veins impelling me unhaltingly the deeper & danker the [illegible].
[4]
See Sequoia aspiring in the upper skies every summit modelled in fine cycloidal [illegible] as if pressed into unseen moulds. Every bole warm in the mellow amber sun How truly godful in [illegible]. I was talking the other day with a Dutchess & was struck with the grand love with wh' she bade me goodbye & thanked me for the glaciers I have her but this fornoon King Sequoia h[illegible] to me down in the grove as I stood gazing & the highbred gestures of the lady s[illegible] [illegible] by contrast. There goes Squirrel Douglass the Master spirit of the tree top. It has just occurred to me how his belly is buffy brown, & his back silver- gray.-Ever since the first Adam of his race saw trees & burrs, his belly has been rubbing upon buff bark, & his back has been combed with silvery needles-, Would that some of you wise; terribly wise social scientists might dis= =cover some method of living as true to nature as the buff people of the woods [illegible] as free as the winds & waters among the burs & filbert thickets of these leafy mothery woods. The sun is set & the star candles are being lighted to show me & Douglass Squirrel to bed therefore my Carr goodnight. You say, When are you coming down? Ask the Lord - Lord Sequoia -
00198 #9189
Location
Squirrelville [Calif.]
Circa Date
[1870 Fall]
Source
Original letter dimensions: 25 x 39 cm.
Recommended Citation
Muir, John, "Letter from [John Muir] to [Jeanne C.] Carr , [1870 Fall]." (1870). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 1360.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/1360
Resource Identifier
muir02_0359-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 02, Image 0359
Collection Identifier
Online finding aid for the microform version of the John Muir Correspondence http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0w1031nc
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
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
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. 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
Pages
3 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
