Creator
J. E. Calkins
Recipient
John Muir
Transcription
Jan. 1907
THE DAVENPORT DEMOCRAT
AND LEADER
DAILY, SUNDAY AND WEEKLY EIDITONS
EDITORIAL ROOM
DAVENPORT. IOWA
My Dear Mr. Muir;-
Doubtless you are quite unaware of the pleasure that your New Year's remembrance, though only a postcard picture of a Sequoia, brought to our home. Anything that comes laden with remembrance of California, the forests, the rocks, the flowers, and the friends that are there, is more than welcome here, but you little memento was particularly gladdening, for we had not done ourselves so proud as to suppose that you would in the least remember us, and when we found that you did, and cared enough to send us the greetings of the season, you may be sure we made an event of it.
We wondered if there might not have been some telepathic suggestion to call us to you mind. At the time it came I was re-reading, again, your book, "Our National Parks," and enjoying it with that heightened and sharpened zest one always brings to scenes revisited. It is always gratifying, I think to anyone, to find somebody who sees things as with his own eyes, and who understands things according to his own interpretation, but it is doubly delightful to a clumsy bungler like myself to find somewhere a man who not only sees and understands as I like to believe I do, but who can put into clear, luminous, enlightening words the things that I can only feel, having not the power to clothe my feelings with such language. So, I say, it is doubtful if you know quite the extent of the good you have done me, and my folk, either by the writing of these books, or by the mere remembering of us at the beginning of another year.
I note that the late literature of the Santa Fe road makes mention the new petrified forests-I should say the old petrified forests newly discovered by you and your daughter, as you wrote to me last April. That is all-it only makes
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THE DAVENPORT DEMOCRAT
AND LEADER
DAILY, SUNDAY AND WEEKLY EIDITONS
EDITORIAL ROOM
DAVENPORT. IOWA
Mention; it gives no details and no description. How I should like to sit down somewhere out of doors, where the birds and squirrels and tame, and listen to your account of what you found there, and have you came upon it; And how much better I should like to wander among those agate logs, with you leading the way! It must have been almost enough to make you forget the sorrow you had left behind you at your home, to roam, a discoverer, through a region of such forest growth as that. To a man who loves and knows the forest giants and the forest children of today as you do, by making their acquaintance in their own homes, this ramble through the trees of forgotten ages must have brought strange sensations. I have been watching for the story of this chapter of discover, and I hope we shall have it soon.
We left California, last spring, five days before the earthquake. Our boy, then it Stanford, advised us that we had been there as long as was good for him; he had several hard examinations in prospect, and we were a bar to anything like serious study. So we came away the morning of Friday, April 13. The superstitious person will surely have hard work to reason from this combination of unlucky days that we invited disaster upon ourselves. It was the fellow who did not leave on that day, or some other more or less auspicious, who got into trouble.
But, good luck or bad, it was hard to leave. The Gold of Ophir was minted in unlimited coinage all over the trellises and trees and fences and houses all the way from San Diego to Sacramento, and every living thing out of doors was showing us its most inviting side, and pleading with us to stay. We had hope to fix ourselves there during the winter, but it so happened that we did not, and the necessity of taking care of what we had back here in Iowa forced us to leave the Coast and come. But ever since we have been trying to so shpae
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THE DAVENPORT DEMOCRAT
AND LEADER
DAILY SUNDAY AND WEEKLY EDITIONS
EDITORIAL ROOM
DAVENPORT, IOWA
Things as to be able to go back there again-and when we go to the Coast this time it will be to stay. Indeed, I came near being there now. I am just now in the way of returning through passes over two lines of road, both of which died with 1906, and both of which, at the last moment, I allowed to expire unused because my wife could not quite bring herself to think that it was best for me to be adventuring out there while she looked after the hard work of selling out and breaking up back her. But a year brings many things to pass, and among others for which we hope is yet another look at the Sierras and the blue Pacific. It is strange how that sunset country wins on one; here are we, feeling that that is home and that we are unwillingly detained here till can go back to the Coast, where we really live.
I have caught myself several times in the act of wondering whether you have ever seen more than a glimpse of the Mississippi and its valley. When I do go to California I should like to take it with me; the river at least, if not the valley. If you have not seen the tender leafage of the first of spring upon the tall trees and their fringing undergrowth along the shores and upon the islands of the upper river, and seen that foliage expand till full grown, and watched the beautiful nacreous colors come and go on the surface of the water on those days when it glides like glass, without a ripple, and felt the mighty strength of the great mile-wide stream beneath you, and against you oar, you have still pleasures in store for the day when you grow tired of mountains and glaciers and cloud-high treetops. There are "cutoffs" that run through these lowlands, thickset with trees that lean into arches overhead and carry great mantles of climbing vines which often show solid walls of smooth green foliage, which are perfect dreams of beauty. There is no sensation that carries with if
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THE DAVENPORT DEMOCRAT
AND LEADER
DAILY SUNDAY AND WEEKLY EDITIONS
EDITORIAL ROOM
DAVENPORT, IOWA
More of pure luxury, as far as I have been permitted to enjoy, than the drift and glide of your skiff on the soundless current that gently sweeps you through these shady leaf-clad channels. There are some of them, within a mile or so of smoky rattling cities, that can bury you in solitude and seclusion as though you were in the heart of the wilderness. And, I am exceedingly glad to say, there are quite a few people in these same towns who properly value the sweet values and advantages of these retreats; though most of them do prefer to travel smoothly paved streets, with good improvements on either hand. They have so far lost the fine appreciation of the best things in this world of beauty that there is none of the good old original Adam left in them.
You in lowland California do not often have thunder and lightning, and we here in cyclonic Iowa do not often have them in the winter, but this morning began with the blink and glare of great red flashes through the thick fog that covered everything, and this evening the flashes and the thunder are still at their majestic play. It is soggy and steamy, and away above freezing, and the thunder only growls, instead of snapping and chasing and rumbling grandly as it does in royal good storm weather, but still it is "thunder in the winter," and the weatherwise old men tell us that it is all working to bring down on us a grand freeze that will make us forget that there ever was a warm day. The climate of Iowa is often very trying on account of the moisture and the low barometer, which, to persons sensitive to atmospheric influences, make a combination very depressing to the best of natural spirits. We have days in midwinter here that are simply abominable with their mugginess, though doubtless for the purposes of the farmer they are excellent, and the host of green growing things appreciate them as great benefits. A dry winter is the calamity worse dreaded
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THE DAVENPORT DEMOCRAT
AND LEADER
DAILY SUNDAY AND WEEKLY EDITIONS
EDITORIAL ROOM
DAVENPORT, IOWA
than a dry summer, and a dry summer here entails no end of distress and misfortune. Three months of such weather as hangs over the San Joaquin valley from the first of June to the first of September would almost ruin this country. And one day of such weather as we sometimes get here at this time of the year would be the death of that.
I am in hope of getting loose here in time to reach California not long hence. I hope I may be able to meet you on the way, at your home or elsewhere, and if you are willing to venture a little of your good time on a bit of chat with me I suppose I may safely say that you will be doing about as much to delight me as any man can do within reason. Some of the very best and most valuable things in this world are not to be measured in figures of any denomination or computed in any coinage values. Such, for example, is the pleasure and satisfaction you have give me for years with everything you have written, and such is the added pleasure of the occasional word from you. Withy all my anticipations in California there are none that promise more to me than to some day get better acquainted with you than it is possible to get with the sole medium of the mails. If you should happen to be in the way of bringing out another book before I get away from the Democrat-or even after I leave-I hope you will let me know so I can have a chance to make a review of it. Any anything else I can do for you will give me great pleasure in the performance.
Sincerely yours,
[illegible]
Mr. John Muir,
Martinez, Californa.
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Location
Davenport, Iowa
Circa Date
1907 Jan
Source
Original letter dimensions: 27.5 x 20.5 cm.
Recommended Citation
Calkins, J. E., "Letter from J. E. Calkins to John Muir, 1907 Jan." (1907). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 3647.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/3647
Resource Identifier
muir16_0617-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 16, Image 0617
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
Copyright status unknown
Copyright Statement
Some letters written 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
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.
Pages
5 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
