Event Title
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift": A Reflection on John Muir's Vision of Water and Wind
Start Date
18-4-1996 7:30 PM
End Date
21-4-1996 1:45 PM
Description
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift" is a creative reflection on wind and water and on John Muir's remarkable sensitivity to both. The author, in the waters off Northern California, watches pigeon guillemots diving for fish and thinks of Muir's celebrated water ouzel, sees surf rolling toward evergreen forested hillsides and remembers Muir's remarkable wave metaphors in "The Description of a Wind Storm." Combining personal reflections on the natural world with a scholarly appreciation for Muir's descriptions of wind and water, this paper braids examination of natural patterns with consideration of the texts in which Muir celebrates such patterns.
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift": A Reflection on John Muir's Vision of Water and Wind
"I Found Myself Fairly Adrift" is a creative reflection on wind and water and on John Muir's remarkable sensitivity to both. The author, in the waters off Northern California, watches pigeon guillemots diving for fish and thinks of Muir's celebrated water ouzel, sees surf rolling toward evergreen forested hillsides and remembers Muir's remarkable wave metaphors in "The Description of a Wind Storm." Combining personal reflections on the natural world with a scholarly appreciation for Muir's descriptions of wind and water, this paper braids examination of natural patterns with consideration of the texts in which Muir celebrates such patterns.
Comments
Daniel Duane is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches nature writing and American literature. An experienced creative writer and mountaineer whose climbing expeditions often take him to Yosemite, Dan is the author of Lighting Out: A Vision of California and the Mountains (Gray Wolf Press, 1994) and Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast (North Point Press, forthcoming 1996).