ever changing, never resting, all are speeding on with love’s enthusiasm, singing with the stars the eternal song of creation.”5 Transformed by the power of beauty himself, John Muir wanted others to be also. “I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.… I care only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.”6
Nature’s Cathedral
ON THIS LATE SUMMER DAY, John Muir had hiked across the Tuolumne River, over meadows, and through heavily wooded forests to Cathedral Peak, which to him was more wondrous than the finest of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals.
How often I have gazed at it [Cathedral Peak] from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing! This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshiper. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars. And lo, here at last in front of the Cathedral [Peak] is blessed cassiope [mountain heather] ringing her thousands of sweet-toned bells, the sweetest church music I ever enjoyed. Listening, admiring, until late in the afternoon I compelled myself to hasten away.…
—JOURNAL ENTRY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1868
The Power of Beauty
JOHN MUIR RECORDED IN HIS JOURNAL this description of the Merced Valley during his first week of working as a sheepherder. He had no interest in pursuing sheepherding, but “… money was scarce and I couldn’t see how a bread supply was to be kept up. While I was anxiously brooding on the bread problem, so troublesome to wanderers, and trying to believe that I might learn to live like the wild animals, gleaning nourishment here and there from seeds, berries, etc., sauntering and climbing in joyful independence of money or baggage, Mr. Delaney, a sheep-owner, for whom I had worked a few weeks, called on me, and offered to engage me to go with his shepherd and flock to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers—the very region I had most in mind. I was in the mood to accept work of any kind that would take me into the mountains whose treasures I had tasted last summer in the Yosemite region.” Dazzled by the beauty of the Sierra Mountains, Muir said, “Gaze-stricken, I might have left everything for it.” He did just that!
… a magnificent section of the Merced Valley at what is called Horseshoe Bend came full in sight—a glorious wilderness that seemed to be calling with a thousand songful voices. Bold, down-sweeping slopes, feathered with pines and clumps of manzanita [berry-bearing shrubs] with sunny, open spaces between them, make up most of the foreground; the middle and background present fold beyond fold of finely modeled hills and ridges rising into mountain-like masses in the distance, all covered with a shaggy growth of chaparral, mostly adenostoma [small flowering shrubs with stiff leaves], planted so marvelously close and even that it looks like soft, rich plush without a single tree or bare spot. As far as the eye can reach it extends, a heaving, swelling sea of green as regular and continuous as that produced by the heaths of Scotland. The sculpture of the landscape is as striking in its main lines as in its lavish richness of detail; a grand congregation of massive heights with the river shining between, each carved into smooth, graceful folds without leaving a single rocky angle exposed, as if the delicate fluting and ridging fashioned out of metamorphic slates had been carefully sandpapered. The whole landscape showed design, like man’s noblest sculptures. How wonderful the power of its beauty! Gazing awe-stricken, I might have left everything for it. Glad, endless work would then be mine tracing the forces that have brought forth its features, its rocks and plants and animals and glorious weather. Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever. I gazed and gazed and longed and admired until the dusty sheep and packs were far out of sight, made hurried notes and a sketch, though there was no need of either, for the colors and lines and expression of this divine landscape-countenance are so burned into mind and heart they surely can never grow dim.
—JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 5, 1869
A Peaceful Joyful Stream of Beauty
THERE IS THE SAYING OF AN UNKNOWN ZEN MASTER, “Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.” John Muir knocked, listened, observed, and took into the core of his being everything that was natural and beautiful. All his senses were awake; he was enfolded in nature’s grasp.
Half cloudy, half sunny, clouds lustrous white. The tall pines crowded along the top of the Pilot Peak Ridge look like six-inch miniatures exquisitely outlined on the satiny sky.… And so this memorable month ends, a stream of beauty unmeasured, no more to be sectioned off by almanac arithmetic than sun-radiance or the currents of seas and rivers—a peaceful, joyful stream of beauty. Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!” Looking back through the stillness and romantic enchanting beauty and peace of the camp grove, this June seems the greatest of all the months of my life, the most truly, divinely free, boundless like eternity, immortal. Everything in it seems equally divine—one smooth, pure, wild glow of Heaven’s love, never to be blotted or blurred by anything past or to come.
—JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 30, 1869
Opening a Thousand Windows
GOD’S FIRST REVELATION is through every aspect of the natural world—days and seasons, the sun rising and setting, rivers and ravens, mountains and plains, forests and ferns, winds and storms, stars splashed across the evening sky—everything that is and was; all creatures that walk, swim, crawl on Earth and fly in the realms above, in Muir’s words are “opening a thousand windows to show us God.”
Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.
—JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 23, 1869
Enduring Beauty
AFTER DAYS OF NEAR STARVATION, Mr. Delaney, the sheep-owner, arrived at the sheep camp with provisions for the shepherds. Now with all his senses tingling, Muir records the beauty of a golden summer day in the High Sierra.
… hunger vanishes, we turn our eyes to the mountains, and tomorrow we go climbing cloud-ward. Never while anything is left of me shall this first camp be forgotten. It has fairly grown into me, not merely as memory pictures, but as part and parcel of mind and body alike. The deep hopper-like hollow, with its majestic trees through which all the wonderful nights the stars poured their beauty. The flowery wildness of the high steep slope toward Brown’s Flat, and its bloom-fragrance descending at the close of the still days. The embowered river-reaches with their multitude of voices making melody, the stately flow and rush and glad exulting on-sweeping currents caressing the dipping sedge-leaves and bushes and mossy stones, swirling in pools, dividing against little flowery islands, breaking gray and white here and there, ever rejoicing, yet with deep solemn undertones recalling the ocean—the brave little bird ever beside them, singing with sweet human tones among the waltzing foam-bells, and like a blessed evangel explaining God’s love. And the Pilot Peak Ridge, its long withdrawing slopes gracefully modeled and braided, reaching from climate to climate, feathered with trees that are the kings of their race, their ranks nobly marshaled to view, spire above spire, crown above crown, waving their long, leafy arms, tossing their cones like ringing bells—blessed sun-fed mountaineers rejoicing in their strength, every tree tuneful, a harp for the winds and the sun. The hazel and buckthorn pastures of the deer, the sun-beaten brows purple and yellow with mint and golden-rods, carpeted with chamaebatia [an aromatic evergreen shrub], humming with bees.
And the dawns and sunrises and sun downs of these mountain days—the rose light creeping higher among the stars, changing to daffodil yellow, the level beams bursting forth, streaming across the ridges, touching pine after pine, awakening and warming all the mighty host to do gladly their shining day’s work. The great sun-gold noons, the alabaster cloud-mountains, the landscape beaming with consciousness like the face of a god. The sunsets, when the trees stood