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C H A P T E R F I V E John Muir on the Range of Light Whether these picture-sheets are to vanish like fallen leaves or go to friends like letters, matters not much; for little can they tell to those who have not themselves seen similar wildness, and like a language have learned it. J O H N M U I R , My First Summer in the Sierra I am sitting on the thick trunk of a fallen incense cedar spanning Yosemite Creek. As the sound of the creek water trickles up from below, the roar of Yosemite Falls washes over me from above. I am amid a thick forest of ponderosa pine, incense cedar, alder, black oak, willow, and fern, all growing from the jumbled layers of round river-stone and rich sediment deposited by the ever changing courses of the creek’s many channels. The creek begins just to the north, at the foot of Yosemite Falls, and then cascades through boulders to wind its way in braided channels to this secluded spot. As I write in my journal, a mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus, silently materializes out of the thick underbrush, stares at me for a few minutes with dark, blinking eyes and, with a flick of the tail, walks daintily off through the woods. Sitting above the creek like this reminds me of what John Muir’s cabin must have been like with its miniature hand-dug stream flowing under and through the middle of the “shanty made of Sugar Pine shingles.” Muir describes this unique feature of his hand-built home in his unfinished memoirs , explaining, “From the Yosemite Creek, near where it first gathers its ............................................................................................... beaten waters at the foot of the fall, I dug a small ditch and brought a stream into the cabin, entering at one end and flowing out the other with just current enough to allow it to sing and warble in low, sweet tones, delightful at night while I lay in bed” (1923, 1:208). Nearby, a plaque placed by the Sierra Club commemorates Muir’s cabin site. Much debate exists about whether its placement is accurate, but in this area of multiply braided and constantly moving stream channels, precise accuracy is impossible. On the banks of the small stream meandering beneath my perch, I have found several masonry abutments. Perhaps they are from the sawmill where Muir worked, perhaps from his cabin itself, or more likely from a bridge built quite some time after Muir’s departure. Regardless of whether I sit on the exact cabin site or not, I am surely within fifty feet of Muir’s front doorstep. I cannot help but imagine what his life must have been like here, especially as I envy his choice of location. On the northern side of the valley, this area gets the most sun, enjoys the ever changing tones of the Yosemite cataracts, and is located in the dappled shadows of the thick forest’s edge, near a wide, grassy meadow. Not only was Muir’s cabin surrounded by natural beauty, but the house was also pervaded by it. He describes this porous connection to the natural world in detail: In the spring the common pteris ferns pushed up between the joints of the [floor] slabs, two of which, growing slender like climbing ferns on account of the subdued light, I trained on threads up the sides and over my window in front of my writing desk in an ornamental arch. Dainty little tree frogs occasionally climbed the ferns and made fine music in the night, and common frogs came in with the stream and helped to sing with the Hylas and the warbling, tinkling water. (208) As I sit, writing and thinking about Muir’s life here, I am forced to keep up a constant drumming of mad slaps and smacks as voracious and innumerable mosquitoes descend upon me like a pack of ravenous wolves. Why did these feisty little vampires escape Muir’s usually precise attention to detail? I wonder . Perhaps it was because he seldom spent time here in the summer or the longer and thicker clothes worn during that time than now. Or perhaps he was just too damn tough to notice them, I think, recalling how one of my field classes complained about his use of words like saunter and ramble to describe difficult and strenuous mountaineering ascents. 92 : Reading the Trail — [3.22.51.241] Project MUSE (2024...

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