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Show V. same, no matter whether they were on the rim of the Grand Canyon or in Yosemite Valley. I hoped it wouldn't be true here. After all, the building itself had a rich history. For the past few winters my friends Anne and Chas had wintered in it, achieving the life which John Muir had longed for during his First Summer. Many of my friends had lived there at one time or another. And the meadows themselves had a rich human history. Here was the scene of John Muir's baptism into the Sierra. Here too was the site of the first Sierra Club Outing. Here was the place where I had been introduced over twenty years ago to the wonders of the Sierra. Carl Sharsmith, the most important teacher I had in those summer days, was still working as a Naturalist. He would be present at the Visitor's Center. I also knew several of the people who had planned the new exhibits. I respected them. They were young seasonal Naturalists who had learned from Carl, the archetypal Tuolumne Naturalist. But the Visitor's Center was a disappointment. Certainly the building itself had been cleaned and painted. The new exhibit cases were professionally done, and the large canvas banners with quotations from Muir's writings provided some food for thought. But they had been selected only for their superficial reference to Tuolumne, not because they had somethinc special to teach. I thought little of the many color photographs which were so unnecessary, since the scenes they depicted were available in Nature, right outside the door. By far the most upsetting part of the exhibit was the set of trays which contained "natural objects" like pine cones, rocks, deer horns, |