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Show 15. or listening to lectures on "Principles of Physics or Natural Philosophy Designed for etc ditto;" he used the uninked backs of the pages for penciled notes in Tenaya Canyon. The inked notes were standard academic fare, but in his penciled notes he thought about "the chemistry of mountains," taking what the nineteenth century would have called a wild and mystical view of Nature, inappropriate for scientists. "Im breathing the granite again. The mtns. are getting back into my blood," he wrote. This was the perspective which could be ascribed to women: We know ourselves to be made from this earth. We know this earth is made from our bodies. For we see ourselves. And we are nature. We are nature seeking nature. We are nature with a concept of nature. And this was what Jeanne Carr had been trying to tell him after his accident when she wrote, "He gave you the eye within the eye, to see in all objects the realized ideas of His mind." He would have to use not just his eye, but all his senses, to absorb the spirit of the mountains. One might also recall that Jeanne Carr was a member of the committee which awarded Muir the prize for his inventions at the State Fair. As she continued to interest herself in his progress when he came to the University, one day she visited his room with her young sons. One particular device caught her attention there: But to me the most captivating piece of mechanism was |
