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Show 64. and structure, I climbed about it, comparing it with its neighbors. . . . He could never call this kind of occupation work, in fact it seemed more like pure pleasure. Even in an essay entitled "Exploration of the Great Tuolumne Canon," he refused to distinguish between the activities normally denoted by the words "explore," "study," "wander," "follow," and "drift." He continued to wonder as he wrote in his journal, whether his "methodless rovings" and "lawless wanderings" would advance him along the path of "grave science." But there had always been a central assumption behind his personal style of mountain travel and mountain atudy. His life was predicated on the Emersonian dictum: "We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy." This had been the rationale for all of nineteenth century science. But even Emerson had divided his investigation of Nature into the kinds of truths which separate disciplines yielded, while Muir wished to integrate all disciplines into his study. One might ask how much the order of things might satisfy for one man, in one place, at one time. Muir wanted it all, and as his studies began to take direction from the ice scratches and boulders, as he began to trace back the soils and waters to their fountains, he believed that he had found the Way. Still, he knew that the order of things was deep, and that man was shallow, that the |
