OCR Text |
Show 91 the depths of a glacier. In terms of this controversy, one can understand why Muir wanted to stay in the bergshrund longer. Time was needed for complete study, the more time the better. Entering the glacial womb, Muir was also dramatizing the limits of empirical science. He knew there would always be hidden secrets in Nature, that finally the empirical method could not take him infinitely back into history or the nature of creation. Even in the glacial womb, Muir had not plumbed the depths of geological history. As we will see, the formative influence of the structure of rocks would create an impenetrable barrier to an empirical scientist who wished to explain the mechanical causes of the Sierran landscape. But there is also a spiritual resonance to Muir's journey into the glacial womb. He was drawn into the world of ice by more than science. If it was a journey to the origin of Yosemite's landscape, it was also a journey into Muir's mind. Indeed, the necessarily brief confrontation between a man and the unclothed reality of wilderness is mentioned in most of Muir's narratives. He always underlined the fact that he needed to return to civilization for bread, and portrayed himself as always in shirtsleeves, whether in a blizzard on Shasta, down in Hetch Hetchy.- or in the glacial womb. This was not poor preparation; rather, Muir was attempting to show the limits of any man's experience. Intense unmediated contact with the wilderness was at best temporary. He could not be close to the ice for too long without becoming part of it. |