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Show 98 It meant finding yourself in a place, by recognizing and following the forces which had created it. Despite the risk of annihilation, Muir had found himself not through his ability to change or take dominion over Nature, but in his ability to follow her laws. As he moved through and took joy from the creation, he became a dynamic force, even as he knew Nature was. The infinite number of lives, the infinite set of possible awakenings, the myriad possibilities of wilderness, the lacelike fabric of existence. Muir never meant to suggest that there was only one way. He meant only to say that the wilderness offered such an infinite variety of possibilities to men, that it offered so many new lives. Every human, no matter what his disposition, would find his own way, if only he looked for it. A man could wade into the holy stream of the Merced as it flowed through Yosemite, or could baptize himself in the irised spray at the base of a thousand waterfalls, or he could seek the origins of the landscape. Somewhere, if he wandered freely enough, he would enter the flow and begin to take his strength from the fountains. Muir knew that his own way required tracing the flow to its origins, but it was perhaps enough if most people simply immersed themselves in the flow at all. Then they would know how important the fountains were, and would learn to inhabit the earth. He never ran out of examples. Previously unpublished incidents appeared right up to the end of his life - riding an avalanche, rocking in an earthquake, baptizing himself in Yosemite Falls, wandering in the Sequoia groves. He continued |