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Show 113. an archetypal mountain for Muir, a fountain peak, as he called it, and must be seen as the center of the earth. When he arrived at the summit of Mount Ritter, he had arrived at the right place and at the right moment. He had come to the place of origin. To know what he saw there, we must know something about the special significance of Ritter for Muir, for he thought of it as a singular peak, not only because of his awakening, but because it was a holy mountain and had great symbolic significance. Though he did not attempt to describe the views from the summits of Whitney, Rainier, or indeed any other peak he climbed, his essay on the climb of Ritter included a thorough and inspired view of the landscape. Why did he know this place would be special, before he had arrived on its summit? Mount Ritter became the archetypal mountain first of all because of its geological significance. Like Shasta, it was a stark peak, and stood alone. Comparing Shasta to Whitney, for instance, he saw that "the former is a colossal cone rising in solitary grandeur and might well be regarded an an object of religious worship; the latter is one of the many peaks of an irregular and fragmentary form." So too, Ritter was the "noblest mountain of the chain" because of its "commanding individuality." Ritter, like Shasta, and the Matterhorn in Europe, was a dark mountain, and nourished a number of glaciers. Though he recorded in his journal that "the glaciers of Ritter number six together," he reported in "Living Glaciers" that it nourished five, and his topographical drawing showed these |