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Show 116. COSMIC VISION As he described the panorama around Ritter, facing south, west, north, and east by turns, he seemed to be describing four separate landscapes. To the south was a "sublime wilderness of mountains . . . peak beyond peak, swelling higher. ..." To the west the landscape spread in flowing undulations of granite, lakes, meadows, and forests, toward the hazy Central Valley and blue mountains of the coast. In the north was the Sierra Crown, the peaks surrounding Tuolumne Meadows. To the east were the Owens and Mono Basins. Just as four separate landscapes spread "map-like" from Ritter, so too, four separate rivers began their courses from fountains, The headwaters of the San Joaquin, Owens, Tuolumne, and Merced Rivers were clustered around his cosmic perch. From this central mountain, axis mundi, the real was unveiled. As Muir's eye roved around the vast expanse, he recognized that he saw not four static views, but a harmonious sequence. The territory was not a map, but a manifestation of flow: Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. . . . Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here |