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Show 142. CHAPTER IV: THE TAO OF GEOLOGY Muir's vision of the Sierra was not fixed and permanent, but as fluid as the landscape he had absorbed. The waterfalls of Hetch Hetchy, the glacier on Red Mountain, the glorious ocean of mountains he had seen from Ritter: all of these he had absorbed into his soul. His fascination with the dynamic geological agents tells us much about him. Muir's Nature was all one, but constantly expanded and could not be seen or comprehended in one place. Indeed the term "comprehend" is unsatisfactory. Nature could not be seized, taken hold of. It eluded any kind of circumscribing. So Muir ran on and on through the 1870's, further from Yosemite and deeper into the Sierra, farther from the center of his world, out into the glaciers of Alaska by the end of the decade. All because he wanted to understand his home in Yosemite, to arrive where he started and know the place for the first time. That is the |
