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Show 235. There are a few of us, but not many. What seems clearer is that Muir could only expect his readers to recognize the possibility of the wilderness, if they would only open themselves up to it, even in more moderate activities. In fact, that comes to be the definition of wilderness, as it gradually takes shape in Muir's Stormy Sermons; it is the realm of possible insight. Its meanings are infinite, and since it is all of one piece, every experience partakes of more of it than the explorer can tell. All he can report are isolated visions and how he arrived at them. Perhaps Muir knew, though he never stated it explicitly, that the audience would be satisfied - as perhaps Emerson was when he added Muir to a list he kept, entitled "My Men" - simply in its awareness that there was someone out there climbing the high mountains and getting their good tidings, that someone was following the ideal life, which was not for everybody. A chance for Muir to rejoice in the glorious might be for the uninitiated an occasion for fear, terror.- and later sorrow. Muir himself was not born to the out-of-doors gospel. In Thousand Mile Walk, he guiltily reminded himself that he had promised his mother or friends that he would not lie out-of- doors if he could help it, and then found excuses for doing what his mother would censure. Yet when he did sleep out, he felt anxious and lonely. He needed to enforce the discipline upon himself. Later he wrote in his journal, about the course °f his life, Not like my taking the veil - no solemn abjuration out for a walk, and finally |