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Show 285. Indians he met. As reasoned and rational as his rhetoric might have appeared in "Wild Wool," his unstated allegiance was to the sacred animal, other, whole, complete, and part of its own world. One wonders about the portraits of animals he didn't write in the seventies. Maybe he did write about the alligators, bears, and coyotes, but he never published his work. In the Muir Papers, there is one page of a manuscript about Coyote, in which Muir began to sing the praise of this favorite. He never published this essay, though he once promised to send his thoughts on "poor persecuted, twice damned Coyote" to Jeanne Carr. Perhaps the climate of opinion about predators was so extreme that he dared not raise his voice for fear that he would produce an effect opposite to the one he intended. Perhaps America was not ready for a discussion of sacred animals in 1875. But Muir kept his peace through those years, and when he did begin to write about animals in his last years, the results were disappointing. I think there is something deeper and more seriously flawed in Muir's own vision. His sheep, squirrels, and deer were all herbivores, and dainty feeders at that. He preferred for himself to eat only bread in the mountains. He seemed essentially frightened of looking too closely into the hunter in Nature, or the hunter in himself. He believed that meat soiled. Indeed he did not want to think of any struggle in Nature at all. He even seemed put off by the appearance of the Sierran juniper which reminded him with its rock like |