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Show 331. made up of a collection of "scenes of wonder and c u r i o s i t y ," Muir argued that Yosemite was but one s l i c e , more concentrated, but s t i l l a part of the whole. The Central Valley was a "garden wild," not a "sort of Sahara" to be traversed as quickly as possible; i t was an appropriate part of the gradual ascent to the high mountains. Just as the January spring in the hollow led to spring higher in the Sierra, the "plant gold" of the hollow was the clue to brighter p o s s i b i l i t i e s than Californians envisaged for their State. The "summer flood of t o u r i s t s " passed the Central Valley well a f t e r i t s bloom time, and so took i t to be a desert. No wonder they did not complain when agriculture and sheep herding stripped the bloom from t h e i r lowland valleys. Muir suspected c o r r e c t l y that he was writing an elegy, as he wrote to Jeanne Carr, "Plant gold i s fading from California faster than did her placer gold, and I wanted to save the memory of that which was l a i d upon Twenty H i l l s . " In t h i s and other early a r t i c l e s for t o u r i s t s , he was encouraging v i s i ts to threatened areas. He would use t h i s strategy for the rest of his l i f e . Is there a b e t t e r one? He also had personal reasons for beginning with Twenty Hill Hollow. Muir described with enthusiasm the wealth of flowers in the Central Valley: Florida i s indeed a "land of flowers," but for every flower creature that dwells in i t s most delightsome Places more than a hundred are l i v i n g here. Here, here i s Florida. Here i t i s not as in our great western |
