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Show 351. a most hopeful and significant sign of the time, indicating at least the beginning of our return to nature, for going to the mountains is going home. Since he wanted to channel this flow into truly productive experiences, he had much to say about how a tourist might get the most from his excursion. Below this was his real strategy, I think. People would resist the destruction of places they had visited. So also one might see why Muir directed his letters toward the upper middle class who could contemplate a trip to Bethesda. These people could become influential allies, as the children of Tar Flat could not. Later, when a battle was won for a new Park, Muir would usually see it as a victory for the trees, not for the people. Tourism of any kind was a development which Muir would applaud, during these years. He continued, however, to recommend a pastoral sort of tourism, appropriate to the view of Nature as garden, not wilderness. I would advise sitting from morning till night under some willow bush on the river bank where there is a wide view. This will be 'doing the valley' far more effectively than riding along trails in constant motion from point to point. Muir's kind of recreation did not require strenuous exercise, and for good reason. He did not want to encourage those activities in which men,tested their powers over Nature. Although he wrote an article about the abundance of "wild life |