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Show 352. in the form which hunters call game" in the area of Shasta, and recounted his experiences with a group of hunters, the next week, he had a better way. "Regarding Mount Shasta from a bee point of view," he advised, "if you like hunting there is game in abundance. But better let blood alone and come purely a beeing." By "beeing" he meant, aside from eating honey, the aimless flitting about in flowers and woods. He encouraged more peaceful family activities, not manly sport, and was happy to report that Shasta was "speedily becoming a family resort." So too, he was pleased to see young couples "dabble away their hot holidays in the cool pool" under the falls of Eaton Creek, in the "Yosemite of San Gabriel." This kind of pastoral recreation was an exercise in letting things be, but it would not be able to compete with the Teddy Roosevelt brand of the Strenuous Life which was soon to come. Though he also advertised the virtues of swimming in the Great Salt Lake, skiing near Lake Tahoe, and climbing Mount Whitney, he was greatly concerned lest sacred places become only playgrounds. This attitude was part and parcel with his fear that the mountains and forests would be seen only in dead mathematical terms. Both fears suggest that Muir understood well a real danger, that the tourist would not give himself up to Nature, but would find himself the center of the scene. He had early been suspicious of the highly urban ways of visitors to the Valley, and was particularly troubled by what I might call anthropocentric tourism. When he noticed that tourists seemed obsessed with curious comparisons, when |