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Show 382. from the wild gale and tempestuous roar: They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for every feature is d i s t i n c t , and the whole is seen in i t s r i g h t proportions, like a well-hung picture on a p a r l o r wall. Muir himself, in c r e a t i n g t h i s "picture on a parlor wall," was responsible for the diminished sense of Nature's glory it provided. The unstated lesson of the essay in i t s e l f was that an attempt to describe a sublime scene must diminish the natural glory, in order that a c u l t i v a t e d reader might see its beauty. Even while he described the "chief features of the picture as seen from the forest window," even while he asked that the reader mark the l i n e s and t e x t u r e s of the scene, he revealed his impatience with an a e s t h e t i c view which required foreground, middleground, and background. For him, i t was not so important to view the scene, as to be in_ i t : . . . i t would s t i l l be a surpassingly glorious [view] were the whole of the fore and middle grounds, with their domes and f o r e s t s , o b l i t e r a t e d altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners, and the blue sky on which they are painted. "Snow Banners" i s a nice enough piece u n t i l one thinks about the Muir who had always believed that the only true experience of Nature required g e t t i n g out of one's self and into Nature. On a l a t e f a l l afternoon, after the f i r s t storm, I wander out through the h i l l s near June Lake, California. The aspens |
