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Show 404 speaking of him as a "pseudo-naturalist," and accusing him of cutting live trees in Yosemite Valley in the early seventies. As will be seen, making Muir represent the wilderness put a heavy burden on him personally. Soon those whose interest was impinged on by Park and Forest movements vented their spleen on Muir personally. Johnson's memoirs indicate that he had so accepted his illusion, his myth of Muir, that it became a reality. When we see the first meeting of these two men through Johnson's eyes, we see in fact the images they were creating of themselves, as they courted each other ' s favors. Johnson came to San Francisco looking for someone to write material on what he thought of as the romantic gold-hunting period in California. Because Muir did not see the gold rushes in California, Nevada, or Alaska as romantic, the two men's expectations were conflicting. As it turned out, Johnson got his articles, but not from Muir. Muir, he saw, was another kind of beast altogether. Here began the parable of the preacher and the politician. When Muir arrived in the wilderness of the Palace Hotel, he played his role to the hilt: "I can't make my way through these confounded artificial canons. There is nothing here to tell you where to go. Now, if you were up in the Sierra, every tree and mound and scratch on the cliff would give you your direction. Everything there is plain as a signpost, but here, how is one to know?" This innocent naturalist, lost in the city, is both fictional |
