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Show 440 What he believed has, I hope, been made abundantly clear. In this chapter, I am going to ask how he planned to accomplish some of his aims. What may be most significant is the style he adopted during this period, a style which embodied his own ethical standards. What kind of role could he take with good conscience, now that the time seemed right for creating real embodiments of the Utopian realm, the wild America given to him in his youth? How radical a stance could he take, while still being effective? How much of a politician could he become without destroying or effacing his own integrity? How far could he go in appealing to prejudices and assumptions of Americans which he did not share? This kind of edge-work was harrowing for Muir, yet it led to his greatest victories. Much of the wild lands and Parks in America which we hold dear today we owe to Muir, and owe to his own self-effacing work. The canyon of the Tuolumne that I walk through with pleasure cost him much pain, and was born of compromise. Even though I must drop down into that canyon by walking down a long series of switchbacks and begin my journey at the river above Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, I catch glimpses of the dark waters impounded below. Even though I walk upstream next to a singing river toward Tuolumne Meadows, nearly empty of tourists on this November weekday, I must think about the dark waters below. In other words, the story I have to tell is neither tragic nor comic. Muir neither realized his dreams nor lost them altogether. He simply did the best he could under the circumstances. |
