| OCR Text |
Show 480. the mountains. In a letter to his wife he contrasted his own outfit to that of Lukens; but he did not refuse the trout Lukens fed him, and probably he also ate his part of the marmot served by the party of women who called themselves the Plumduffers. There is good reason to believe that his own rigorous standards for the "right manners of the wilderness" had been tempered with regard to others, gradually during the eighties and nineties. First of all, a letter to his eldest daughter Wanda in 1884 was a delightfully humane and humorous account of his wife's difficulties in adjusting to Yosemite. He saw first-hand how the strong healthy woman he loved could become fearful, disoriented, and uncomfortable in what he thought was a garden Park. He learned more of the same with Robert Underwood Johnson. And so by 1895 he seemed particularly enthusiastic about young people and the "girl mountaineers" who represented a "hopeful beginning." He learned what happened to people who did not have the "University of the Wilderness" as a part of their early education, and was pleased to see the positive effects such an education had on those who could acquire it. The next year, 1896, when he met Gifford Pinchot while travelling with the National Forestry Commission, I suspect Muir took an immediate liking to the young man, precisely because Pinchot was willing to sleep outside and accommodate himself to the wilderness. Though Pinchot hardly was likely to appreciate Muir's idea of "right manners of the wilderness," |
