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Show 538. embraced the new i d e n t i t y he received when he went to the wilderness. He abandoned d e l i b e r a t e l y most of the ideology which the immigrant had used as a defense against the wild new land. Family, r e l i g i o n , c i v i l i z a t i o n : Muir t r i e d to rid himself of a l l a r t i f i c i a l encumbrances. And so in his youth he had hoped to become s e n s i t i v e to a new self which might in time germinate into a new s o c i e t y , based not on the old European or New England r e l a t i o n s of men to each other, but on a new relationship of a l l men toward the wonderful p o s s i b i l i t i es inherent in the North American continent. This was the Utopian significance of California, and t h i s ideology was at bottom the set of values which had been developed by natives like Ishi, long before white men had seen the coast. Though Muir never became f u l l y aware of the kinship he shared with Indians, he did know t h a t his consciousness was new and old, revolutionary and e t e r n a l. Even a poor Scottish immigrant l i k e him could attune himself to the song of Nature in the New World. But he must have had c e r t a i n advantages in his past. What were they and how had he made the most of them? He began to reconsider his boyhood and youth, in l i g h t of what he had become. And his increased tendency toward introspection was linked to an acceptance of what he had become. He was a writer. Men called him a poet of Nature, and perhaps he was, but he was also a scientist. They were inseparable, and he wondered if some influences in h i s early youth had allowed these to merge in him, producing a new consciousness, a new s e n s i b i l i t y. |