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Show 554. likely, and is contradicted by the few remaining early drafts of the book. For one thing, the narrative is organized thematically. Crucial passages are heavily revised and worked over in one manuscript that remains. Significant structuring episodes are added or elaborated. The journal also contradicts certain facts. Muir's progress toward understanding the glacial history of the Sierra was certainly not so far advanced in 1869 as the book suggests. And he was not yet committed to a long stay in the Sierra; at the end of that summer he seriously considered moving on to South America. All of this simply suggests that the book is carefully crafted. Like Walden, it telescopes the actual experience of several summers. Late in his life, Muir accepted his kinship with Thoreau, calling himself "a self appointed inspector of gorges, gulches, and glaciers." Although we may well believe that Muir's colleague, the shepherd Billy, expressed his ignorant and selfish views of an employee's responsibility toward his employer on the Fourth of July, it is a little harder to take literally the fact that ripe summer appeared that year on July First. Though First Summer is certainly an honest and truthful book, it is also narrated with all the skill that a novelist might muster. Like the artist of the city of Kouroo in Walden, Muir knew "The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful." He was right; he was minting the gold of his youth. So it is possible to learn a great deal about what the old Muir thought of his former self |
