| OCR Text |
Show 563 demands, in this case that he write at least one letter a year. After this visit, young Muir recognized that his commerce was with Nature, not with men. He dismissed the telepathic incident as a distraction from his past, and stepped into his future. He finally understood that "the natural and common is more truly marvelous and mysterious than the so-called supernatural." And so he returned to the mountains. Though he continued to wonder whether it was natural for him to prefer the company of rocks, flowers, trees, and animals to that of his own species, he also began to see that "The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar, full of humanity." He chose to ignore the values of civilization, to the best of his ability. He would return to the wilderness, knowing that "Wherever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God's wild fields, we find more than we seek." Thus far had the pilgrim progressed toward eternal truth. I have said that First Summer is an honest book, and I believe that the unresolved conflicts faced by young Muir in his musings are signs of this honesty. When the older Muir Placed his younger self in a more complex world than he might have wanted, when he kept reminding the reader that civilization is constantly piercing and breaking into the wilderness, when he continued to reveal the large social forces which were so capable of crushing not just the tender flowers of the glacial meadow, but also the soul of his younger self, then he was |
