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Show 44. practical nor rational, they seemed to suit him. When we arrived at Yosemite however, we had Muir's example of the right way to live in the mountains. At issue here is a way of life which has transcended Muir's time, and has come to be an archetypal experience. Muir's way of going light in the mountains is likely to remain a long time in the American imagination. And at present it seems that many will follow his practice. I think it is interesting to explore the way in which Muir' s wanderings began to take direction in Yosemite. Each generation will have to rediscover Muir's method of study, and perhaps what I have to offer here is the way one man found the Way- Those who have followed Muir have sometimes been more scrupulous to the details gleaned from his narratives than they have been to the principles which led to his style of travel in the mountains. Others I have met learned his Way without reading his books. What, finally, is important or essential? What does it mean to go light? One is tempted to construct an imaginary dialogue: Interviewer: "John, why did you stop carrying that plant press, and why?" Answer: "When I discovered I could learn more by studying the plant where it was." This would be factually wrong, since Muir continued to collect plant specimens and send them to botanists and friends, particularly to Asa Gray, director of Harvard's herbarium. Nevertheless it is true to the spirit of Muir's changing |