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Show 48. for outing gear. During that period, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, we made barefoot and even naked ascents of technical climbs. We fasted in the backcountry, avoided bright clothes, and disdained the tourists and rangers who were all around us. We renounced society and with these material signs we demonstrated to ourselves that we were trying to follow the spirit. And we could always turn to Muir to justify our way of life. Were we right? In this chapter I wish to reevaluate our way, and follow a path which leads back through Muir's own language. ITINERARY John! Were you an itinerant, or did you truly have an itinerary? Muir's answer was a paradoxical "yes" to both questions. When he had left on his Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, he had carefully consulted maps, had planned his route, which led for most of the journey from city to city. His journal indicates that every time he attempted to go cross country he ran into unanticipated, sometimes overwhelming problems. So he frequently stuck to main travelled roads. But in California his route became more radically an escape from cities and civilized routes of travel. Further, where his itinerary in the Walk led downstream to the thick rich life of the tropics, in California he ascended toward the austere alpine environments. Either way he would be following the flow, but in California he became conscious of his direction. |