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Show 100, years were not a temporary retirement l i k e Thoreau's, and were not simply an i n i t i a t o r y period. Perhaps i t would be impossible to live the l i f e of the wilderness unless one were committed to i t fully. Or one might argue that Muir's l a t e r years would be patterned through a kind of periodic cycling through the wilderness. He had to return to the mountains often, whenever he was in danger of being degraded by s o c i e t y . Each time that meant repeating the painful t r a n s i t i o n of "A Geologist's Winter Walk." It is true that one's re-immersion into the wilderness was as dramatic, r a d i c a l , and painful an experience as the f i r st baptism, as Muir suggested in many n a r r a t i v e s . But the prospect of a future without wilderness was more frightening. One's glacial eye did become dimmed, though there was only one light, and a man had only one l i f e. |