OCR Text |
Show 102. appreciate a "sense of place," not in any mechanical way, but because he felt himself a part of the spiritual wholeness of the Sierra. He might compare himself to Adam in the garden, unfalien and alone. Like Thoreau, he recognized his sacred spiritual state as opposite to the profane. He was cleansed by being converted from conventional or traditional man back into natural man. This was what it meant to be awakened. This is what he meant when he wrote to his brother that he had been baptized three times in one day and had "got religion." The process of baptism or awakening can be seen in narrative accounts of the particularly intense initiation he underwent during this period, but there is some problem in interpreting these narratives, because they were often written at a considerable distance from the actual experience, many years afterward. The significant awakenings that he wrote about were few, including his immersions in the power of Yosemite Falls, at the brink and at Fern Ledge, his ride on an avalanche, his experience of the earthquake, his immersion in the flood storms, and most important, I believe, his climbs of Mount Ritter and Cathedral Peak. I am going to follow his mountaineering narratives because they give the most intense and most complete analysis by Muir of the process of enlightenment. All of these moments had certain elements in common, however. They included physical danger, loss of the sense of self, and increased clarity of vision as a result. When describing these timeless moments, Muir frequently used similar |