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Show 104. I find in practice that what journal entries he left are less enlightening about the process than are his later narratives, which begin to analyze what he had received. This was also true of his baptism in Yosemite Falls on Fern Ledge. It was only in 1890 that he began to consider fully what had happened to him on that night when he was immersed in the power of water. So too, his climb of Mount Ritter began to take form in his mind, but only took literary form in 1880. It is this narrative, first called "In the Heart of the California Alps," and later "A Near View of the High Sierra," which explores the process of awakening and enlightenment. Thus it remains the seminal text, just as it becomes the central chapter of The Mountains of California. Without it, much of what Muir thought in the seventies would lack true and immediate significance to a modern reader. This is his best narrative, and deserves, I hope, the kind of close reading I will give it. I believe it is a poem, and its literary structure is comparable to more modern narratives which we have learned to praise, like Hemingway's "Big Two Hearted River," or Faulkner's "The Bear." Like those narratives, it is about the power of the wilderness and its ability to awaken a heightened consciousness in men. A NEAR VIEW ON THE NORTH FACE OF MOUNT RITTER The walk to Ritter was the journey out of self, the wandering toward the center of the world which would later |