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Show 151. islets to emerge from the glacial sea into the azure mountain sea, and ere its new-born brightness was marred by storms, must have presented a glorious spectacle, dispersed light like a crystal island over the snowy expanse in which it stood alone. The moraine at the base is planted with a very equal growth of manzanita. Baptism, birth from one environment to another, the sea of ice replaced by the sea of vegetation, all suggested that Starr King was alive. This is most obvious in his earliest draft of the Studies. Muir loved the domes for their wholeness and because they suggested that the landscape evolved through an organic process of ripening and growth - this despite the eroding power of glaciers whose roles were only apparently descructive. If the last chapter of the Studies concluded, "In all this sublime fulfillment there was no upbuilding, but a universal razing and dismantling, and of this every mountain and valley is the record and monument," this could only be understood if the reader realized that such an evolutionary process merely separated weak and dying rock from live and growing forms. The dead rock would be redeemed later as soil, but in the concentric exfoliating granite of the great domes, Muir could see a blossom-like structure, an unfolding of great buds of rock. Basic to this view was his refusal to be stopped by paradox, and the patience to see that the tension and apparent strife were part of a larger harmony. "Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes fairest harmony," said Heraclitus, and "The hidden harmony is better |