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Show 178 original glacial period. Do we devaluate Muir's vision because he is factually limited? No, because the essential spirit of his glacial theory is more important than the accuracy or completeness of his details. Living glaciers meant a living Nature to him, and the spirit of that discovery remains true even if his theory is not perfect. Just as he was blinded by accepting Agassiz's glacial theory, so too he could not escape the language of a limited vision which he inherited from nineteenth century science. Yet his attempt to see clearly and write clearly is apparent when we realize that he began to transcend the limiting and false language he had inherited. Even when I follow his errors of expression, I am assuming that his books, and behind them, his life, have an intrinsic coherence. Further, when I write this book about Muir, I must assume that wild Nature, the source of his writing, is the same source that I value, and largely for the same reasons. Nature remains the sacred text from which men take their wholeness. Like Muir, I write a flawed book. I know that Muir's thinking was more complex than any version I can present in these pages, yet I can only embody the serious meditation I have done about him in a book. And I am reminded by Professor Krieger of the consequences of giving up the sacredness of Nature, when writing itself becomes an escape for Man, who "must create forms beyond Nature's 'given' if he is, even momentarily, to be more than a driven and determined thing, a part of Nature's 'given' himself." Humanists like Ezra Pound and Murray Krieger replace |