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Show 189. To classify valleys as one might trees is no small task, particularly since "The greatest obstacle in the way of reading the history of Yosemite valleys is not its complexity or obscurity, but simply the magnitude of the characters in which it is written." Muir solved this problem by climbing up above the valley to a vantage where the harmonies could be seen, where he received the wider viewpoint Asa Gray suggested as the aim of classification. On its surface, this might appear to be an argument for aesthetic distance, but taking Muir's description of Yosemite valleys as temples, one sees that the point of view is not distant at all, but rather that of the builder. Because we are overawed when we stand on the floor of a temple, we should climb up and look down on it from its walls, see it as the builder saw it, take as nearly as possible a God's eye view. Then, if we look carefully at the rock forms, we will see that "The abundance, therefore, of lofty angular rocks, instead of rendering Yosemite unique, is the characteristic which unites it most intimately with all the other similarly situated valleys in the range." Such a cosmic view gives the death blow to catastrophic theory, when it shows that Yosemite is not a unique phenomenon, but rather one of many Sierran temples, a member of a large family. They are all different, of course; some are produced by three, some four, some five major glaciers, but their features are similar and all suggest larger harmonies. |