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Show 206 Studies. He had to account for his own spiritual communion with the wilderness. He wrote in his journal as he returned from San Francisco after finishing the Studies, "Winter blows the fog out of our heads. Nature is not a mirror for the moods of the mind." This was the foundation for Muir's belief that Man depended on Nature, not as a projection of his own mind, but as a creator of healthy mind. He wanted to blow the fog out of the public consciousness. Jeanne Carr knew that the best method for accomplishing this task was not preaching science. Her solution was for Muir to learn to depict Nature for the public, to study the craft of picturesque writing, as he had studied Nature. As early as 1866, she had written, "You are a true lover of Nature. I want to know you, dear friend, many years hence when you shall have a true deep love for art, also." She tried to "broaden" his outlook, even while she was working to get his essays published: "Try your pen on some humans too. Get sketches at least. Then you will have to put your scientific convictions into crystalline prose for other uses." Muir did start to pay more attention to matters of artifice, and became less self-conscious, but even two years after the King Sequoia letter, he remained reticent. On Christmas of 1872, he confessed, "Book-making frightens me, because it demands so much artifi-cialness and retrograding." He contrasted the pure light of the mountains to the unsatisfactory state of language: You tell me that I must be patient and reach out and grope |