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Show 212. upon all the doors and lintels of art factories and manufactories of the whole world!! etc., etc. This was not the principle that Muir wished to follow in his own writing. He wished to be as wild and immoderate as Nature. In practice he had to compromise. MOVING MOUNTAINS Glorious as are these rocks and waters arrayed in storm robes, or chanting rejoicing in every-day dress, they are still more glorious when rare weather conditions meet to make them sing. . . . Weather in the mountains is different from the weather that comes to the lowlands. There is something about the mountains that makes any kind of storm more real. And in winter, the season of weather for the Sierra, the mountains come alive. When Muir spent his third winter in Yosemite in 1871 and 1872, he received much of the reality he loved. A grand flood in mid-December was followed by the glorious earthquake in the predawn hours of March 26. The earthquake offered Muir the most profound experience. Apocalyptic imagery indeed! A revelation. Did this earthquake announce the opening of the sixth seal, when "every mountain and island were moving out of their places?" By the end of that day Muir had begun to write the good news of the earthquake to Emerson, using the occasion to invite |