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Show 224 eating the apple, and against becoming too wild. But Muir thought we might return to the same wild Garden of Eden by the same door we used to leave it. His juxtaposition of sublime storm and wild apples tells us much about his attempt to absorb Thoreau's argument and carry it further into the wilderness, further into the West. So when Muir first attempted to conclude his essay, he found himself using Thoreau's language: Civilization needs pure wildness & is beginning to seek it but it is not yet ready to appreciate the best beauties of the lower Sierras, any more than that of storms. Their closely printed scriptures & still small voices, are not heard or seen. One immediately notices the diction and themes of Thoreau in the draft conclusion. Particularly, Thoreau carefully defined his term, wildness, in "Walking:" The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. . . . From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. . . . I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. Later in his essay- Thoreau argued, "A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it." And finally, "The most alive is the wildest." |