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Show 232. lacked certain inner resources. Muir could only comfort him, promising that the next day they would go a-Maying, and "all that would be left of the trying night would be a clump of unrelated memories he would tell his children." These memories were not unrelated to Muir, who satirized Jerome's wish for a minister, and Muir even tried to convert the piteous freezing fellow to the out-of-doors gospel. "The snow fell on us not a whit more harshly than warm rain on the grass," Muir said. When they trudged down the next morning to "God's country, as Sisson calls the Chaparrel zone," Muir might have asked, "God's country? Then where had we been?" He had described a kind of journey to the underworld at the top of the world. By participating in the fire and ice history of Shasta he had learned something about the God of Nature, and embodied his theme in the description of the snow itself. He spoke of its lavishness: The marvelous lavishness of the snow can be conceived only by mountaineers. The crystal flowers seemed to touch one another and fairly to thicken the blast. This was the blooming time, the summer of the storm, and never before have I seen mountain cloud flowering so profusely. Winter became a strange summer. He contrasted the snowflowers to the bloom of the manzanita on the lower slopes of the mountain. The climbers were laved, washed, baptized in flowers. This is the final irony of Muir's message. Men appreciate the flowers under their feet, the flowers on the lower flanks of Shasta, but they have great difficulty - Muir included - |