OCR Text |
Show 332. prairie, flowers sprinkled in the grass, but grass in the flowers; not as in Cuba, flowers piled upon flowers, heaped and gathered into glowing masses, but flowers side by side, raceme to raceme. On the other hand, Twenty Hill Hollow was at that very moment making its transition from land of flowers to land of sheep. When Muir went to work there for Smokey Jack, it became the scene of his disenchantment with the romantic and pastoral business of sheepherding. So the meaning of Twenty Hill Hollow was at least twofold. On the one hand, the land itself was edenic, a botanist's paradise. On the other hand, his own work involved him in the destruction of that plant eden. No wonder he was ambivalent when he attempted to describe his own state of mind while living there. His joy in the flowers and his disillusionment with the industry of sheep herding were indissolubly mixed, one coloring the other in his memory. In the summer of 1868, he was still able to write with enthusiasm to his brother David: The sheep, wild as antelopes, would become ungovernable, and a sort of wholesale sheep hunt would commence in which deeds of romantic daring might be witnessed in the heaving surging masses of men and mutton equal to those of kinghts of old in tournament. But by the end of February, 1869, his early romantic illusions about sheep were passing, though he still tried to write in a Pastoral vein to his sister, referring to Old King David who |