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Show 336. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. Even a moderate traveller could hope to find his own Nature near his own home. But the hollow did not represent extravagance to Muir, who needed larger fences to leap. Although the strategy of such an essay is clear enough, there is a significant difference between the aspirations of the narrator and the reader. Muir's awkwardness in the face of this difference was apparent when he blunted the personal significance of his encounter with the eagle, also in his clumsy use of pronouns, and in quick transitions between private and public points of view. His conclusion, written as a direct address to the reader, meant one thing to Muir, and another to his traveller, since the lonely traveller did not feel that going to the mountains was going home. The reader, for whom Nature was not home, still felt out of doors, and was not as extravagant as Thoreau*s cow. This barrier to communication would return as Muir began, in the same year, to attack the pastoral "improvements" of Yosemite Valley. If one looks at the photographs taken in the late 1860's, early 1870's, and later during the State administration of the Valley, then one realizes that these scenes might well have been taken by a cultured American audience to be perfectly and pleasantly pastoral. The rail fences, haystacks, orchards, and other "improvements" would be received |