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Show 356 "the most sublime feature in all Yosemite," was below one's feet. Men often lost their proper perspective when standing too high in a landscape. He scrutinized closely the behavior of two men he guided to the summit of Mount Whitney. They became caricatures in his article, types familiar to most mountain guides. He wrote about them with a subdued and ironic sense of humor. Bayley, the inveterate whooper, didn't think of consequences, frequently lamented the absence of danger, but nearly killed his fellow climber by loosening and dropping a rock. Washburn, the young student, was cautious, undemonstrative, and wiser. He climbed the mountain "like a child clinging timidly to its mother." To Muir, the determination and persistence of a Washburn was preferable to the rash enthusiasm of a Bayley, who said he "could or at least would follow" Muir anywhere. Muir noted Washburn's "becoming satisfaction," as he said on the summit, "I'm the first and only student visitor to this highest land in North America." All men who climbed the mountains should behave as students and visitors, Muir thought; Washburn's care and decorum were appropriate. As is clear from his journal, Muir's chief concern as a guide, in the mountains with friends, or in the pages of the Bulletin, was to help People forget themselves, escape from the anthropocentric Poisons of the cities, and live in the eternal moments which could be theirs in Nature. |
