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Show 432 America might make the region a Park only if it wasn't good for anything else. He was tired of compromising his philosophical ideals, just as he was tired of writing advertisements for Parks. There was no such thing as a genteel wilderness, he knew. He wanted the Kings Canyon to remain as wild as it had been in 1873, when he had first wandered in its gardens and groves. And he wanted to be as wild and lawless as he had been in those days, before he had become civilized. It was too late in the century for either possibility. Something was wrong. The process I have narrated represents a devestating consolidation and limitation of aims for Muir. Having accepted certain ground rules, he found himself terribly confined by them. Learning to use the language of the picturesque, even while carefully bending this language to his own uses, had allowed him to achieve a kind of initial success. He was able finally to preserve a good portion of the Yosemite region, though he would see even that diminished during the next twenty-five years. But a closer look at his success reveals a starker picture. The wildest parts would be stripped from the Yosemite Park, including Mount Ritter, the Minarets, and Muir's favorite, Hetch Hetchy. The Kings Canyon region, on the other hand, could not be handled within the conventions Muir had chosen. He had been able to save only those wild places which he revealed as picturesque. He had appealed to the prejudicial standards of his eastern audience, and in the process had reinforced their own limited |