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Show 540. after his wife's death in 1905. Though he l e f t no written remembrance of her, her death marked a major t r a n s i t i o n in his life. For several years he wrote about nothing, and immersed himself in a study of the p e t r i f i e d forests of Arizona as a kind of consolation. When he returned to his writing he knew he was beginning a new phase, turning a new page. S t i l l, he was ambivalent. When Century had published an early version of Stickeen as "Adventures with a Dog and Glacier," he considered their t i t l e "vulgar" and "catchy." He d i d n ' t want simply to tell tales of adventure. When Johnson suggested that his further contributions be "nature and l i f e in about equal proportions," Muir balked again, answering that they would "be a l l nature - animated nature." But he had come to think seriously about the l i f e he had lived, and in Story of My Boyhood and Youth, Stickeen, and My F i r s t Summer in the Sierra, he began to investigate the values he developed in the years before he s e t t l e d down. Somehow, Scotland, Wisconsin, the Sierra, and Alaska, were braided together by the green thread of his l i f e . And those worlds of his youth were rapidly being l o s t , despite his best efforts for Parks and Wilderness. His autobiography might be a means of making a plea for the Nature to which he was devoted. Perhaps he might influence a new generation of young Americans, and then his values might find ascendancy after the conservationists had passed away. That, of course, is what has happened. The Muir who has been so i n f l u e n t i a l on my generation i s the Muir the old man |