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Show 566. intelligently to him and also sent him many invaluable books. Rather he attempts to accept the social and economic realities which surrounded him and simply transcends them. He is more innocent than the thirty year old man who came to California in 1868. CREATION'S DAWN Each time young Muir escaped from the sheep camp on an excursion into the wilds, he was furthering his education in the University of the Wilderness. During his botanical June he began to sense the true freedom, the "good practical sort of immortality" implicit in "vast calm, measureless mountain days." On his excursion to the top of Yosemite Falls, he looked down into the "heart of the snowy, chanting throng of comet like streamers," and it was like looking into the depths of the Universe. Over the days that followed this intense, even apocalyptic vision of his own death, pounding in the "death song of Yosemite Creek," he began to hear more clearly the "eternal song of creation." He was immersed in the flow. A rock like South Dome, which had appeared earlier as sculpture, suddenly seemed "full of thought, clothed with living light . . . steadfast in serene strength like a god." On Mount Hoffman, he wakened to the dizzying radiance, "every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator." He became what he beheld. As he sauntered through bogs and gardens, crossed mirrored glacial pavements |
