Monday with Muir: Nature's Loveliness

...I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. John Muir

Not to perpetuate a culture informed by sound clips and one liners, I enjoy digging deeper into Muir’s quotes to better understand him and the time he lived in. This quote is from a letter he wrote to Jeanne Carr, wife of Ezra Carr. Jeanne was a dear friend and mentor to John. Her husband was one of Muir’s professors at the University of Wisconsin. Jeanne was a botanist and nature lover. The two quickly bonded over their shared interest and appreciation for the natural world. Jeanne is who introduced Muir to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his future wife, Louisa Wanda Strentzel.

At the time this letter was written Muir was on an excursion to Yosemite Valley to break away from a self-imposed seclusion in the San Francisco Bay area. He was disciplining himself to write. He was writing articles for journals of the time. The work was strenuous and frustrating to him, in part because the English language didn’t have words to properly express the experiences and visions he desired to share. Mrs. Carr even suggested to him to suspend social correspondence during this time in order to focus on his writing, which he heeded. Although successful in producing the “Sierra Studies” and other material, Muir was choked by the surrounding materialism and commercialism. He needed to once again break away to the mountains. So he did just that, and after some time in Yosemite Valley, he wrote the letter below.

Yosemite Valley, October 7th, 1874

Dear Mrs. Carr:

I expected to have been among the foothill drift long ago, but the mountains fairly seized me, and ere I knew I was up the Merced Cañon where we were last year, past Shadow and Merced Lakes and our Soda Springs. I returned last night. Had a glorious storm, and a thousand sacred beauties that seemed yet more and more divine. I camped four nights at Shadow Lake [Now called Merced Lake.] at the old place in the pine thicket. I have ouzel tales to tell. I was alone and during the whole excursion, or period rather, was in a kind of calm incurable ecstasy. I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer.

How glorious my studies seem, and how simple. I found out a noble truth concerning the Merced moraines that escaped me hitherto. Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me have not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. My own special self is nothing. My feet have recovered their cunning. I feel myself again.

Tell Keith the colors are coming to the groves. I leave Yosemite for over the mountains to Mono and Lake Tahoe. Will be in Tahoe in a week, thence anywhere Shastaward, etc. I think I may be at Brownsville, Yuba County, where I may get a letter from you. I promised to call on Emily Pelton there. Mrs. Black has fairly mothered me. She will be down in a few weeks. Farewell.

John Muir

So sweet. Distance did seem to make his heart grow fonder and brought clarity to his purpose, to entice others to see the beauty he could see. To provide a lens for them through his writing. I find that the context to this quote makes it all the more precious and meaningful. What do you live for?