Part 9

Remember me to the Doctor and to all of your boys.

I am most cordially,

Your friend, JOHN MUIR.

La Grange, November 15, 1869.

DEAR FRIENDS MRS. AND DR. CARR:--

I thank you most heartily for the very kind invitation you send me. I could enjoy a blink of rest in your new home with a relish that only those can know who have suffered solitary banishment for so many years, but I must return to the mountains, to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and to-morrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.

The plains here are green already and the upper mountains have the pearly whiteness of their first snows.

Farewell. I will bring you some cones in the spring. I hope that you enjoy your labor in your new sphere.

My love to all your family, and I am

Yours most cordially, JOHN MUIR.

Yosemite, December 6th, 1869.

I am feasting in the Lord’s mountain house, and what pen may write my blessings? I am going to dwell here all winter magnificently “Snowbound”? Just think of the grandeur of the mountain winter in the Yosemite! Would that you could enjoy it also!

I read your word in pencil upon the bridge below the Nevada, and I thank you for it most devoutly. No one or all the Lord’s blessings can enable me to exist without a friend indeed.

There is no snow in the valley. The ground is covered with the brown and yellow leaves of the oak and maple, and their crisping and rustling makes one think of the groves of Madison. I have been wandering about among the falls and rapids, studying the grand instruments of slopes and curves and echoing caves upon which those divine harmonies are played. Only a thin flossy veil sways and bends over Yosemite now, and Pohono is a web of waving mist. New songs are sung, forming parts of the one grand anthem composed and written “in the beginning.”

Most of the flowers are dead. Only a few are blooming in summer nooks on the north side rocks. You remember that delightful fernery by the ladders. Well, I discovered a garden meeting of adiantum far more delicate and luxuriant than those of the ladders. They are in a cover or coverlet between the upper and lower Yosemite Falls. They are the most delicate and graceful plant creatures I ever beheld, waving themselves in lines of the most refined of heaven’s beauty to the music of the water. The motion of purple dulses in pools left by the tide on the sea-coast of Scotland was the only memory that was stirred by these spiritual ferns. You speak of dying and going to the woods; I am dead and gone to heaven.

An Indian comes to the valley once a month upon snowshoes. He brings the mail, and so I shall hope to hear from you. Address to Yosemite, via Big Oak Flat, care of Mr. Hutchings.

Yosemite, April 5, 1870.

I wish you were here to-day, for our rocks are again decked with deep snow. Two days ago a big gray cloud collared Barometer Dome. The vast booming column of the upper falls was swayed like a shred of loose mist by broken pieces of storm that struck it suddenly, occasionally bending it backwards to the very top of the cliff, making it hang sometimes more than a minute like an inverted bow edged with comets. A cloud upon the dome and these ever varying rockings and bendings of the falls are sure storm signs, but yesterday morning’s sky was clear, and the sun poured the usual quantity of the balmiest spring sunshine into the blue ether of our valley gulf, but ere long ragged lumps of cloud began to appear all along the valley-rim, coming gradually into closer ranks, and rising higher like rock additions to the walls. From the top of these cloud-banks fleecy fingers arched out from both sides and met over the middle of the meadows, gradually thickening and blackening, until at night big, confident snowflakes began to fall. We thought that the last snow-harvest had been withered and reaped long ago by the glowing sun, for the bluebirds and robins sang spring, and so also did the bland, unsteady winds, and the brown meadow opposite the house was spotted here and there with blue violets. Carex spikes were shooting up through the dead leaves, and the cherry and briar rose were unfolding their leaves, and besides these spring wrote many a sweet mark and word that I cannot tell; but snow fell all the hours of to-day in cold winter earnest, and now at evening there rests upon rocks, trees, and weeds as full and ripe a harvest of snow flowers as I ever beheld in the stormiest, most opaque days of midwinter.

April 13th.

About twelve inches of snow fell in that last snowstorm. It disappeared as suddenly as it came, snatched away hastily almost before it had time to melt, as if a mistake had been made in allowing it to come here at all.

A week of spring days bright in every hour, without a stain or thought of the storm, came in glorious colors, giving still greater pledges of happy life to every living creature of the spring, but a loud, energetic snowstorm possessed every hour of yesterday. Every tree and broken weed bloomed yet once more; all summer distinctions were leveled off; all plants and the very rocks and streams were equally polypetalous.

This morning winter had everything in the valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in thick sheets of frozen spray. Thus do winter and spring leap into the valley by turns, each remaining long enough to form a small season or climate of its own, or going and coming squarely in a single day. Whitney says that the bottom has fallen out of the rocks here (which I most devoutly disbelieve). Well, the bottom frequently falls out of these winter clouds and climates. It is seldom that any long transition slant exists between dark and bright days in this narrow world of rocks.

I know that you are enchanted with the April loveliness of your new home. You enjoy the most precious kind of sunshine, and by this time flower-patches cover the hills about Oakland like colored clouds. I would like to visit these broad outspread blotches of social flowers that are so characteristic of your hills, but far rather would I see and feel the flowers that are now at Fountain Lake and the lakes of Madison.

Mrs. Hutchings thought of sending you a bulb of the California lily by mail but found it too large. She wished to be remembered to you. Your Squirrel is very happy. She is a rare creature.

I hope to see you and the Doctor soon in the valley. I have a great deal to say to you which I will not try to write. Remember me most cordially to the Doctor and to Allie and all the boys. I am much obliged to you for those botanical notes, etc., and I am ever most

Cordially yours, JOHN MUIR.

Here is a moss with a globular capsule and a squinted, cowl-shaped calyptra. Do you know it?

Yosemite, May 17th, 1870.