Most cordially yours,
John Muir.
Yosemite via Big Oak Flat.
Yosemite, Sunday, May 29th, 1870.
I received your “apology” two days ago and ran my eyes hastily over it three or four lines at a time to find the place that would say you were coming, but you “fear” that you cannot come at all, and only “hope” that the Doctor may; but I shall continue to look for you nevertheless. The Chicago party you speak of were here and away again before your letter arrived. All sorts of human stuff is being poured into our valley this year, and the blank, fleshly apathy with which most of it comes in contact with the rock and water spirits of the place is most amazing. I do not wonder that the thought of such people being here, Mrs. Carr, makes you “mad,” but after all, Mrs. Carr, they are about harmless. They climb sprawlingly to their saddles like overgrown frogs pulling themselves up a stream-bank through the bent sedges, ride up the valley with about as much emotion as the horses they ride upon, and comfortable when they have “done it all,” and long for the safety and flatness of their proper homes.
In your first letter to the valley you complain of the desecrating influences of the fashionable hordes about to visit here, and say that you mean to come only once more and “into the beyond.” I am pretty sure that you are wrong in saying and feeling so, for the tide of visitors will float slowly about the bottom of the valley as a harmless scum, collecting in hotel and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls eloquent as ever and instinct with imperishable beauty and greatness. And recollect that the top of the valley is more than half way to real heaven, and the Lord has many mansions away in the Sierra equal in power and glory to Yosemite, though not quite so open, and I venture to say that you will yet see the valley many times both in and out of the body.
I am glad you are going to the coast mountains to sleep on Diablo,—Angelo ere this. I am sure that you will be lifted above all the effects of your material work. There is a precious natural charm in sleeping under the open starry sky. You will have a very perfect view of the Joaquin Valley and the snowy, pearly wall of the Sierra Nevada. I lay for weeks last summer upon a bed of pine leaves at the edge of a [ ] gentian meadow in full view of Mt. Dana.
Mrs. Hutchings says that the lily bulbs were so far advanced in their growth when she dug some to send you that they could not be packed without being broken, but I am going to be here all summer, and I know where the grandest plantation of these lilies grow, and I will box up as many of them as you wish, together with as many other Yosemite things as you may ask for and send them out to you before the pack train makes its last trip. I know the Spiræa you speak of. It is abundant all around the top of the valley and on the rocks at Lake Tenaya and reaches almost to the very summit about Mt. Dana. There is also a purple one very abundant on the fringe meadows of Yosemite Creek, a mile or two back from the brink of the Falls. Of course it will be a source of keen pleasure to me to procure you anything you may desire. I should like to see that ground again. I saw some in Cuba but they did not exceed twenty-five or thirty feet in height.
I have thought of a walk in the wild gardens of Honolulu, and now that you speak of my going there it becomes very probable, as you seem to understand me better than I do myself. I have no square idea about the time I shall get myself away from here. I shall at least stay till you come. I fear that the agave will be in the spirit world ere that time. You say that I ought to have such a place as you saw in the gardens of that mile and a half of climate. Well, I think those lemon and orange groves would do, perhaps, to make a living, but for a garden I should not have anything less than a piece of pure nature. I was reading Thoreau’s “Maine Woods” a short time ago. As described by him, these woods are exactly like those of Canada West. How I long to meet Linnæa and Chiogenes hispidula once more! I would rather see these two children of the evergreen woods than all the twenty-seven species of palm that Agassiz met on the Amazons.
These summer days “go on” calmly and evenly. Scarce a mark of the frost and snow of the 15th is visible. The brackens are four or five feet high already. The earliest azaleas have opened, and the whole crop of bulbs is ready to burst. The river does not overflow its banks now, but it is exactly brim-full. The thermometer averages about 75 degrees at noon. We have sunshine every morning from a bright blue sky. Ranges of cumuli appear towards the summits with neat regularity every day about 11 o’clock, making a splendid background for the South Dome. In a few hours these clouds disappear and give up the sky to sunny evening.
Mr. Hutchings arrived here from Washington a week ago. There are sixty or seventy visitors here at present.