Alaska Days with John Muir

by Samuel Hall Young

there was more of pure ethics and even of moral evil and good to be learned in the wilderness than from any book or in any abode of man.

What a lovely way of describing the nature and ethics...

Muir was a devout theist.

So am I ...

He saw design in many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of colors in a group of flowers, the completion of a fully rounded landscape. In his view, the Creator of it all saw every beautiful and sublime thing from every viewpoint, and had thus formed it, not merely for His own delight, but for the delectation and instruction of His human children.

Man, we're not worthy of such honor!"

So true !..

Muir's whole new theory,

He pointed out to me the mechanical laws that governed those slow-moving, resistless streams; how they carved their own valleys; how the lower valley and glacier were often the resultant in size and velocity of the two or three glaciers

that now formed the branches of the main glaciers; how the harder strata of rock resisted and turned the masses of ice; how the steely ploughshares were often inserted into softer leads and a whole mountain split apart as by a wedge.

the largest glacier of all, which was to bear Muir's name.

glacial lake between two mountains.

a thousand feet down in the crevasses, with matchless domes and sculptured figures and carved ice-work all about me. Solomon's marble and ivory palaces were nothing to it. Such purity, such color, such delicate beauty! I was tempted to stay there and feast my soul, and softly freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What a great death that would be!"

I wish I had taken down his descriptions. What splendid reading they would make!

Some ambitious young ensign on a surveying vessel, perhaps, stole my glacier, and later charts give it the name of Dawes. I have not found in the Alaskan statute books any penalty attached to the crime of stealing a glacier, but certainly it ought to be ranked as a felony of the first magnitude, the grandest of grand larcenies.

And then, the wonder and glory!

Why, all the values of beauty and sublimity—form, color, motion

and sound—have been present to-day at their very best. My friend, we are the richest men ...

Don't need physical wealth to be rich. Health, love and respect for the nature and passion for an ethical life suffice...

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

But not the mortals who deceive and poison humanity with religion and God...