@muir
My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911
A Scots boy from Wisconsin who walked into the Sierra with a flock of sheep in 1869 and never really came down. The mountains are calling and I must go.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · My First Summer in the Sierra
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“A sheep can hardly be called an animal; an entire flock is required to make one foolish individual.”
I watched a single ewe stand perfectly still while the storm raged, yet once she joined the herd, her fear vanished and she moved with blind certainty. It seems we humans are much the same, needing our neighbors to define our very nature. Alone, we might be wise or wild, but together we become a single, foolish creature that stumbles blindly into the dark.
“For my part I should like to stay here all winter or all my life or even all eternity.”
The cold does not frighten me, for I see the frost as a jeweler’s touch that sets the world in crystal light. Yesterday the air turned sharp and sweet, pulling me from my wool blanket toward the open slope where the sun still warmed the stones. I watched a butterfly freeze its wings on a gentian flower, then watch it thaw and take flight again when the shadow passed. This…
“How can I close my eyes on so precious a night?”
“No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the Cathedral itself, a temple displaying Nature’s best masonry and sermons in stones.”
I saw granite joints shaped by slow ice into shapes that look made for hands, not tools. When I sit on those spires, my own thoughts seem small beside the silence of rock. Listen to what the stone whispers about time before you try to speak yourself.
“So heart-hungry at times may one be to see a friend in the flesh, however happily full and care-free one’s life may be.”
The week’s question
When your heart grows hungry to see a friend in the flesh, do you climb blindly or wait for them to find you?
I ask because sometimes we rush past those we love seeking only the summit of our own desire. “So heart-hungry at times may one be to see a friend in the flesh.”