John Muir’s Letters Part 2: Lonely in Yosemite
In these letters written by John Muir during his stay in Yosemite, his loneliness is apparent.
This is a continuation of the story that began in John Muir’s Letters: The Journey. Here, we can witness through the man’s own words his growing, aching desire for visitors, for friendship.
John Muir’s excitement about the natural wonders of Yosemite has not dwindled, however. In fact, his exuberance becomes ever stronger during his duration in the park, so much so that it pains him to experience the area’s majesty alone.
He needs to share it. He must.
And when his friends refuse to visit, or come up with excuses to avoid subjecting Muir to the sting of their denial, he calls them out on it. In these Letters to a Friend, we being to see the man behind the legend, the real and true John Muir.
Read all parts of John Muir’s Yosemite adventure to get the whole story:
- John Muir’s Letters: The Journey
- John Muir’s Letters: Lonely in Yosemite
- John Muir’s Letters: Self-Reliance
John Muir’s Letters: Lonely in Yosemite
November 1st, 1868
I was extremely glad to receive yet one more of your ever welcome letters. It found me two weeks ago.
I am not surprised to hear of your leaving Madison and am anxious to know where your lot will be cast. If you go to South America soon, I shall hope to meet you, and if you should decide to seek the shores of the Pacific in California before the end of the year, I shall find you and be glad to make another visit to the Yosemite with your Doctor and Priest, according to the old plan. I know the way up the rocks to the falls, and I know too the abode of many a precious mountain fern. I gathered plenty for you, but you must see them at home. Not an angel could tell a tithe of these glories.
If you make your home in California, I know from experience how keenly you will feel the absence of the special flowers you love. No others can fill their places; Heaven itself would not answer without Calypso and Linnæa.
I think that you will find in California just what you desire in climate and scenery, for both are so varied. March is the springtime of the plains, April the summer, and May the autumn. The other months are dry and wet winter, uniting with each other, and with the other seasons by splices and overlappings of very simple and very intricate kinds. I rode across the seasons in going to the Yosemite last spring. I started from the Joaquin in the last week of May. All the plain flowers, so lately fresh in the power of full beauty, were dead. Their parched leaves crisped and fell to powder beneath my feet, as though they had been “cast into the oven.” And they had not, like the plants of our West, weeks and months to grow old in, but they died ere they could fade, standing together holding out their branches erect and green as life. But they did not die too soon; they lived a whole life and stored away abundance of future life-principle in the seed.
After riding for two days in this autumn I found summer again in the higher foothills. Flower petals were spread confidingly open, the grasses waved their branches all bright and gay in the colors of healthy prime, and the winds and streams were cool. Forty or fifty miles further into the mountains, I came to spring. The leaves on the oak were small and drooping, and they still retained their first tintings of crimson and purple, and the wrinkles of their bud folds were distinct as if newly opened, and all along the rims of cool brooks and mild sloping places thousands of gentle mountain flowers were tasting life for the first time.
A few miles farther “onward and upward” I found the edge of winter. Scarce a grass could be seen. The last of the lilies and spring violets were left below; the winter scales were still shut upon the buds of the dwarf oaks and alders; the grand Nevada pines waved solemnly to cold, loud winds among rushing, changing stormclouds. Soon my horse was plunging in snow ten feet in depth, the sky became darker and more terrible, many-voiced mountain winds swept the pines, speaking the dread language of the cold north, snow began to fall, and in less than a week from the burning plains of the San Joaquin autumn was lost in the blinding snows of mountain winter.
Descending these higher mountains towards the Yosemite, the snow gradually disappeared from the pines and the sky, tender leaves unfolded less and less doubtfully, lilies and violets appeared again, and I once more found spring in the grand valley. Thus meet and blend the seasons of these mountains and plains, beautiful in their joinings as those of lake and land or of the bands of the rainbow. The room is full of talking men; I cannot write, and I only attempt to scrawl this note to thank you for all the good news and good thoughts and friendly wishes and remembrances you send.
Ever yours most cordially, J. M.
—
February 24th, 1869
Your two California notes from San Francisco and San Mateo reached me last evening, and I rejoice at the glad tidings they bring of your arrival in this magnificent land. I have thought of you hundreds of times in my seasons of deepest joy, amid the flower purple and gold of the plains, the fern fields in gorge and cañon, the sacred waters, tree columns, and the eternal unnameable sublimities of the mountains. Of all my friends you are the only one that understands my motives and enjoyments.
I have not made a single friend in California, and you may be sure I strode home last evening from the post office feeling rich indeed. As soon as I hear of your finding a home, I shall begin a plan of visiting you.
I am engaged at present in the very important and patriarchal business of sheep. I am a gentle shepherd. The gray box in which I reside is distant about seven miles northwest from Hopeton. The Merced pours past me on the south from the Yosemite; smooth, domey hills and the tree fringe of the Tuolumne bound me on the north; the lordly Sierras join sky and plain on the east; and the far coast mountains on the west. My mutton family of eighteen hundred range over about ten square miles, and I have abundant opportunities for reading and botanizing. I shall be here for about two weeks, then I shall be engaged in shearing sheep between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus from the San Joaquin to the Sierra foothills for about two months. I will be in California until next November, when I mean to start for South America.
You must prepare for your Yosemite baptism in June.
Spring will soon arrive to the plants of Madison, and surely they will miss you. In Yosemite you will find cassiopes and laurels and azaleas, and luxuriant mosses and ferns, but I know that even these can never take the place of the long-loved ones of your Vermont hills.
Forgive me this long writing. I know that you are in a fever of joy from the beauty pouring upon you; nevertheless you seem so near I can hardly stop.
My most cordial regards to the Doctor. Californians do not deserve such as he.
I am your friend, John Muir.
—
May 16th, 1869
The thoughts of again meeting with you and with the mountains make me scarce able to hold my pen. If you can let me know by the first of June when you will leave Stockton, I will meet you in the very valley itself. When the grass of the plains is dead, most owners of sheep drive their flocks to the pastures green of the mountains, and as my soul is athirst for mountain things, I have engaged to take charge of a flock all summer between the head waters of the Tuolumne and Yosemite, within a few hours’ walk of the valley. I intended to enjoy another baptism in the sanctuaries of Yosemite, whether with companions of like passions or alone. Surely, then, my cup will be full when blessed with such company.
You will require a light tent made of cotton sheeting, also a strong dress and strong pair of shoes for rock service. You will, of course, bring a good supply of paper for plants. I suppose, too, that you will all bring a supply of drawing-material, but I hardly think that drawing will be done. People admitted to heaven would most likely “wonder and adore” for at least two weeks before sketching its scenery, and I don’t think that you will sketch Yosemite any sooner.
Here is, I think, a fair estimate of the cost of the round trip from Stockton, allowing, say, ten days from time of departure from Mariposa till arrival at same point. Stage fare and way expenses to and from Mariposa, say $40.00; saddle horse, $20.00; provisions, cooking utensils, etc., $15.00; total, direct expense for one person, $75.00. Each additional day spent in the valley would cost about $3.00. If you and all the members of your company are good riders, and you could purchase horses at a reasonable rate in San José or Gilroy, you could cross the Coast Range via the Pacheco Pass or Livermore Valley, thence direct to the Yosemite across the Joaquin and up the Merced, passing through Hopeton and Snellings. This kind of a trip would be less costly, and you would enjoy it, but unless your company was all composed of the same kind of material it would not answer.
I hope the Doctor will come too. I want to see him and ask him a great many questions.
There is a kind of hotel in the valley, but it is incomparably better to choose your own camp among the rocks and waterfalls. The time of highest water in the valley varies very much in different seasons, and at any rate there will be a thousand times more of grandeur than any person can absorb.
When you arrive in the valley, please register your name at Mr. Hutchings’ hotel. I will do the same.
I bid you good-bye, thanking the Lord for the hope of seeing you and for his goodness to you in turning your face towards his most holy mansion of the mountains.
—
July 11, 1869
I need not try to tell you how sorely I am pained by this bitter disappointment. Your Mariposa note of June 22 did not reach Black’s until July 3rd, and I did not receive it until the 6th.
I met a shepherd a few miles from here yesterday who told me that a letter from Yosemite for me was at Harding’s Mills. I have not yet received it. No dependence can be placed upon the motions of letters in the mountains, and I feared this result on my not receiving anything definite concerning your time of leaving Stockton before I left the plains. I wish now that I had not been entangled with sheep at all but that I had remained among post-offices and joined your party at Snellings.
Thus far all of my deepest, purest enjoyments have been taken in solitude, and the fate seems hard that has hindered me from sharing Yosemite with you.
I must say good night while bonds of Nature’s sweetest influences are about me in these sacred mountain halls, and I know that every chord of your being has throbbed and tingled with the same mysterious powers when you were here. Farewell. I am glad to know that you have been allowed to bathe your existence in God’s glorious Sierra Nevadas and sorry that I could not meet you.
John Muir.
—
November 15, 1869
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.
Yours most cordially,
John Muir.
—
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 13, 1870
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.
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. 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.
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.
—
May 17th, 1870
Our valley is just gushing, throbbing full of open, absorbable beauty, and I feel that I must tell you about it. I am lonely among my enjoyments; the valley is full of visitors, but I have no one to talk to.
The season that is with us now is about what corresponds to full-fledged spring in Wisconsin. The oaks are in full leaf and have shoots long enough to bend over and move in the wind. The good old bracken is waist-high already, and almost all the rock ferns have their outermost fronds unrolled. Spring is in full power and is steadily reaching higher like a shadow and will soon reach the topmost horizon of rocks. The buds of the poplar opened on the 19th of last month, those of the oaks on the 24th.
There is at least ten times the amount of water in the valley that there was when you were here.
In crossing the valley we had to sail in the boat. The river paid but little attention to its banks, flowing over the meadow in great river-like sheets. But last Sunday, 15th, was a dark day; the rich streams of heat and light were withheld; the thermometer fell suddenly to 35 degrees, and down among the verdant banks of new leaves, and groves of ferns, and thick settlements of confident flowers, came heavy snow in big, blinding flakes, coming down with a steady gait and taking their places gracefully upon shrinking leaves and petals as if they were doing exactly right. The whole day was snowy and stormy like a piece of early winter. Snow fell also on the 16th. A good many of the ferns and delicate flowers are killed.
There are about fifty visitors in the valley at present. When are you and the Doctor coming? Mr. Hutchings has not yet returned from Washington, and so I will be here all summer. I have not heard from you since January.
Did you see the gold of the Joaquin plains this spring? There is a later gold in October which you must see.
Most cordially yours, John Muir.
—
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
There are sixty or seventy visitors here at present.
I have received only two letters from you this winter and spring.
I kissed your untamed one for you. She wishes that she knew the way to Oakland that she might come to you.
Yours most cordially, J. Muir.
—
John Muir’s Stay in Yosemite
Jonny boy is going a little overboard with the ‘please please visit me’ requests in these letters. We can feel his love for the mountains and all the wonderful elements of nature held within them, but John Muir is sorely missing the one thing the mountains cannot provide him, a human connection. I feel sorry for him, but also for Mrs. Carr. She’s got quite an emotional friend she’s having to comfort here. Apparently, the other valley residents and visitors don’t offer Muir much in the way of companionship, not of the same ilk of intelligence and passion that he thinks so highly of in Mrs. Carr, at least.
An ancient Greek philosopher by the name of Plotinus believed that nothing was inherently evil, only that it lacked good. When looking at John Muir’s life through the lens of legend, we only see the good of him, and not only in that we see him as a good man, but that he was a healthy, wealthy, intelligent, passionate, and all of the other good traits associated with a legendary figure who accomplished a great many things. In reality, at least in this stage in life, Muir was also lonely, sad, and maybe a little spiteful. He lacked companionship, and companionship is a good thing for us humans. Without it a void was left within him, and so it was filled by these negative feelings, this distaste for the average park visitor.
Humans really are social creatures. Even the most self-reliant, people hating, dig a hole in the ground and live in there forever hobbity hermits eventually succumb to some level of loneliness. John Muir is aching to share the wild lands, his love, with someone who will appreciate it as much as he does. How many times have you wanted the same, only to find no one in close proximity to share your passion with, and how did you respond to those emotions? What good is missing in your life? And can you find a way to replace it with more good rather than evil?
Missed John Muir’s journey to Yosemite? Start the story at the beginning.
Next, we will flip over the coin and take a look at John Muir’s self-reliance.
