Letters to a Friend 



claims, and it soon will fill with coarse home 

 steads, but as the winter is so severe at Lake 

 Tenaya, very few will care to live there. Hetch 

 Hetchy is about four thousand feet above sea, 

 while Lake Tenaya is eight. I have been living 

 in these mountains in so haunting, soaring, 

 floating a way that it seems strange to cast any 

 kind of an anchor. All is so equal in glory, so 

 ocean-like, that to choose one place above an 

 other is like drawing dividing lines in the sky. 

 I think I answered your last with respect to re 

 maining here in the winter. I can do much of 

 this ice work in the quiet, and the whole sub 

 ject is purely physical, so that I can get but 

 little from books. All depends upon the good 

 ness of one's eyes. No scientific book in the 

 world can tell me how this Yosemite granite is 

 put together or how it has been taken down. 

 Patient observation and constant brooding 

 above the rocks, lying upon them for years as 

 the ice did, is the way to arrive at the truths 

 which are graven so lavishly upon them. 

 Would that I knew what good prayers I could 

 t i57 1 



