i8 Sierra Club Bulletin 



boughs, with cones or blossoms, and other trophies gathered on 

 shore rambles. ''Look at that little muggins of a fir cone," he 

 would say to me, lovingly stroking the latest accession with 

 which he littered the room, to the despair of the steward who 

 tried to keep it in order. 



That other great child-soul of nature, John Burroughs, was 

 with us in Alaska, and the coming together of these two men 

 was an event in American life. Burroughs is naively human, 

 Muir intensely aloof. But Muir's aloofness was never cold or 

 hard. It was the result of his almost fanatical absorption in the 

 thrilling play of nature. 



We dubbed him *'Ice Chief" in Alaska, because of his enthu- 

 siasm for the great ice sculptor of the Glacial Age who had 

 carved out the mountains in their present form. In those far 

 northern wilds he was in his element, for with glaciers thun- 

 dering their bergs into the inlets and sweeping majestically 

 down through rugged mountain defiles, it was easy for him to 

 show how all the carving of the mountains of the West was the 

 work of their Titan graving tools. He would not hear of earth- 

 quake faults as a factor even in the shaping of the Yosemite. 

 It was all the work of the ice, although he had himself wit- 

 nessed a great avalanche there as the result of an earthquake, 

 and loved to tell about rushing up on the great mass of granite 

 when the blocks were still hot from crashing down the moun- 

 tain. 



To have explored with Muir the great glacier which bears 

 his name, to have wandered with him in the Yosemite and 

 Kings River Cafion, is to have come, through his enthusiasm 

 and vision, a little nearer the hidden mysteries of nature. Every 

 tree and flower, every bird and stone was to him the outward 

 token of an invisible world in process of making. He sauntered 

 over the mountains in his blue jeans overalls, claiming kinship 

 with the rocks and growing things and gathering them all to 

 his heart. 



Nor can I forget the simple kindly welcome at his Martinez 

 home, the strolls about his broad acres of fruit and vine, and 

 the evening talks, prolonged far into the night, in his study, lit- 

 tered with the trophies of a life-time of communion with the 

 great out-doors in many lands. In the autumn, boxes of grapes 



