John Muir as I Knew Him 



II 



went with certainty and alertness, while I fell and floundered 

 like a bad swimmer, so that he had to give me many a helpful 

 hand and cheering word, and when at last I was obliged to rest, 

 Muir, before going on for an hour's exploration, sought out for 

 me one of the most beautiful spots I had ever seen, where the 

 rushing river, striking pot-holes in its granite bed, was thrown 

 up into water wheels twenty feet high. When he returned to 

 camp he showered me with little attentions and tucked me into 

 my blankets with the tenderness that he gave to children and 

 animals. 



Another Scotch trait was his surface antipathies. He did not 

 hate anything — not even his antagonists, the tree vandals — but 

 spoke of those "misguided worldlings" in terms of pity ; yet he 

 had a wholesome contempt for the contemptible. His growl — he 

 never had a bark — was worse than his bite. His pity was often 

 expressed for the blindness of those who through linenlightened 

 selfishness chose the lower utility of nature in place of the 

 higher. 



Many have praised the pleasures of solitude — few have known 

 them as Muir knew them, roaming the High Sierra week after 

 week with only bread and tea and sometimes berries for his sus- 

 tenance, which he would have said were a satisfactory substi- 

 tute for the "locusts and wild honey" of his prototype. His trips 

 to Alaska were even more solitary and we should say forbidding 

 — but not he, for no weather, no condition of wildness, no ab- 

 sence of animal life could make him lonely. He was a pioneer 

 of nature, but also a pioneer of truth, and he needed no com- 

 rade. Many will recall his thrilling adventure on the Muir gla- 

 cier, told in his story entitled Stickeen, named for his compan- 

 ion, the missionary's dog. I heard him tell it a dozen times — how 

 the explorer and the little mongrel were caught on a peninsula 

 of the glacier — and how they escaped. It is one of the finest 

 studies of dogliness in all literature, and told in Muir's whimsi- 

 cal way, betrayed unconsciously the tenderness of his heart. 

 Though never lonely, he was not at all a professional recluse: 

 he loved companions and craved good talk, and was glad to 

 have others with him on his tramps, but it was rare to find con- 

 genial friends who cared for the adventures in which he rev- 

 eled. He was hungry for sympathy and found it in the visitors 



