MUIR LODGE— AN APPRECIATION 

 By Mary Frances Kellogg 



Of the worship due our western mountains, not a tithe has 

 been paid. Nor does the finest homage come from tourists 

 poured into resorts by swarming cities, but from the winnowed 

 few who behold the snow-girdled peaks, the innumerable moun- 

 tain lakelets and the myriads of flower-enameled, fern-brocaded 

 meadows circled by majestic sequoias. And how many of these 

 elect were imbued with enthusiasm by John Muir's matchless 

 word-pictures ! This above all is both his legacy to us and his 

 own crown of glory — to have taught us his beauty-lore. 



So John Muir has no need of a memorial. Rather do we 

 long to express, though never so inadequately, the thanks we 

 owe him. From magnificent glaciers, and forests, and moun- 

 tains, even down to our own modest mountain home, all borrow 

 honor from his name. 



If that which is essentially material ; if that which makes ease- 

 ful the mountaineer's toil ; if that which cements friendships of 

 the out-of-doors — if such may stand as an appreciation of one 

 so predominantly of the spirit, who shunned no privation or 

 hardship if it brought him into harmony with wildness, whose 

 feet wandered so much alone and whose passionate search for 

 understanding of the sculpturing of the ages found so few 

 kindred souls — then Muir Lodge is, as intended, an apprecia- 

 tion of John Muir. Though he walked alone, he valued friend- 

 ship as one of the finest of mortal possessions. 



Muir Lodge is a brief home for the wayfarer, ever urging 

 beyond — on — on, up the wonder-trails leading over the heights 

 and far within the mountain barriers. In its simple plainness it 

 is appropriate. No complications of thought, language or char- 

 acter were his. All his life was as openly inspiring as one of his 

 own books. 



John Muir could teach us because, like all great men, he ex- 

 emplified a singleness of pnrpose — a perfect absorption in that 

 to which he was dedicated. Because he himself reverently 



