The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1997

• Main Author: The John Muir Center for Regional Studies
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1997
• Subjects: John Muir; Newsletter; Holt-Atherton Special Collections; University of the Pacific; Holt-Atherton Pacific Center for Western Studies; Stockton; California; John Muir Center for Regional Studies; American Studies; Natural Resources and Conservation; United States History; Atherton; Carr; Fairbanks; Nig; Pacific; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/49; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmn/article/1048/viewcontent/spring97.pdf

JOHN WgW Volume 7, Number 2 NEW MUIR Spring 1997 X I 4 J^,AN EPISODE IN THE YOSEMITE: by Frank E. Buske copyright @ 1989,1991, by Frank E. Buske (Editor's note: Dr. Frank Buske, emeritus professor and former Chair of the English Department at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, now lives in Tucson, Arizona. This paper was presented at the 1990 John Muir Conference at UOP, and is published here, along with letters from a private collection, with the author's permission.) ('•< Muir spent the winter of 1873-75 at the McChesney home in land, having come down from his beloved mountains to spend time putting into words some of the observations he had made • ■ nig the trees and the glaciers and on the ■ - les. Mrs. Jeanne Carr and others of his I «ls had, for a long time, been * •imaging him to do more writing; they HHgested that there was a market for his j I les and a need for him to set down his ilf|overies while they were still fresh in his mind. Mrs. McChesney, in a later reminiscence, described Muir as "dressed gi»iei ally in what we call now negligee, i.e., he wore a blue flannel shirt, but was never : without a sprig of some green plant as an-S*0 jjpment." Muir's apparel would be appropriate for ij§krnd of life he most enjoyed. He disliked lifting to dress for any formal occasion and hied to avoid any social gathering that would HHuire clothing and behavior that were not comfortable to him. Although he had uently written of his loneliness, sped1 w.f t enviously about his relatives and ids who had married and were raising families, he seems to made no effort to alter his own bachelor status during that Winter in the Bay Area. Mrs. J "• ' Carr The subject of John Muir and his relationship with women is interesting to ponder, and is a topic that has received a good deal of attention and even more misinformed speculation. Some verses that he wrote before this time, highly critical of young women, their appearance and the way they dressed, prompted his friend, Bradley Brown, to write the eighteen-year old Muir, ...