The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1999
NEWSLETTER c Reconstructing John Mum's First Public Lecture, Sacramento, 1876 by Steve Pauly, Pleasant Hill, California (Editor's Note: In our previous issue, Steve Pauley's article placed John Muir's first public talk in context. Wmere is his re-creation of some sections of the...
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Scholarly Commons
1999
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| Online Access: | https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn/57 https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmn/article/1056/viewcontent/spring99.pdf |
| Summary: | NEWSLETTER c Reconstructing John Mum's First Public Lecture, Sacramento, 1876 by Steve Pauly, Pleasant Hill, California (Editor's Note: In our previous issue, Steve Pauley's article placed John Muir's first public talk in context. Wmere is his re-creation of some sections of the talk.) n the beginning of the long glacial winter, the lofty Sierra seems to have consisted of one vast undulated wave, in which a thousand separate mountains, with their domes and spires, their innumerable canons and lake basins, lay concealed. In the development of these, the Master Builder chose for a tool, not the earthquake nor lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent nor eroding rain, but the tender snowflowers, noiselessly falling through unnumbered seasons, the offspring of the sun and sea. All classes of glacial phenomena are displayed in the Sierra on the grandest scale, furnishing unmistakable proof of the universality of the ice-sheet beneath whose heavy folds all her sublime landscapes were molded. Her jee-winter is now nearly ended, and her flanks are clothed with warm forests; but in high latitudes, north and south, and in many lofty mountains, it still prevails with variable severity. In the Sierra. . .all her valleys and canons formed channels for separate ice-rivers. These have but recently vanished, and when we trace their retiring foot- Heps back to their fountains among the high summits, we discover small residual glaciers in considerable numbers, lingering beneath cool shadows, silently completing the sculpture of the summit peaks. The first Sierra glacier was discovered in October, ■871, in a wide, shadowy amphitheater, comprehended by the bases of Red and Black mountains, two of the dominating summits of the Merced group. This group consists m the highest portion of a long crooked spur that straggles ;iut from the main axis of the range in the direction of Ifosemite Valley. At the time of my discovery I was engaged in exploring its neve amphitheaters, and in tracing the channels of the ancient ... |
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