Letter from John Muir to [Katharine M. Graydon], 1880 Feb 5.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/514; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/1513/viewcontent/muir04_0026_md_1.pdf

[Original letter returned Jo Miss Katharine M. Graydon]To Miss Katharine m. Graydon920 Valencia St.,San Francisco, Feb. 5th, 1880.My dear Katie Miss Kate Graydon,Prof. of Greek and English Literature, etc.Conduct of Life,etc,etc.My dear, frail, wee, bashful lassie and dear Madam:I was delighted with your bright charming letter introducing your friends Prof. [David Starr] Jordan and Chas. Gilbert.I have not yet met either of the gentlemen.They are at Santa Barbara, but expect to be here in Apri, when I hope to see them and like them for your sake, and Janet's, and their own worth.Some time ago I learned that you were teaching Greek, and of all the strange things in this changeful world, this seemed the strangest, and the most difficult to get packed quietly down into my awkward mind.Therefore I will have to beg you to excuse the confusion I fell into at the beginning of my letter.I mean to come to you in a year or two, or any time soon,to see you all in your new developments.The sweet blooming underbrush of boys and girls,Moores, Merrills, raydons, etc. was very refreshing and pleasant to me all my Indiana days, and now that you have all grown up into trees, strong, and thrifty, waving your outreaching branches in God's Light I am sure I shall love you all.Going to Indianapolis is one of the brightest of my hopes.It seems but yesterday since I left you all. And indeed, in very truth, all these years have been to me one unbroken day, one continuous walk in one grand garden.I'm glad you like my wee dear ouzel.He is one of the most complete of God's small darlings.I found him in Alaska a month or two ago.I made a long canoe trip of seven hundred miles from Fort Wrangel northward,exploring the glaciers and icy fiords of the coast and inland channels with one white man and four Indians. And on the way back to Wrangell, while exploring one of the deep fiords with lofty walls, like those of Yosemite Valley, and with its waters crowded with immense bergs discharged from the noble glaciers, I found a single specimen of ...