April 21, 2007
Dear Friends,
Once
again I share with you a memorable writing of John Muir on
the occasion of his 169th Birthday, April 21, 2007. This writing
reminds us of
Muir's guidance to "Climb the
mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will
flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares
drop off like autumn leaves."
We cannot all saunter along Yosemite's
trails every day (if ever), but we can relish Muir's description of a
"One-Day Excursion" there.
Richard A. Cellarius, Ph.D.
Prescott, AZ
One-Day
Excursions*
No. 1.
If I were so
time-poor as to have only one day to spend
in Yosemite I should start at daybreak, say at three o'clock in
midsummer, with a pocketful of any sort of dry breakfast stuff, for
Glacier Point, Sentinel Dome, the head of Illilouette Fall, Nevada
Fall, the top of Liberty Cap, Vernal Fall and the wild boulder-choked
River Caņon. The trail leaves the Valley at the base of the
Sentinel Rock, and as you slowly saunter from point to point along its
many accommodating zigzags nearly all the Valley rocks and falls are
seen in striking, ever-changing combinations. At an elevation of about
five hundred feet a particularly fine, wide-sweeping view down the
Valley is obtained, past the sheer face of the Sentinel and between the
Cathedral Rocks and El Capitan. At a height of about 1500 feet the
great Half Dome comes full in sight, overshadowing every other feature
of the Valley to the eastward. From Glacier Point you look down 3000
feet over the edge of its sheer face to the meadows and groves and
innumerable yellow pine spires, with the meandering river sparkling and
spangling through the midst of them. Across the Valley a great telling
view is presented of the Royal Arches, North Dome, Indian
Caņon, Three Brothers and El Capitan, with the dome-paved
basin of Yosemite Creek and Mount Hoffman in the background. To the
eastward, the Half Dome close beside you looking higher and more
wonderful than ever; southeastward the Starr King, girdled with silver
firs, and the spacious garden-like basin of the Illilouette and its
deeply sculptured fountain-peaks, called "The Merced Group"; and beyond
all, marshaled along the eastern horizon, the icy summits on the axis
of the Range and broad swaths of forests growing on ancient moraines,
while the Nevada, Vernal and Yosemite Falls are not only full in sight
but are distinctly heard as if one were standing beside them in their
spray.
The views
from the summit of Sentinel Dome are still
more extensive and telling. Eastward the crowds of peaks at the head of
the Merced, Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers are presented in
bewildering array; westward, the vast forests, yellow foothills and the
broad San Joaquin plains and the Coast Ranges, hazy and dim in the
distance.
From Glacier
Point go down the trail into the lower end
of the Illilouette basin, cross Illilouette Creek and follow it to the
Fall where from an outjutting rock at its head you will get a fine view
of its rejoicing waters and wild caņon and the Half Dome.
Thence returning to the trail, follow it to the head of the Nevada
Fall. Linger here an hour or two, for not only have you glorious views
of the wonderful fall, but of its wild, leaping, exulting rapids and,
greater than all, the stupendous scenery into the heart of which the
white passionate river goes wildly thundering, surpassing everything of
its kind in the world. After an unmeasured hour or so of this glory,
all your body aglow, nerve currents flashing through you never before
felt, go to the top of the Liberty Cap, only a glad saunter now that
your legs as well as head and heart are awake and rejoicing with
everything. The Liberty Cap, a companion of the Half Dome, is sheer and
inaccessible on three of its sides but on the east a gentle,
ice-burnished, juniper-dotted slope extends to the summit where other
wonderful views are displayed where all are wonderful: the south side
and shoulders of Half Dome and Clouds' Rest, the beautiful Little
Yosemite Valley and its many domes, the Starr King cluster of domes,
Sentinel Dome, Glacier Point, and, perhaps the most tremendously
impressive of all, the views of the hopper-shaped caņon of
the river from the head of the Nevada Fall to the head of the Valley.
Returning to
the trail you descend between the Nevada
Fall and the Liberty Cap with fine side views of both the fall and the
rock, pass on through clouds of spray and along the rapids to the lead
of the Vernal Fall, about a mile below the Nevada. Linger here if night
is still distant, for views of this favorite fall and the stupendous
rock scenery about it. Then descend a stairway by its side, follow a
dim trail through its spray, and a plain one along the border of the
boulder-dashed rapids and so back to the wide, tranquil Valley.
Note:
Fred Gunsky, in his footnote to this "excursion" in the
Doubleday/Anchor Natural History Library paper edition of The
Yosemite (1962) says that the "Round trip
distance from Park
Headquarters (Yosemite Village), by trail, [is] 24 miles."
* From Muir,
J., The
Yosemite, New York: The Century Company,
1912, Ch. 12, How
best to spend one's Yosemite Time. A number of reprints are
available, including on line at http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/chapter_12.html [accessed
4/20/2007].
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