[at-l] historic trip report

[jbryankramer@msn.com (J Bryan Kramer)]

I came across this facinating trip report, try to guess who is writing
before you get to the end:

"It was my good fortune to know John Muir. He had written me, even before I
met him personally, expressing his regret that when Emerson came to see the
Yosemite, his (emerson's) friends would not allow him to accept John Muir's
invitation to spend two or three days camping with him, so as to see the
giant grandeur of the place under surroundings more congenial than those of
a hotel piazza or a seat on a coach. I had answered him that if ever I got
in his neighborhood I should claim from him the treatment that he had wished
to accord Emerson. Later, when as President I visited the Yosemite, John
Muir fulfilled the promise he had at that time made to me. He met me with a
couple of pack mules, as well as with riding mules for himself and myself,
and a first-class packer and cook, and I spent a delightful three days and
two nights with him.

The first night we camped in a grove of giant sequoias. It was clear
weather, and we lay in the open, the enormous cinnamon-colored trunks rising
about us like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than was
ever conceived by any human architect. One incident surprised me not a
little. Some thrushes - I think they were Western hermit-thrushes - were
singing beautifully in the solemn evening stillness. I asked some question
concerning them of John Muir, and to my surprise found that he had not been
listening to them and knew nothing about them. Once or twice I had been off
with John Burroughs, and had found that, although he was so much older than
I was, his ear and his eye were infinitely better as regards the sights and
sounds of wild life, or at least of the smaller wild life, and I was
accustomed unhesitatingly to refer to him regarding any bird note that
puzzled me. But John Muir, I found, was not interested in the small things
of nature unless they were unusually conspicuous. Mountains, cliffs, trees,
appealed to him tremendously, but birds did not unless they possessed some
very peculiar and interesting as well as conspicuous traits, as in the case
of the water ouzel. In the same way, he knew nothing of the wood mice; but
the more conspicuous beasts, such as bear and deer, fro example, he could
tell much about.

All next day we traveled through the forest. Then a snow-storm came on, and
at night we camped on the edge of the Yosemite, under the branches of a
magnificent silver fir, and very warm and comfortable w were, and a very
good dinner we had before we rolled up in our tarpaulins and blankets for
the night. The following day we went down into the Yosemite and through the
valley, camping in the bottom among the timber.

There was a delightful innocence and good will about the man, and an utter
inability to imagine that any one could either take or give offense. Of this
I had an amusing illustration just before we parted. We were saying good-by,
when his expression suddenly changed, and he remarked that he had totally
forgotten something. He was intending to go to the Old World with a great
tree lover and tree expert from the Eastern States who possessed a somewhat
crotchety temper. He informed me that his friend had written him, asking him
to get from me personal letters to the Russian Czar and the Chinese Emperor;
and when I explained to him that I could not give personal letters to
foreign potentates, he said: "Oh, well, read the letter yourself, and that
will explain just what I want." Accordingly, he thrust the letter on me. It
contained not only the request which he had mentioned, but also a delicious
preface, which, with the request, ran somewhat as follows:

"I hear Roosevelt is coming out to see you. He takes a sloppy, unintelligent
interest in forests, although he is altogether too much under the influence
of that creature Pinchot, and you had better get from him letters to the
Czar of Russia and the Emperor of China, so that we may have better
opportunity to examine the forests and trees of the Old World."

Of course I laughed heartily as I read the letter, and said, "John, do you
remember exactly the words in which this letter was couched?" Whereupon a
look of startled surprise came over his face, and he said: "Good gracious!
there was something unpleasant about you in it; wasn't there? I had
forgotten. Give me the letter back."

So I gave him back the letter, telling him that I appreciated it far more
than if it had not contained the phrases he had forgotten, and that while I
could not give him and his companion letters to the two rulers in question,
I would give him letters to our Ambassadors, which would bring about the
same result.

John Muir talked even better than he wrote. HIs greatest influence was
always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him. But he
wrote well, and while his books have not the peculiar charm that a very,
very few other writers on similar subjects have had, they will nevertheless
last long. Our generation owes much to John Muir."