Midday August 12, 1888 John Muir came upon a meadow and experienced his first close encounter with The Mountain. He later recounted the moment:
“Out of the forest at last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and majesty, filling all the view like a separate, newborn world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful it might well fire the dullest observer to desperate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent admiration, buried in tall daisies and anemones by the side of a snowbank.”
He had arrived at Camp of the Clouds, east of a small hill now known as Alta Vista, on the southern flank of Mount Rainier.
Fifty-year-old Muir was in the Northwest to gather materials for his latest book Picturesque California, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope. He had settled into retirement on his California ranch and his days of inspired writing had ceased. However, he plunged enthusiastically into this new project, returning to the wilderness world he loved. While he hadn’t planned on climbing Rainier, he was a man who had known mountain fever before, and given the opportunity he wouldn’t resist a summit attempt…
This is the start of the article I wrote that appeared in the Douglasia Journal, Summer of 2022.
Click on the image to read or download the full article.
Click here to see the bibliography for this article.
