“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds. This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.”
More from John Muir
“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang—home-going. So the snow-flowers go home…”
“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at…”
“The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and…”
“Sit down in climbing, and hear the pines sing.”