Part 15 (1/2)
his ”Gospel of Nature” (which one of his friends calls ”The Gospel according to Saint John”), his ”Noon of Science,” his ”Long Road”?
And athered in his journeys back to Pepacton, inspired by the scenes a him daily in these scenes, one feels that it may, indeed, be said of him as Matthew Arnold said of Sophocles, that he sees life steadily, and sees it whole What ahis reader the truths of the scientist touched with an idealis me of ”The Summit of the Years,” spoke of ”its splendid ascent by a rapid crescendo fro it is to see our author putting forth such fine work in his advancing years
Another friend called it ”a beautiful record of a beautiful life”
I recall the Septean that essay He had written the first sentence--”The longer I live, the more I am impressed with the beauty and the wonder of the world”--when he was interrupted for a time He spoke of what he had written, and said he hardly knehat he was going to e part of the essay to copy, and I rerateful that I had been present at its inception and birth
One afternoon he called us from our separate work, the artist from her canvas andthe wide valley below us The next day he brought , ”If that seems worth while to you, youin it or not” It was ”The Rainbohich appeared soood illustration of his ability to throw the witchery of the ideal around the facts of nature The lad with us had been learning Wordsworth's ”Rainbow,” a favorite of Mr Burroughs, and it was no unusual thing of athe bacon for breakfast, singing contentedly in a sort of tune of his own :--
”And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety”
One afternoon a neighbor came and took him in her automobile a ride of fifty miles or more, the objective point of which was Ashland, the place where he had attended a seminary in 1854 and 1855 On his return he said it seemed like wizard's work that he could be whisked there and back in one afternoon, to that place which had been the goal of his youthful dreams! They had also called on a schoolmate whom he had not seen for forty years He told us how a possession of that boy's had been a thing he had coveted for un-cap! ”How I longed for that pencil! I tried to trade for buttons (all I had to offer in exchange), but it was too precious for my san early to sigh for the unattainable
We picked wild strawberries in June frohs and his mother used to pick theureslowly in the summer fields toward ho on Old Cluone in the lowlands”
During this sueous e haeed--a display that rivaled the carpet of gold and purple we had seen in the San Joaquin Valley, in company with John Muir three su for South America He had pro it off to get copy ready, and the Laird of Woodchuck Lodge was exasperated that the mountaineer would stay in that hot Babylon,--he, the lover of the wild,--e in the Delectable Mountains were calling him hither As we looked upon the riot of color one day, Mr Burroughs said, ”John Muir, confound hiht!”
Returning to the little gray far dusk one late Septe back at the old hoazed upon the landscape long and long How fondly his eye dwells upon these scenes! So I have seen hi to fix the features and expression in his rows, the more the later years erode away, as do the secondary rocks, and one gets down to bed-rock,--youth,--and there he wants to rest These scenes make youth and all the early life real to me, the rest is one; but here it lives again”
(Illustration of On the Porch at Woodchuck Lodge Froh he is face to face with the past at his old home, his days there are not so sad as some of his reminiscent talk would seem to indicate In truth, he is serenely content, sosoreality to veil or blot out the Past!” he sighed ”And yet, is it not best so? Does not the grass grow above graves? Why should these lovely scenes always be a cemetery to me? There seehosts, and I arandchildren, hunting in the woods for crooked sticks for his rustic furniture, waking the echo in the ”new barn” (a barn that was new in 1844), routing out a woodchuck fro a half-rance of the buckwheat bloom, is to know that, wistful Celt that he is, and dominated by the spell of the Past, he is yet veryas full ato-day
He looked about hie after the completion of the repairs which had made the house so homelike and comfortable, and said contentedly: ”A beautiful dream come true! And to think I've stayed down there on the Hudson all these years with never the ho to cradle me as they did in my youth, and I so slow to return to them! I've been homesick for over forty years: I was an alien there; I couldn't take root there It was a lucky day when I decided to spend the rest of my summers here”
CAMPING WITH BURROUGHS AND MUIR
In February, 1909, I was one of a shs for the Pacific Coast and the Hawaiian Islands The lure held out to hied his trip was that John Muir would start from his home at Martinez, California, and await hih, that weirdly picturesque region, and in and around the Grand Canon of the Colorado; camp and tramp with him in the Mojave Desert; tarry awhile in Southern California; then visit Yose on the Pacific preparatory to lotus-eating in Hawaii The lure held out to the more obscure members of the party was all that has been enureat, si coreat good fortune, but to see them in company with these two students of nature, and to study the students while the students were studying the wonders, was an incalculable privilege
It frightensour opportunity for this unique Journey; for Mr Burroughs, though at first deciding to go, had later given it up, declaring hio so far fro about to see the strange and the extraordinary?” he wrotethe trip ”The whole gospel of ospel) is 'Stay at hos all about you; make the one abroad, I have carried this spirit with me, and have tested what I have seen by the nature revealed to lad I have triuain, now that this incubus is off ain, for the nexthim to reconsider and let two of his women friends accompany him So it all came about in a few days, and ere off
We wondered how Mr Muir would relish tohs we should not hamper them, and should be ready to do whatever they were
”Have no fears on that score,” he said; ”Muir will be friendly if you are good listeners; and he is orth listening to He is very entertaining, but he sometimes talks when I want to be let alone; at least he did up in Alaska”
”But you won't be crusty to him, will you?”
”Oh, no, I shan't dare to be--he is too likely to get the best of one; he is a born tease”
The long journey across the Western States (by the Santa Fe route) was full of interest at every point Even the monotony of the Middle West was not wearisome, while the scenery and scenes in New Mexico and Arizona were fascinating in the extrehs had been to the Far West by a northern route, but this was all fresh territory to hiht to it his usual keen appetite for new phases of nature, ical subjects It enhanced the pleasure and profit of the trip a hundredfold to get his first i panorama, as I did when he dictated notes to me from his diary, or descriptive letters to his wife and son The iets out there of earth sculpture in process is one of the chief attractions of the region, and Mr Burroughs never tired of studying the physiogno evidences of ti these with our still older, h Kansas he co unbearable froood far brooks and winding roads, he turned away froood place to make money, it was also a place to lose one's own soul--he was already homesick for the beauty and diversity of our o and we reached the desert town of Adamana As the train stopped near the little inn, a voice called out in the darkness, ”hello, Johnnie, is that you?”