Honestly, this reading was from the summer
before this semester, but I reread a majority of My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir and absolutely fell in love with this one quote from the text. It
reads, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” I took the entire
passage to be referring to nature as a whole and the necessity that it is in
human life. It explicitly reflects on topics that we covered in class about
communication with the Divine through nature and spiritual journey. Nature
offers a sort of disconnect from the typical hustle and bustle of the life that
has been given to us. This disconnect provides a means of introspection and opens
up an opportunity for communication with God. In the above image is another
John Muir quote from a letter to his sister. He does not mean to say that the
elevated terrain is simply yelling at him to come for no reason, there are many
different, subtly implications of this quote. When Muir first was exposed to
the unique and serene environment of the nature in the mountains, his soul had
been opened up to an experience that would alter his worldview and even the
condition of his soul. With that altered worldview, he would then realize that
he’d been missing out on the enlightenment of the intimate connection with
nature and the Divine his whole life. With a revelation that great and an
emotional and spiritual alteration that significant, Muir cannot fathom the
idea of letting “the mountains” become a fading memory. His soul thirsts for
more; his heart is drawn back to the elevated wilderness. That place is what
Muir correlates with God. There, he is a man meeting his creator, a son in the
arms of his father, a weary traveler resting in the comfort of a place that
feels like home.
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