Monday, July 27, 2009

Summer 1869

My First Summer in the Sierra
by John Muir
Chapter 6
Mount Hoffman and Lake Tenaya
JULY 26.

"From garden to garden, ridge to ridge, I drifted enchanted, now on my knees gazing into the face of a daisy, now climbing again and again among the purple and azure flowers of the hemlocks, now down into the treasuries of the snow, or gazing afar over domes and peaks, lakes and woods, and the billowy glaciated fields of the upper Tuolumne, and trying to sketch them. In the midst of such beauty, pierced with its rays, one's body is all one tingling palate. Who would n't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing."

Reading the journal account of John Muir's Sierra adventures during the summer of 1869 has brought on even more infectious enthusiasm for my trip next week to Yosemite. The day before Headlands Hundred I should be resting my legs but I can't resist taking a hike out to May Lake and summiting Mount Hoffman.

Getting "stoked" for my 4 day adventure out west.