Transcription:
Original letter in mounted set of letters to Mrs. Carr, 94 . Yosemite Valley, Oct. 7th, 1874. Dear Mrs. Carr: I expected
to have been among the foothill drift long ago, but the mountains fairly seized me, and ere I knew I was up the Merced ca
on where we were last year, past Shadow and Merced Lakes and our soda springs, etc. I returned last night. Had a glorious
storm, and a thousand sacred beauties that seemed yet more and more divine. I camped four nights at Shadow Lake at the old
place in the pine thicket. I have ouzel tales to tell. I was alone and during the whole excursion or period, rather, was in
a kind of calm incurable ecstasy. I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer. How glorious my studies seem, and how simple.
I found out a noble truth concerning the Merced moraines that escaped me hitherto. Civilization and fever and all the morbidness
that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness.
My own special self is nothing. My feet have recovered their cunning. I feel myself again. Tell Keith the colors are coming
to the groves. I leave Yosemite for over the mountains to Mono and Lake Tahoe. Will be in Tahoe in a week, thence, anywhere
Shastaward, etc. I think I may be at Brownsville, Yuba Co., where I may get a letter from you. I promised to call on Emily
Pelton there. Mrs. Black has fairly mothered me. She will be down in a few weeks. Farewell. John Muir