Title:
Letter from Johannes Reimers to John Muir, 1902 Apr 5.
Creator:
Johannes Reimers
Publisher:
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies
of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Contributor:
John Muir
Date:
1902 Apr 5
2008
Type:
Text
Format:
Image/jpeg2000
Identifier:
muir12_0326-md-1
Source:
Original letter dimensions: 20 x 16.5 cm.
Language:
eng
Coverage:
Stockton [Calif.]
Rights:
Copyright status unknown
Some letters written to John Muir may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Transmission or reproduction
of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners.
Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Transcription:
page-01.905. E. Oak St. STOCKTON. April 5, 1902. My Dear Mr Muir:- I have just returned from a long tramp with you through
our national parks. Indeed it was a delightful one -happy hours of forgetfulness of struggle and strife - deep-breathing enjoyment
in the great solitudes, which you so masterly describe. Indeed, I have been with you, and I felt the vast places breathe upon
me, and I lay on the forest-ground rapt by the music of wind-tossed trees, and I stood in the cannon abyss by the onrushing
mountain brook, its glad song rejoicing through my heart, its soft spray blown upon me, refreshing , reawakening my life-forces.
What a stillness of natural grandeur there breathes through your whole book - what pictures you have drawn. It all makes a
poor fellow, who can not go, weep for homesickness. Lucky man, you, who can go and come, as you please page-2.You asked me
the other day, if I did not think OUR NATIONAL PARKS an improvement on your first book. I should now answer, that upon the
whole, I think it is. Yet, what have you written which in strength and beauty surpasses your description of the wind-storm
in the Sierras. There is more poetry, more roundedness, more liberated emotion, more idyl in your later book than in your
first. You at times carried me away in such a manner as to leave, me much saddened when the realities of life, such as are
mine, again clutched me. You have created pictures in my mind, -some great and strong, others lovely with the lonlyness of
woodland interiors, with the fairytales of mountain meadows fragrant with the still-life of posies, with the sparkle of dashing
water, and the glitter of snowy peaks - pictures which never, never I shall forget, which have become part of me, and which
shall add much to the better man whom, some day I hope to grow, through the purifying influence of all that wonderfull cleanlinesspage-3.which
lies outdoors everywhere, and which trembles on the rain-washed blade of grass by the house-wall, and which rolls on with
such mighty harmonies through the limitless space above us. I thank you for it all, and with my best greetings to you and
your, I remain yours affectionatly illegible