Transcription:
Camp-fire 8 miles north of Yosemite Palls, September 1871. Dear Merriam, This has been a most glorious day, as full of
beauty and joy as sun ever measured, one of God's own mountain units of time, nameless and dateless, big enough, and rich
enough for a whole life. Last evening I camped in a glacier meadow at the head of the Cascades Eastmost tributary. The meadow
was velvet with grass and compassed with a wall of Wiliamson spruce. I made a great fire and the daisies of the green sod
rayed as if conscious of a sun. As I lay on my back in the silence, feeling the presence of the trees gleam-ing bright against
the outer dark, all gushing with life and circling closer and closer about me, and saw the small round sky coming down with
its stars and doming the Tumined trees,I said, Never was mountain mansion more beautiful, more spiritual. Never was mortal
wanderer more blessedly homed.The sun rose and my forest walls were removed -- the charmed trees returned to the common fund
of the woods, and my sky flake fused back into the fathomless blue, and I was left upon common ground to pursue my daily glacier
labor. I followed the main Yosemite rim northward, passing round the head of the second Yosemite tributary which flowed about
northeast until bent southward by the main current. About noon I came to the basin of the third ice tributary of the west
rim, a place of domes which had long engaged my attention, and as I was anxious to study their