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| Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains. I had a good time in Europe and New York, but it seemed very hard work to travel in a civilized tourist way and I got very tired of it. Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains... The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong. The shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of nature's heart. The water in music the oar forsakes. The air in music the wing forsakes. All things move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. |
| JOHN MUIR |
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