Saturday, May 26, 2012

Muir's "Wilderness Conversion"







"I'm in the woods, woods woods, & they are in me-ee-ee. The King tree & me have sworn eternal love-- sworn it without swearing & I've taken the sacrament with Douglass Squirrell drank Sequoia blood, & with its rosy purple drops I am writing this woody gospel letter. I never before knew the virtue of Sequoia juice. Seen with sunbeams in it, its color is the most royal of all royal purples. ... I wish I was so drunk & Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the juiceless world, descending from this divine wilderness like a John the Baptist eating Douglas Squirrels & wild honey or wild anything, crying, Repent for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand."
--John Muir, letter to Jeanne Carr, Fall, 1870
(as found in Land and Spirit in Native America by Joy Porter, Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2012)