Visions of ineffable beauty and harmony, health and exhilaration of body and soul, and grand foundation lessons in Nature’s eternal love are the sure reward of every ernest looker in this glorious wilderness.
Thrilled and exhilarated one strides onward in the crisp bracing air as if never more to feel fatique, limbs moving without effort, every sense unfolding and alert like the thawing flowers to take part in the new day harmony.
Peaks and Glaciers of the High Sierra, Picturesque California
But far the greater number (of people) are in good spirits, showing the influence of holiday enjoyment and mountain air. Fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom under the new inspiration. Mount Shasta, Summer Days at Mount Shasta, Picturesque California
After gaining the open summit of this first bench, feeling the natural exhilaration due to the slight elevation of a thousand feet or so…
The spreading hairs of horses tails and sparks from our blankets show how highly charged the air is.
We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. ….thrilling with the air and the trees…
Game in the woods, gold in the rocks, health and exhilaration in the air, while the colors and cloud furniture of the sky are ever inspiring through all sorts of weather. Chapter 1 Through the Foot Hills With A Flock Of Sheep, My First Summer In the Sierra
Oh, these, vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days whose light everywhere seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever. Chapter 2 In Camp on the North Fork of the Merced, My First Summer In the Sierra
Here every day is a holiday, a jubilee ever sounding with serene enthusiasm, without wear or waste or cloying weariness. Everything rejoicing. Not a single cell or crystal unvisited or forgotten. Chapter 3 A Bread Famine My First Summer In the Sierra
How sweet and keen the air! Every breath a blessing.
Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this morning with excess of wild animal joy.
How deathlike is sleep in this mountain air, and quick the awakening into newness of life.
Chapter 4 To The High Mountains, My First Summer In the Sierra
These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God’s beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. Drinking this champagne water is pure pleasure, so is breathing the living air, and every movement of limbs is pleasure, while the whole body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the camp fire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one’s flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure-glow not explainable. One’s body then seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal.
It is easier to feel than realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur.
Chapter 5 The Yosemite My First Summer In the Sierra
Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue; indeed the body seems one palate and tingles throughout. Chapter 6 Mount Hoffman and Lake Tenaya My First Summer In the Sierra
Another of those charming exhilarating days that make the blood dance and excite nerve currents that render one unwearable and well-nigh immortal. Chapter 8 The Mono Trail My First Summer In the Sierra
John Muir’s wife said that he suffered from, “low elevation sickness” when living in Martinez, California, and thus needed to return to the high Sierra Nevada for recovery. John Muir US National Park Service video documentary. See online: YouTube.
The summer climate of the fir and pine woods of the Sierra Nevada would, I think, be found infinitely more reviving; but because these woods have not been advertised like patent medicines, few seem to think of the spicy, vivifying influences that pervade their fountain freshness and beauty. Steep Trails, The San Gabriel Valley, last paragraph.
Updated: 7-17-20