Sublime

“Not gifted with genius but honestly holding his experience deep in his heart, he kept his simplicity and humanity.”

An air altogether of occupying a time not his own – might he be more at ease in an Edwardian dining room, say, or on a pitching clipper’s deck? Very likely.

Aux États-Unis, c’est un héros national, c’est le protecteur de Yosemite, le sauveur des séquoias, le père fondateur de l’écologie politique, même s’il y a malentendu dans ce domaine. Et puis c’est un personnage fantasque et barbu, un vagabond magnifique, libre et plein d’humour, qui a laissé parmi les plus belles pages de nature writing, ce genre

He hears his dead undergrad mentor quoting Mark Twain. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. “In the field. I seem to have gotten a little lost.”

There was a photograph of Trout. He was an old man with a full black beard. He looked like a frightened, aging Jesus, whose sentence to crucifix-ion had been commuted to imprisonment for life.

Quand au soir de sa vie Muir raconte son enfance avec gourmandise, on imagine sa plume gambader, son œil bleu étinceler de malice au moment d’écrire tel ou tel souvenir, et un sourire affleurer dans sa barbe, abondante, mais qui ne savait guère dissimuler ses émotions, ses états d’esprit, cette lucidité amusée qu’il mettait en toutes choses. Il en

Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled.