Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Sunday, September 27. 2015

Muir and Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an important American figure who I find almost impossible to read, took a train out west partly to visit John Muir.


Emerson was Muir's hero. However, the elderly Emerson, the author of Nature, had no interest in going into the woods with Muir. I think nature was an idea for Emerson, not experienced outside of a park or a farm. For Muir, of course, wilderness was religion.


Life – and Emerson – tried to lure the naturalist John Muir back to the world. But his home was always the American wild.


Pic: Muir with Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite, 1906.

Posted by Bird Dog in Natural History and Conservation, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:36 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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Read Stanley Cavell on Emerson.

Cavell is a virtuoso reader of American philosophers.
#1 rhhardin (Link) on 2015-09-27 14:01 (Reply)
John Muir's autobiography is a great read. The man was a genius.
#2 fodderwing on 2015-09-27 14:54 (Reply)
Emerson's 'Self-Reliance essay was a handbook for me -- a dreamy young man in my early 20s...I still find him wonderful to read...I'm surprised...thought an exemplar New Englander like Bird Dog would love him...
#3 Dex Quire (Link) on 2015-09-27 18:42 (Reply)
Climbed half dome in 1961--before the easy trail up the back side. There was only sticks with a wire between them on the back side. They were stuck in holes that had been drilled in the rock and the holes were bigger than the sticks so as to absorb the angle difference of you pulling your weight up from the bottom and then lurching forward to the next stick in a rock. Laid down on my stomach and inched toward the edge. Hard, hard time inching my way back!
#4 apple Pie on 2015-09-27 23:30 (Reply)
Most environmentalists I meet live seem to be hankering to make the world look like the summer camps of their childhoods. Creepy.

I don't say that's true for activists or people I read online.
#5 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2015-09-28 16:59 (Reply)

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