The Bread Supply
I was longing for the mountains about this time, but money was scarce and I couldn’t see how a bread supply way to be kept up. While I was anxiously brooding on the bread problem, so troublesome to wanderers, and trying to believe I might learn to live like the wild animals, gleaning nourishment here and there from seeds and berries, sauntering and climbing in joyful independence of money or baggage, Mr Delaney, a sheep-owner, for whom I had worked a few weeks, called on me and offered to engage me to go with his shepherd and flock to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers — the very region I had most in mind.
This is how Muir ends up in the Sierra for his first extended stay.
Sunday was warm and sunny and lawnmowers were puttering across the neighborhood. I pulled the hammock to the fence near the wisteria vine, climbed in and opened My First Summer in the Sierra.
The book is a delight and Muir far more of a mystic than I previously understood.
Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.
The Sierra would be nice, but coastal Virginia is just fine for today.
The thing that surprised me the most about the book was how often Muir talks about hoping he might see this scenery again. As he goes off on his last excursion before his descent, there’s a downright ache to his words. He’s relishing it and already missing it and plagued by the thought that he may never return, may never set his sights on these mountains and meadows again.
Away we go, down through the pines, leaving the lovely lawn where we have camped so long. I wonder if I’ll ever see it again.
How absurd. He is John Muir! Of course, he will see it again!
Except that he had no idea if he would be back. It’s only in retrospect that the return seems inevitable. The real time living is uncertain and achy, at once elated and a little sad.
E.L. Doctorow said that “writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” And so I’m reminded that there must be an element of trust in the living. In the writing of the novel, in the making of a mountaineer. Trust that the ache means there’s something worth exploring further. Trust that there may be a return. Trust that the descent isn’t the end of the journey. Trust that the bread supply can be kept up.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference. - Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, June 2005
[ Photo by Brannon Naito on Unsplash ]
