"Perhaps the least known of all this grand group of reserves is the Bitter Root, of more than four million acres. It is the wildest, shaggiest block of forest wildness in the Rocky Mountains, full of happy, healthy,storm-loving trees, full of streams that dance and sing in glorious array, and full of Nature's animals, - elk, deer, wild sheep, bears, cats, and innumerable smaller people."
Did you know that John Muir had left the Sierras and visited Montana. I hadn't, but apparently he did, and what did he recommend? "Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted" For some of us a summer was not nearly enough. A year was not enough. A lifetime may not be enough. It was here we were reminded of what he meant when he said, "The mountains are calling and I must go."
Reading Muir, I have a hard time believing that encountering a mountain bike would ruin his wilderness experience or that he would be offended by someone enjoying the outdoors in a way different from him. His desire was to show people nature and to get them to love it with the same passion he did."Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common everyday beauty. "
He wanted people to venture beyond the safety and comforts of resorts, to not experience nature through a plane of glass, "Most travelers here are content with they can see from car windows or the verandas of hotels, and in going from place to place cling to their precious trains and stages like wrecked sailor to rafts."
Ever here someone say, "nature is my church, " or "the woods are my temple?" Sometimes I think people take this too literally. I once engaged a fierce anti-bike wilderness advocate who said, "You wouldn't ride a bike through the Sistine Chapel, why do think you should be able to ride your bike through my church?" Well, first off I've done a lot of things in the wilderness that I wouldn't do at the Vatican including digging cat holes, skinny dipping, climbing pillars, making love. There is do doubt that Muir saw the divine in nature, and if he believed it to be a church I imagine it wouldn't be the whispering and tip toeing propriety of a Prairie Home Companion Lutheran Church, but rather an acoustic version of James Brown's church in the Blues Brothers, and when he saw the light he would be doing back flips down the aisle. Why do I think that? Because along with being a church the forest and the mountains were also a library and a classroom where he learned this lesson, "Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes - all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them."
Finally I can't help that think that John Mir would are a mountain biker, if only because is understands the importance of flow, "Everything is flowing -- going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks... While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature's warm heart."
All photos from Blodgett Canyon, One of the trails being closed by the Bitterroot National Forest Travel Plan, and probably one of the more popular trails in the forest being only 5 miles from town. As you can see from the scarcity of tracks, popularity is relative and the place remains as wild as when Muir was alive.
3 Comments
Jeffrey
3/22/2016 12:06:14 am
I can't say Muir would have "loved" mountain biking... but he likely would have respected it. Besides being the most well known conservationist, he was an inventor.... loved building mechanical things (clocks, watches, things to get you out of bed, etc.). A bicycle wouldn't have scared him. And while he was more of a "saunterer", I think he'd appreciate those of us who would navigate, explore and survive Wilderness on a human powered bicycle.
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AuthorLance Pysher Archives
September 2017
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