Part 2: Twain and Muir’s Meeting
Except for a story believed to be apocryphal, Mark Twain and John Muir, separated by only three years in age, never met. The two famous writers did, however, cross paths astrologically on April 21 – Muir born on the date in 1838 and Twain dying on it in 1910.
Following is Part 2 of how I imagine their conversation, using their own written words, might have gone had they shared a campfire in Yosemite.
*
Muir: “A slight sprinkle of rain – large drops far apart, falling with hearty pat and plash on leaves and stones and into the mouths of the flowers.”
Twain: “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”
Muir, laughing: “Wash your spirit clean. Keep close to Nature’s heart – and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
Twain: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
Muir: “As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature’s sources never fail.”
Twain: “Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”
Muir: “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away.”
Twain: “If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.”
Muir: “Most people are on the world, not in it. In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
Twain: “There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.”
Muir: “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
Twain: “Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of the sympathetic ear.”
Muir: “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”
Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
Muir: “Going to the mountains is going home.”
Twain: “There is nothing more satisfying than that sense of being completely ‘at home’ in your own skin.”
Muir: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”
Twain: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Muir: “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
*
Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com