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Zusatztext “Probably no other man in this country has his enthusiasm for mountains and glaciers . . . united with so rare a literary gift.”— John Burroughs Informationen zum Autor Edward Hoagland is the author of Notes from the Century Before (a Modern Library paperback) and nearly twenty other books on nature and exploration. He lives in Bennington, Vermont. Klappentext In the late 1800s! John Muir made several trips to the pristine! relatively unexplored territory of Alaska! irresistibly drawn to its awe-inspiring glaciers and its wild menagerie of bears! bald eagles! wolves! and whales. Half-poet and half-geologist! he recorded his experiences and reflections in Travels in Alaska! a work he was in the process of completing at the time of his death in 1914. As Edward Hoagland writes in his Introduction! "A century and a quarter later! we are reading [Muir's] account because there in the glorious fiords . . . he is at our elbow! nudging us along! prompting us to understand that heaven is on earth—is the Earth—and rapture is the sensible response wherever a clear line of sight remains.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes photographs from the original 1915 edition. chapter i Puget Sound and British Columbia After eleven years of study and exploration in the Sierra Nevada of California and the mountain-ranges of the Great Basin, studying in particular their glaciers, forests, and wild life, above all their ancient glaciers and the influence they exerted in sculpturing the rocks over which they passed with tremendous pressure, making new landscapes, scenery, and beauty which so mysteriously influence every human being, and to some extent all life, I was anxious to gain some knowledge of the regions to the northward, about Puget Sound and Alaska. With this grand object in view I left San Francisco in May, 1879, on the steamer Dakota, without any definite plan, as with the exception of a few of the Oregon peaks and their forests all the wild north was new to me. To the mountaineer a sea voyage is a grand, inspiring, restful change. For forests and plains with their flowers and fruits we have new scenery, new life of every sort; water hills and dales in eternal visible motion for rock waves, types of permanence. It was curious to note how suddenly the eager countenances of the passengers were darkened as soon as the good ship passed through the Golden Gate and began to heave on the waves of the open ocean. The crowded deck was speedily deserted on account of seasickness. It seemed strange that nearly every one afflicted should be more or less ashamed. Next morning a strong wind was blowing, and the sea was gray and white, with long breaking waves, across which the Dakota was racing half-buried in spray. Very few of the passengers were on deck to enjoy the wild scenery. Every wave seemed to be making enthusiastic, eager haste to the shore, with long, irised tresses streaming from its tops, some of its outer fringes borne away in scud to refresh the wind, all the rolling, pitching, flying water exulting in the beauty of rainbow light. Gulls and albatrosses, strong, glad life in the midst of the stormy beauty, skimmed the waves against the wind, seemingly without effort, oftentimes flying nearly a mile without a single wing-beat, gracefully swaying from side to side and tracing the curves of the briny water hills with the finest precision, now and then just grazing the highest. And yonder, glistening amid the irised spray, is a still more striking revelation of warm life in the so-called howling waste,-a half-dozen whales, their broad backs like glaciated bosses of granite heaving aloft in near view, spouting lustily, drawing a long breath, and plunging down home in colossal health and comfort. A merry school of porpoises, a square mile of them, suddenly appear, tossing themselves into the air in abounding s...
