Scribblings

There is not a “fragment” in all nature, for every relative fragment of one thing is a full harmonious unit in itself.
–John Muir

Sounds like something a haiku poet might say, doesn’t it? A few days ago I visited the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez and walked through the rooms where he lived with his wife and two daughters nearly 120 years ago. I lingered awhile in the room he called his “Scribble Den,” where, from his desk, he would have looked out over orchards and pristine rolling hills. This is where he gathered his thoughts after his many travels and composed letters, articles and books through which he inspired the environmental movement. Outside the house a light rain was falling, the tail end of a series of winter storms that blew through the Bay Area last week. Breathing in the damp air and imagining what the landscape might have looked like in John Muir’s time, I felt inspired to head home to write.

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
–John Muir

a birdcall
from across the valley
and –there! –its answer