{"id":9887,"date":"2012-03-04T14:38:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T14:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/04\/the-range-of-light\/"},"modified":"2012-03-04T14:38:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T14:38:52","slug":"the-range-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/04\/the-range-of-light\/","title":{"rendered":"The Range of Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Muir (The Mountains of California<\/em>, 1894, Ch. 1) on California's Sierra Nevada mountain range:<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Would we have this beautiful description if John Muir had heeded the injunction, Never hike alone<\/em>!? Note his use of 'mountain-chains'  near the end of the passage. That is a term that has fallen into desuetude if it ever saw much use. It is an exact equivalent of the German Bergketten<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best guide to that region of the Sierra Nevada known as the High Sierra is R. J. Secor, The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes and Trails<\/em>  (The Mountaineers, 1992, 2nd ed. 1999). It is a beautifully written book. Here is a taste:<\/span><\/p>\n

The High Sierra . . . is the best place in the world for the practice of mountains. By the practice of mountains, I am referring to to hiking, cross-country rambling, peak bagging, rock climbing, ice climbing and ski touring. One of my goals in life is to go around the world three times and visit every mountain range twice. But whenever I have wandered other mountains, I have been homesick for the High Sierra. I am a hopeless romantic, and therefore my opinions cannot be regarded as objective. But how can I be objective while discussing the mountains that I love? (p. 9)<\/span><\/p>\n

My kind of guy. During one of my High Sierra backpacking trips I met a man who knew Secor. Secor the climber smokes cigarettes! To be a climber you have to be all legs and lungs. Take that, you tobacco-wackos!<\/span><\/p>\n

The following photograph is from Edwin Farrell's Sierra Nevada Gallery<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sierra-nevada-convict-lk-2005\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Muir (The Mountains of California, 1894, Ch. 1) on California's Sierra Nevada mountain range: . . . the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing … Continue reading “The Range of Light”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california","category-hiking-and-backpacking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}