If My Soul Could Get Away From This So-called Prison, Be Granted All The List Of Attributes Generally Bestowed On Spirits, My First Ramble On Spirit-wings Would Not Be Among The Volcanoes Of The Moon.

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If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the
list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on
spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon. Nor should I
follow the sunbeams to their sources in the sun. I should hover about the
beauty of our own good star. I should not go moping among the tombs, not
around the artificial desolation of men. I should study Nature's laws in
all their crossings and unions; I should follow magnetic streams to their
source and follow the shores of our magnetic oceans. I should go among the
rays of the aurora, and follow them to their beginnings, and study their
dealings and communions with other powers and expressions of matter. And I
should go to the very center of our globe and read the whole splendid page
from the beginning. But my first journeys would be into the inner substance
of flowers, and among the folds and mazes of Yosemite's falls. How grand to
move about in the very tissue of falling columns, and in the very
birthplace of their heavenly harmonies, looking outward as from windows of
ever-varying transparency and staining!
-- John Muir, American Naturalist (1838-1914)

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