It can be hard to meet your heroes. In the spring of 1871, the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson left Boston to take his first and only trip to the far West, where he encountered a sawmill operator named John Muir. The two men seemed to have much in common: Emerson was the leading light of the transcendentalist movement, which emphasized the basic goodness of humanity and nature, and Muir later became a leading preservationist who cofounded the Sierra Club. Yet Muir was disappointed by his encounter with the famed author, who was so timid that he declined an invitation to camp in Yosemite Valley, lest he fall ill in the night air.Muir’s disregard for Emerson, though, pales in comparison with the sentiments of the…
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