The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [343]
Oh, what a grand time Roosevelt and Muir had together in Yosemite for those three memorable days. They hiked to and camped in many of the most beautiful spots in Yosemite, including Bridal Veil Falls, where they had a fantastic view of El Capitan and Ribbon Falls gushing down from the valley’s north rim. Religious metaphors filled Roosevelt’s writings about Yosemite, with Muir serving as his Old Testament guide through the wilderness. (Except that Muir’s god wasn’t the god of ancient Israel.) For starters, there didn’t seem to be a sickly face within 100 miles of the park; such human healthiness always appealed to Roosevelt. Even though Yosemite was a national park, bear traps were still laid on the floor of Yosemite Valley; Roosevelt wanted the “setters” arrested. Only hunting bears with rifle or knife was a sport; there should be no steel traps in a national park.125
Although Roosevelt changed clothes a few times, he is remembered as wearing jodhpurs with puttees, a thick sweater, a Stetson hat, and around his neck a soiled bandanna. Muir wore an oversize coat and loose-fitting trousers, looking rather like a hobo who had been cleaned up for a photo. Both men later boasted that they were alone in the Sierras, but Leidig and Lenord were constantly with them. There were also two packers and three mules.
Housed in the Yosemite National Park Archive is a detailed report of Roosevelt and Muir’s visit of 1903, written by Charlie Leidig, one of the trail guides. It gives a revelatory insider’s look at the trip. Leidig, for example, claimed that Roosevelt was annoyed when Muir wanted to stick a twig in one of the president’s buttonholes. He also noted that “some difficulty was encountered because both men wanted to do all the talking.” According to Leidig the president snored loudly, mimicked birds exactly, ate huge amounts of steak-fried chicken, and disdained crowds. Roosevelt’s primary order was to “outskirt and keep away from civilization.” 126 Highlights, according to Leidig, included seeing the sonorous Bridal Veil Falls, or Pohono (“puffing wind”), as the Indians called them.127
Roosevelt complained that the botanist and ornithologist Muir was much more interested in the trees than in the deer families they encountered along the primitive trail.128 Muir explained to Roosevelt on the third day, May 17, that he had an ulterior motive, an agenda item—saving Mount Shasta along the California-Oregon border and enlarging Yosemite National Park to include Mariposa Grove at the Yosemite Valley. Roosevelt was all ears, enjoying himself in the timeless hills and valleys of Yosemite. Always intent on self-mythologizing, Roosevelt had created a “lost in the wild” scenario for himself. It made for good copy. There was something very romantic, indeed, about the president of the United States sleeping outside in a snowstorm, high in the Sierras, with the weather-worn John Muir as a companion. At sunrise Roosevelt and Muir hiked into Yosemite Valley, camping within range of the spray from Bridal Veil Falls. “John Muir talked even better than he wrote,” Roosevelt found out in Yosemite. “His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him.”129
Back at the Sentinel Hotel, still pumped up with adrenaline, Roosevelt was unbelievably buoyant. He portrayed himself as a surviving backwoodsman, trapped by the harsh winter, eating dusty bread. “We were in a snowstorm last night, and it was just what I wanted,” he said. “This is the one day of my life and one that I will always remember with pleasure. Just think of where I was last night. Up there!” President Benjamin Wheeler of the University of California–Berkeley hosted a dinner for Roosevelt at the Sentinel Hotel in the park. Instead of speechifying, Roosevelt recounted his exploits with Muir on Glacier Point “amid the pines and the silver firs in Sierrian solitude, in a snowstorm, too, and without a tent.” Again he