**S**

**SABINE PINE (Pinus Sabiniana)**

"...excepting the strange looking Sabine pine, which here forms small
groves or is scattered among the blue oaks. The trunk divides at a
height of fifteen or twenty feet into two or more stems, out leaning or
nearly upright, with many straggling branches and long gray needle
casting but little shade ..."

MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, pg.15

**SALMON**

\"Used, wasted, canned and sent in shiploads to all the world, a grand
harvest was reaped every year while nobody sowed.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.246

**SALT LAKE CITY**

\"Salt Lake cannot be called a very beautiful town, neither is there
anything ugly or repulsive about it.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.75

**SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS**

\"\...Most of the plants are identical with those of the Sierra, but
there are quite a number of Mexican species. One coniferous tree was all
I found. This is a spruce of a species new to me Douglasii macrocarpa.\"

The spruce, or hemlock, then known as Abies Douglasii var. macrocarpa is
now called Pseudotsuga macrocarpa.

STEEP TRAILS, pg.109

**SAN GABRIEL VALLEY**

\"The sun valley of San Gabriel is one of the brightest spots to be
found in all our bright land, and most of its brightness is
wildness\...Cultivation is not wholly wanting, for here are the choicest
of all the Los Angeles orange groves, but its glorious abundance of ripe
sun and soil is only beginning to be coined into fruit.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.97

\"I believe there are some fifteen thousand people here, and some of
their buildings are rather fine, but the gardens and the sky interested
me more. A Palm is seen here and there poising its royal crown in the
rich light, and the banana, with its magnificent ribbon leaves, produced
a marked tropical effect\...\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.97

**SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY**

\"This valley of the San Joaquin is the floweriest piece of level I have
ever walked, one vast level, even flower bed. A sheet of flowers, a
smooth sea ruffled a little by the tree fringing of the river and here
and there of smaller cross streams from the mountains. Florida is indeed
a land of flowers, but for every flower created that dwells in the most
delightsome places more than a hundred are living here. Here, here is
Florida.

LETTERS TO A FRIEND, pg. 39-40

**SCENERY**

\"The scenery is mostly of a comfortable, assuring kind, grand and
inspiring without too much of that dreadful overpowering sublimity and
exuberance which tend to discourage effort and cast

people into inaction and superstition.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.193

**SCOTLAND (school lessons)**

\"We had to get three lessons every day in Latin, three in French, and
as many in English, besides spelling, history, arithmetic, and
geography. Word lessons in particular, the wouldst couldst

shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing,
until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars
to memory, and in connection with the reading

lessons we were called on to recite parts of them with the rules over
and over again, as if all the regular and irregular incomprehensible
verb stuff was poetry.\"

John was 8 years old at this time.

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.17

\"It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the
Scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary
bathing for health terrible to us.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.9

\"Scotch boys are seldom spoiled with money. We thought more of a penny
those economical days than the poorest American schoolboy thinks of a
dollar.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.6

Dunbar

\"With redblooded playmates, wild as myself, I loved to wander in the
fields to hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder
at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks
when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful
storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of old Dunbar
Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled
together as one.\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.1

'We fairly reveled in the battle stories of the glorious William Wallace
and Robert the Bruce, with which every breath of Scotch air is
saturated\...\"

MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH, pg.16

**SEA and SKY**

\"Both ocean and sky are already about as rosy as possible the one with
stars, the other with dulse, and foam, and wild light.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.1

**SEEDS**

\"Sequoia seeds have flat wings and glint and glance in their flight
like a boy\'s kite.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.121

\"The dispersal of Juniper seeds is effected by the plum and cherry plan
of living birds at the cost of their board, and thus obtaining the use
of a pair of extra good wings.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.121

**SELF INTEREST**

\"Perhaps the profession of doing good may be full, but everybody should
be kind at least to himself.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.58

**SEQUOIAS**

\"\...Sequoias, kings of their race, growing close together like grass
in a meadow, poised their brave domes and spires in the sky, three
hundred feet above the ferns and lilies that enameled the ground;
towering serene through the long centuries, preaching God\'s forestry
fresh from heaven.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.334

\"But of all living things sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait
long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.277

\"The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will
find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the
cause of the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause
of the water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain,
but cut off the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more
completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related
phenomena of Sequoia woods and perennial streams.\"

THE YOSEMITE, pg.104

\"It belongs to an ancient stock, as its remains in old rocks show, and
has a strange air of other days about it, a thoroughbred look inherited
from the long ago\-\-- the auld lang syne of trees.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.268

\"The Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea) is Nature\'s forest masterpiece, and,
so far as I know, the greatest of living things.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.268

**SEQUOIAS cont.**

\"\...they never lose their god-like composure, never toss their arms or
bow or wave like the pines, but only slowly, solemnly nod and sway,
standing erect, making no sign of strife, none of rest,

neither in alliance nor at war with the winds, too calmly unconsciously
noble and strong to strive with or bid defiance to anything.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.284

\"There is something wonderfully attractive in this king tree, even when
beheld from afar, that draws us to it with indescribable enthusiasm; its
superior height and massive smoothly rounded outlines proclaiming its
character in any company; and when one of the oldest attains full
stature on some commanding ridge it seems the very god of the woods.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.287

\"As far as man is concerned they are the same yesterday, today, and
forever, emblems of permanence.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.269

\"\...towering serene and satisfied through countless years of calm and
storm, the greatest of plants and all but immortal.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.281

\"\...the venerable aboriginal Sequoia, ancient of other days, keeps you
at a distance, taking no notice of you, speaking only to the winds,
thinking only of the sky\...\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.273

"But I'm in the woods, woods, woods, and they are in me--ee-ee. The King
tree and I have sworn eternal love -- sworn it without swearing, and
I've taken Sacrament with Douglas squirrel, drunk Sequoia wine, sequoia
blood, and with it's rosy purple drops I am writing this woody gospel
letter."

LIFE AND LETTERS, pg.140

"In the cones and sometimes in the lower portion of the trunk and roots
there is a gritty substance which dissolves readily in water and yields
a magnificent purple color. It is a strong astringent and said to have
been used by Indians as "big medicine". Mr. Nelder showed me specimens
of ink made from it I found good, free flowing, and holding it's color
well."

SIERRA BIG TREES, pg.36-37

"I never before knew the virtue of Sequoia Juice. Seen with sunbeams in
it, its color is the most royal of all royal purples. No wonder the
Indians instinctively drink it for they know not what. I wish I were so
drunk and Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods to all the
juiceless world...crying, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at
hand."

LIFE AND LETTERS, pg.140

**SEX**

\"Here come the Gabriel lads and lassies from the commonplace orange
groves, to make love and gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays
in the cool pool.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.105-6

**SHASTA**

\"The mountain in itself seems to turn, displaying its niches like the
revolving pyramids in jewelers\' windows.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.59

\"\...No labyrinth of peaks and canyons I had ever been in seemed to me
so dangerous as these immense slopes, bare against the sky.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.43

\"\...A succession of small clouds struck against the summit rocks like
drifting icebergs, darkening the air as they passed, and producing a
chill as definite and sudden as if ice water had been

dashed in my face.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.44

\"The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible
and available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it no then
be a fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite as a
National Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind, preserving its
fountains and forests and all its glad life in primeval beauty? Very
little of the region can ever be more valuable for any other use
certainly not for gold nor grain. No private right or interest need
suffer, and

thousands yet unborn would come from far and near and bless the country
for its wise and benevolent forethought.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.74

(proposed gondola to top of Shasta)

\"\...Going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a whirlwind, as one is
shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace cartridge\...fine
exhilarating translation, yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so
much might be seen and enjoyed.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.32

**SHEEP**

\"No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the manipulations of
culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks merely by causing them
to stare at objects of the desired hue; and possibly Merinos may have
caught their wrinkles from the perplexed brows of their breeders.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.11

**SHEEP cont.**

\"It is almost impossible to conceive of a devastation more universal
than is produced among the plants of the Sierra by sheep\...nine tenths
of the whole surface of the Sierra has been swept by the source. It
demands legislative interference.\"

(Clark\'s Meadows)

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.174

"Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry. Excepting my guarded
lily gardens, almost every leaf that these hoofed locusts can reach
within a radius of a mile or two from camp has been devoured."

MY FIRST SUMMER IN THE SIERRA, pg.56

**SIERRA AUTUMN**

\"In autumn the sighing of the winds is softer than ever, the gentle
ah-ah-ing filling the sky with a fine universal mist of music, the birds
have little to say, and there is no appreciable stir or rustling among
the trees save that caused by the harvesting squirrels.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.283

**SIERRA NEVADA**

"Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or
Snowy Range, but the Range of Light."

MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA, pg.2

\"All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more
light than other mountains.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.76

\"In some of Nature\'s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble
unwelcome creature; wild beasts and weather trying to kill him, the rank
tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging

needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.98

\"The sunshine falls in glory through the colossal spires and crowns,
each a symbol of health and strength, the noble shafts faithfully
upright like the pillars of temples, upholding a roof of infinite leafy
interlacing arches and fretted skylights.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.99

**SIERRA SPRING**

\"The sky is mostly sunshine, oftentimes tempered by magnificent clouds,
the breath of the sea built up into new mountain ranges, warm during the
day, cool at night, good flower opening weather.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.281

**SIERRA SUMMER**

\"In summer the days go by in almost constant brightness, cloudless
sunshine pouring over the forest roof, while in the shady depths there
is the subdues light of perpetual morning.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.282

**SMOG**

\"\...He (Thoreau) thanked God that at least the sky was safe. Had he
gone West he would have found out that the sky was not safe; for all
through the summer months, over most of mountain regions, the smoke of
mill and forest fires is so thick and black that no sunbeam can pierce
it. The whole sky, with clouds, sun, moon, and stars, is simply blotted
out.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.357

**SNOW**

\"The faint lisp of snowflakes as they alight is one of the smallest
sounds mortal can hear.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.274

\"The fertile clouds, descending, glide about and hover in brooding
silence, as if thoughtfully examining the forests and streams with
reference to the work before them\....\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.249

\"Small flakes or single crystals appear, glinting and swirling in
zigzags and spirals; and soon the thronging feathery masses fill the sky
and make darkness like night, hurrying wandering\
mountaineers to their winter quarters.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.249

"To lie out alone in the mountains of a still night and be touched by
the first of these small silent messengers from the sky is a memorable
experience, and the fineness of that touch none will forget."

STEEP TRAILS, pg.53

**SNOWSHOE**

\"\...I had the means of making snowshoes and could retreat or hold my
ground as I pleased.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.46

**SOLDIERS**

\"In pleasing contrast to the noisy, ever changing management, or
mismanagement, of blundering, plundering, money making vote sellers who
receive their places from boss politicians as purchased goods, the
soldiers do their duty so quietly that the traveler is scarce aware of
their presence.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.40

\"The poor fellows that lie here deserve far more pity than they have
ever received.\" (comments on soldiers killed in Modoc war)

STEEP TRAILS, pg.66

**SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN**

THE YOSEMITE, pg.124-6

**SPEED**

\"Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day. The
multitude of mixed, novel impressions rapidly piled on one another make
only a dreamy, bewildering, swirling blur, most of

which is unrememberable.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.56

**SPRING**

\"Then the plants also are in flood; the hidden sap singing into leaf
and flower, responding as faithfully to the call of the sun as the
streams from the snow, gathering along the outspread roots

like rills in their channels on the mountains, rushing up the stems of
herb and tree, swirling in their myriad cells like streams in potholes,
spreading along the branches and breaking into foamy bloom, while
fragrance, like a finer music, rises and flows with the winds.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.256

**SQUIRREL, DOUGLAS**

\"He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy and sound as a sunbeam.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg.232

Note: Pages 231-232 have excellent action word pictures of the Douglas

Squirrel.

\"\...A squirrel of squirrels, quick mountain vigor and valor condensed,
purely wild, and as free from disease as a sunbeam.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.194

\"The Douglas is a firm, emphatic bolt of life, fiery, pungent, full of
brag and show and fight\...\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.195

\"He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,\-- a fiery,
sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the
woods\' best juices.\"

THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA, pg.229

\"\...The happiest, merriest of all the hairy tribe, and at the same
time earnest and solemn, sunshine incarnate, making every tree tingle
with his electric toes.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.196

\"In the calm Indian summer these busy harvesters with ivory sickles go
to work early in the morning, as soon as breakfast is over, and nearly
all day the ripe cones fall in a steady pattering, bumping shower.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg. 274

**SQUIRREL, DOUGLAS cont.**

\"I never found a dead Douglas. He gets into the world and out of it
without being noticed; only in prime is he seen, like some little plants
that are visible only when in bloom.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.196

**SQUIRREL, GRAY**

\"The Gray, \"Sciurus fossor,\" is the handsomest, I think, of all the
large American squirrels.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.195

**STICKEEN**

Read Muir's "Stickeen"

"Rather he was a hermit -- a wandering star beyond the influence of any
of his kind."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.275

"A little black horizontal philosopher, calm, pensive, silently
watchful."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.276

**STORMS**

\"Even the storms are friendly and seem to regard you as a brother,
their beauty and tremendous fateful earnestness charming alike.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.99

"Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, "convulsions
of nature", etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may
seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied
expressions of God's love."

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.267

**STREAMS**

\"There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream, and
this is the first I ever saw.\"

THOUSAND MILE WALK TO THE GULF, pg.30

\"\...ungovernable energy, rushing down smooth inclines in wide foamy
sheets fold over fold, springing up here and there in magnificent
whirls, scattering crisp clashing spray for the

sunbeams to iris, bursting with hoarse reverberating roar through ragged
gorges and boulder dams, booming in falls, gliding, glancing with cool
soothing, murmuring\....\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg. 242

\"\...silvery branches interlacing on a thousand mountains, singing
their way home to the sea\...\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg. 241

\"The joyful, songful streams of the Sierra are among the most famous
and interesting in the world\...\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg. 241

**SUCCESS**

"I was in great danger of becoming so successful that my botanical and
geographical studies might be interrupted."

SON OF THE WILDERNESS, pg.100

**SUGAR PINE**

\"\...Sugar Pine, the largest and most beautiful of all the 70 or 80
species of pine trees in the world,...\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.109

\"\...on through the oaks and chaparral of the foothills to
Coulterville; and then ascended the first great mountain step upon which
grows the sugar pine. Here I slackened pace, for I drank the spicy,
resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble tree I felt that I was
safely home. Never did pine trees seem so dear. How sweet was their
breath and their song, and how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled
my fingers among their tassels and rustled my feet among their brown
needles and burrs, and was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can
write.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg. 12

**SUMMER IN NEVADA**

\"During the fiery days of summer the whole of this vast region seems so
perfectly possessed by the sun that the very memories of pine trees and
snow are in danger of being burned away, leaving

one but little more than dust and metal.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg. 124

**SUN**

\"The sun, looking down on the tranquil landscape, seems conscious of
the presence of every living thing on which he is pouring his blessings,
while they in turn, with perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious of
the presence of the sun as a benevolent father and stand hushed and
waiting.\"

STEEP TRAILS, pg. 161

"One can make a day of any size, and regulate the rising and setting of
his own sun and the brightness of its shining."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.218

"The sun shines not on us but in us."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.92

**SUNRISE/SUNSET**

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is
never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever
rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on
sea and continents and islands, each in its turn as the round earth
rolls."

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS, pg.438

\"\...the sun is already in the west, and soon our day will be done.\"

OUR NATIONAL PARKS, pg.73