Calypso Borealis John Muir Analysis

Unlike most kids, my vacations consisted of visiting national and state parks. From climbing the stairs at the tallest cascading waterfall in the southeast, Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia, to collecting all the Junior Ranger badges at each park we stopped at, I have fond memories of these trips. I guess the thing I remember most was taking in the glorious surroundings. Not only was it a pretty thing to look at – the canyons, mountains, waterfalls, forests, etc. – but it gave me comfort and made me appreciate nature and our beautiful Earth. Two authors that would relate to this feeling would be John Muir and William Wordsworth. In John Muir’s, “The Calypso Borealis”, where he describes his expedition to find that flower and how he was …show more content…
First, this author used diction when he mentions, “With one of these large backwoods loaves I was able to wander many a long wild fertile mile in the forests and bogs, free as the winds, gathering plants, and glorying in God's abounding inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread.” The diction shown here with the words wander, free, and glorying show a positive tone and gives an overall feeling of joyous comfort and free-spiritedness. These words show John Muir's relationship with nature because illustrate how much he valued and took in the beauty of nature while living in it. He chose these particular words because they show his unbounded appreciation of the great outdoors. Another example of this would be, “I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung.” Muir used words like beautiful, soft, and sprung to exemplify the overall feeling of being thrilled and elated with a positive tone. What sets this apart from a lot of other writings is that this diction made this flower seem like the most unique and special one in the world. Because of this, Muir’s strong relationship with nature is evident. These words bring to life the magic Muir felt when he discovered the flower. Following this, William Wordsworth expressed that, “Storms, thunderclouds, winds in the woods—were welcomed as friends.” In this line, the weather is given the human characteristic of being greeted as if they were friends. This is personification because the weather cannot be your friend. It’s not something that is living but instead something that just occurs naturally in this world of ours. His love of nature is shown be this text because we considered nature to be his friend. To get to the friend