Then Fate Intervened
“By the spring of 1867 John was still swinging like a pendulum between two worlds…he spent long days rambling in the wild. But he also loved the frenetic pace of inventing and putting ideas into action on the factory floor.
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“Even his machines created a philosophical dilemma for him. On the one hand, their purpose was to free humans from manual labor; on the other hand, as labor-saving devices, they often put people out of work. No matter what he did or where he went, he kept running headlong into the same kinds of paradoxes. But then fate intervened.
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“One evening, while repairing a belt on one of the machines, John stopped to untie a connection with the point of a long file. Somehow, the file flipped up and struck him in the right eye. Stunned, he stood by a window holding his hand over his eye; the cornea was badly scratched and the aqueous humor dribbled out into his hand. His assistant, standing nearby, heard him say, ‘My right eye gone. Closed forever on all God’s beauty!’
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“A specialist was called and assured John that, if he rested, his sight would be restored, at least partially. Muir was dutiful, staying in a darkened room for four weeks. Days no longer alternated with nights: Time floated and he drifted with it.
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“Finally, his eye was stable enough for him to go outside, and he headed for the woods. For two hours he wandered, letting the world pour back into him—trees, weeds, rocks, birds, the light. He knew then that the machines he had invented stood between him and his true love, the wilderness.
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“’This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields,’ he said. ‘God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.’” — Gretel Ehrlich; John Muir: Nature’s Visionary, p. 54-58
Sammy Slabbinck
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