What makes Muir's declaration so arresting is that he frames wanderlust not as luxury or escape, but as moral obligation—the mountains don't invite politely, they *call*, and he cannot refuse without betraying something essential in himself. Most of us experience similar summons (a half-read book, a neglected friendship, a skill we've meant to learn), yet we treat them as indulgences to postpone until life settles. Muir suggests instead that ignoring what genuinely moves us is a kind of dishonesty, a small death. A woman I knew finally learned to paint at sixty-three because she stopped waiting for permission and recognized her studio's quiet demand as something more serious than a hobby—it was, she said, the thing keeping her alive.