vagabond for beauty.

In between shooting on location and working back at the hotel editing along with plane trips, I started and finished a book that will take me some time to fully grasp. It was perhaps the singularly most powerful prose I have ever read, and the fact it was actually just a collection of letters never intended to be read by anyone other than their recipient I believe perhaps led to their honesty. The author felt no inhibitions. No need to impress. But impress he did, no doubt not only me in such a way but surely countless others. He – like Abbey – writes of the desert in all its beauty and immenseness. I try feebly without intention to write of the mountains in theirs.

Everett Ruess was merely sixteen years old when he first left his home in Los Angeles in the summer of 1930, bound for the northern California coast. After a life lived all too shortly but incredibly deeply, he disappeared in 1934 – last seen in the Escalante River region of southern Utah. No trace was ever found, and the question remains wherever he may be?

It has been said his reactions to the wonders of Nature went beyond what we would assume to be normal experience, to the point where he could almost resonate to the light waves that struck him from all points in the landscape. We do not fully understand him. Probably the most intriguing paradox in Ruess' personality was the balance between the inwardly-directed, intensely-sensitive visionary and the outgoing, courageous adventurer. His self-confidence was massive, but his doubts all the same ever-present. What he was after was beauty – so much that it seemed to consume his very being.

I've ended up underlining the majority of the book, scrawling notes in the margins next to those lines that I found particularly incredible or fitting. I will be revisiting this book as I decompress what I read, but wanted to post this one letter that struck me in its entirety perhaps stronger than any other ~

Dear Bill,

Once more I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty. Adventure seems to beset me on all quarters without my even searching for it; I lead the wild, free life wherever I am. And yet, there is always an undercurrent of restlessness and wild longing; "the wind is in my hair, there's a fire in my heels," and I shall always be a rover, I know. Always I'll be able to scorn the worlds I've known like half-burnt candles when the sun is rising, and sally forth to others now unknown. I'm game; I've passed my own rigorous tests, and I know I can take it. And I'm lucky too, or have been. Time and again, my life or all my possessions have swung on the far side of the balance, and always thus far I've come out on top and unharmed, even toughened by the chances I've taken.

"Live blindly upon the hour; the Lord, who was the future, died long ago." Among others, I've tried that way, and found it good, too. Finality does not appall me, and I seem always to enjoy things the more intensely because of the certainty that they will not last. Oh, it's a wild, gay time! Life can be rich to overflowing. I've been so happy that I can't think of containing myself. I've no complaints to make, and time and the world are my own, to do with as I please. And I've had it up and down; no tedious, humdrum middle course has been mine, but a riotously  plunging and soaring existence.

Again I say, it's a wild gay time. I've slept under hundreds of roofs, and shall know others yet. I've carved a way for myself, turned hostile strangers into staunch friends, swaggered and sung through surplus of delight where nothing and no one cared whether I lived or died.

The things I've loved and given up without complaint have returned to me doubled. There's no one in the world I envy.

Around me stretches the illimitable desert, and far off and nearby are the outposts of suffering, struggling, greedy, grumbling humanity. But I don't choose to join on that footing. I'm sorry for it and I help it when I can, but I'll not shoulder its woes. To live is to be happy; to be carefree, to be overwhelmed by the glory of it all. Not to be happy is a living death.

Alone I shoulder the sky and hurl my defiance and shout the song of the conqueror to the four winds, earth, sea, sun, moon and stars. I live!

May

Northeast Arizona

He was twenty years old.  Seven months later he disappeared forever. His message he left behind was simple: life on this earth is very precious and very beautiful.

We must learn to heed the pure and delicate voices of those who cherish it. Without intention, Everett Ruess was one of those voices.

waikoloa.

My last night tonight.

After finishing up work around 10 o'clock tonight, finally I was able to change and head down to the infinity pool now completely deserted and still. Before jumping in, I quick walked around and took some snapshots to help remember this place. Then tossed my goggles in the water and dove in after them.

I'll miss swimming at night under clear skies warm and humid. Palm trees overhead swaying in the winds, the frawns making a calm sound that would help me fall asleep. Lying on my back floating like a scene near the end of Immortal Beloved some music or other in my head. I'll miss the wind. I think now I'll miss the warmth but I'm not totally convinced. I'll miss the sound of the palm trees outside my door, open all night despite the humidity. I'll miss jumping off cliffs into a crystal clear, deep blue Pacific Ocean warm and inviting. There are songs tied forever to these moments.

But I also miss fall and crisp mornings stepping and crunching on leaves and a lot of other things, so I know it will be good to fly back across the Pacific tomorrow. But maybe surprisingly I'll miss something about this place. Maybe because I don't plan on ever coming back. Trying to soak up every last minute before fading to sleep. It's quiet now outside, no wind. Very, very quiet.

orion.

At long last, floating in the pool tonight way too late I looked east and saw – having just risen above the hotel – my favourite constellation. It made me smile, under palm trees shaking in the trade winds whipping across the pavilions so comfortable taking turns swimming laps and dipping in hot tubs no one else around.

déjà vu.

I've taken to falling asleep to this song now, far away from home (I think it's called what it is because he uses samples from previous songs on previous albums). What's neat is when I turn it off right before I'm about to fall asleep, I leave my door open all night so I can hear the trade winds blowing through the palm trees outside my room that actually is a really cool ambience if only I could fall asleep without music ....

ps – the link to the video is really, really cheesy – so if you're actually inclined to click it, maybe just hide the browser and listen to the music.

seven lives many faces.

I just got home with Enigma's new studio release in hand and – per the norm – blazed through x songs before coming to what is the seventh track and called La Puerta Del Cielo (I believe loosely translated in Spanish means 'at the gate of heaven') which is now on repeat quite loudly and will be for the remainder of the night, and will most likely accompany me on most of my journey across the Pacific.

And in an instant ... peace. When I listen to it, I imagine myself a lens focused at infinity on Polaris (Ursae Minoris) 430 light years away while everything else in the universe spins around me.

goodbye milky way.

Probably my favourite song of his, listening to this reminds me of this post about how young and foolish we as a human species really are. Here, it sounds like Michael Cretu (whose studio project is called Enigma) is saying – albeit in a much more somber way – what Sagan often writes about ~

Shall I go shall I stay?
A hundred-seven light years away
Many times so many doubts but no reason to talk about
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
But it's time to go away ... goodbye Milky Way
For a better world without hate
Follow your heart believe in Fate
Only visions and the mind will guide you to the light
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
But it's time to go away ... goodbye Milky Way
Mission is over mission is done
I will miss you children of the sun
I go home until someday I say goodbye ...

Goodbye Milky Way
[In five billion years the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way and a new, gigantic Cosmic world will be born]

It seems like when he says 'only visions of the mind will guide you to the light' – he is saying exactly what Sagan says. And Sagan's peaceful, optimistic approach to our perhaps doomed civilization is brought out with Cretu's 'for a better world without hate, follow your heart believe in Fate.' We need to look beyond our petty wants and selfishness to view how amazing everything around us really is and – in an even more holistic view – how insignificant but at the same time how absolutely incredible carbon-based life, this planet, the cosmos – really are.

And in saying 'doomed,' I suppose I mean only in the sense of what the song mentions at the end – how eventually and inevitably the sun will explode and the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies will collide. But maybe, just maybe – as Sagan thinks and I like to believe – by that time we'll have long since learned how to overcome our shortsightedness and gained unfound wisdom which would then allow us to move on to other galaxies and to other suns and to other planets even more spectacular and incredible than the one upon which we find ourselves here at this moment.

the wild cascades.

I love the smell of old books. And the feel of them, wrinkled and torn and soft around the edges. I can't remember now how I came across this book – The Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland – but did somehow so in an instant ordered it from a bookseller in town and just found it stuffed in my mailbox today. It was published by the Sierra Club back in 1965, written by an eccentric character named Harvey Manning (who wrote countless guidebooks for the Cascades) who is a Cascades explorer, writer and editor and has – as the Sierra Club's David Brower writes in the acknowledgments – "the Cascade River flowing through the arteries on his right side and the Stehekin on his left." The purpose was to convince a public that the North Cascades needed saving. Saving from the bulldozers and the logging trucks. As justice William O. Douglas writes from Goose Prairie, Washington in the Foreword ~

If we do not preserve the remaining samples of primitive America, we will sacrifice traditional American values, the values of frontier America. Not every citizen goes to the wilderness – and they did not even 300 years ago. But so long as there is the presence of wilderness and the option of going to see it, a certain number of citizens do go there and bring back a message for their fellows. As long as that continues we will retain a historic connection with the past of our nation – and our race.

Upon first inspection, it is a beautiful book. I've now been introduced to the simple photography of the late Philip Hyde, who apparently studied alongside Ansel Adams. His black and white photographs from the Cascade Pass region (coincidentally, where I'm headed back again on Saturday) are simply spectacular, and in an instant convinced me to lug a Hasselblad and a couple of lenses up to the pass because that area is as rugged and as beautiful as one can hardly imagine.

I have, upon first setting foot on rock and ice here, felt a certain connection with the North Cascades. They are like no other mountain range on earth, and certainly unlike any range I have visited. They have been called a masterpiece. They have a quality – a ruggedness, pristineness, softness and stillness – about them that I just cannot do justice. Photographs cannot do justice. But a walk through the damp cedar and fir forests clinging to the western slopes, a climb high above the valleys and the clouds crampons crunching on solid glacial ice, a moment standing still in the crisp air of views unimaginable – those can. It is a new adventure – a new experience – every time I find myself there. They are a home to me, a place I can go to find an almost unbearable amount of reflection.

I've hiked through the ranges of the Sierras and the Rockies and the Winds, but none of them call me back the same way as these jagged, impressive peaks with their inspiring glaciers and massive struts of elevation from valley floors lined with fir and fog. Each time I return, I'm only more inspired to go back.

Throughout the book, the poetry of Theodore Roethke weaves in and out of the the pages of Manning's eloquent prose. Interspersed and molding with the spectacular photography of Philip Hyde (as mentioned), David Simons, Bob and Ira Spring, Ansel Adams and others. The images of the Chilliwack Range; of Glacier and Dome and Forbidden Peaks; of the South Cascade Glacier; of Image Lake, floating ice in Doubtful Lake, a lake in the White Chuck Basin; of Bridge Creek and the head of Flat Creek – all of these stir memories of my own images, my own travels up the spines of mountain ridges, glaciers clinging far below. Of finding my way through fogs and whiteouts and blizzards and raging storms. Of standing on summits surrounded by seas of peaks.

Under a photograph by Bob and Ira Spring of Forbidden Peak at sunset (a view I've soaked up on my climbs up Eldorado Peak, looking across the Inspiration Glacier to the north face and the Forbidden Glacier that tumbles in a beautiful mess to the deep turquoise waters of Moraine Lake far, far below) Roethke writes without assumption most fittingly (and most excerpts are labeled as just that – untitled extractions of a larger work) ~

And I acknowledge my foolishness with God,

My desire for the peaks, the black ravines, the rolling mists

Changing with every twist of wind,

The unsinging fields where no lungs breathe,

Where light is stone.

Clearly, the book's efforts paid off and the North Cascades National Park (created by Congress in 1968, three years after publication) was established and protects these wild lands and incredible wilderness for me and all others beckoned and inspired to explore. I'm grateful for the foresight of those that put this together, this incredible collection of poetry, prose and photography – all of a place that is and will always be to me home.