I have been one who loved the wilderness
       Swaggered and softly crept between the mountain peaks
I listened along to the sea’s brave music;
       I sang my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
              -  Everett Ruess. Ruess was an artist, poet and desert wanderer. In 1934, he mysteriously disappeared while wandering with his donkeys through a remote area of Utah.

 

 

A Sonnet for Everett Ruess

You walked into the radiance of death
through passageways of stillness, stone, and light,
gold coin of cottonwoods, the spangled shade,
cascading song of canyon wrens, the flight
of scarlet dragonflies at pools, the stain
of water on a curve of sand, the art
of roots that crack the monolith of time.

You knew the crazy lust to probe the heart
of that which has no heart that we could know,
toward the source, deep in the core, the maze,
the secret center where there are no bounds.

Hunter, brother, companion of our days:
that blessing which you hunted, hunted too,
what you were seeking, this is what found you.
- Edward Abbey, Oracle, Arizona, 1983