Wilderness Song

 

Wilderness Song

I have been one who loved the wilderness:
Swaggered and softly crept between the mountain peaks;
I listened long to the sea's brave music;
I sang my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
On canyon trails when warm night winds were blowing,
Blowing, and sighing gently through the star-tipped pines,
Musing, I walked behind my placid burro.
While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.
I have known a green sea's heaving; I have loved
Red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,
Slow sunny clouds, and red sand blowing.
I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall.
In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard
The ghostly murmur of regretful winds In aspen glades, where rustling silver leaves
Whisper wild sorrows to the green-gold solitudes.
I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high;
Singing I rode to meet the splendid, shouting storm
And fought its fury till the hidden sun
Foundered in darkness, and the lightning heard my song.
Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary;
That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;
Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;
Lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!
Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness:
Swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;
I shall listen long to the sea's brave music;
I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.

Pledge to the Wind

Onward from vast uncharted spaces,
Forward through timeless voids,
Into all of us surges and races
The measureless might of the wind.
Strongly sweeping from open plains.
Keen and pure from mountain heights,
Freshly blowing after rains,
It welds itself into our souls.
In the steep silence of thin blue air.
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air has a clear, clean rarity,
I give to the wind . . . my pledge:
"By the strength of my arm, by the sight of my eye.
By the skill of my fingers, I swear.
As long as life dwells in me, never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind.
I will feel the wind's buoyancy until I die;
I will work with the wind's exhilaration;
I will search for its purity; and never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind."
Here in the utter stillness,
High on a lonely cliff-ledge.
Where the air is trembling with lightning,
I have given the wind my pledge.
**
The Indian Council Cave

Wand'ring among the painted rocks one day
I saw some ancient, moss-grown boulders there
That leaned together in a friendly way
And formed a cave that might have housed a hear.
But on the high arched ceiling were designs
And symbols that some Indian had drawn;
A rising sun, marked out in faint red lines,
A row of running wolves, a deerand fawn.
Bones from forgotten feasts wereon the floor,
Picked clean by men who sataround a fire
Discussing and deciding peace or war
Or chanting solemn prayers, in gay attire.
The cave is empty now, the paintings fade . . .
And here the silent centuries invade.

—Everett Ruess, published in The American Indian, April 1929
-Poem by Everett Ruess
Quote from the book Everett Ruess, a vagabond for beauty