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Poetry
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Prose
Grand
Canyon /Southwest
Exploration
of the Colorado River of the West
by John Wesley Powell
Everett
Ruess "Vagabond for Beauty"
by W.L. Rusho
Beyond
the Hundredth Meridian
by Wallace Stegner
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Wilderness
Song
by Everett Ruess
I have been one who loved the wilderness
Swaggered and softly crept among the mountain peaks
I have listened long to the seas brave music,
I have sung my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
On canyon trails when warm nights winds were blowing,
Blowing and sighing 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 seas 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 solitude’s,
I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high.
Singing, I rode to meet the splendid shouting storm,
And fought it’s fury until the hidden sun foundered in
darkness,
And the lightning heard my song.
Say that I was tired and weary,
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 among the mountain peaks.
I shall listen long to the seas brave music.
I shall sing my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
From Everett Ruess "Vagabond for Beauty" by W.L.
Rusho |
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Success
- Anonymous
To laugh often and love much,
to win the respect of intelligent people and
the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and
endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to give of oneself;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
or a redeemed social condition;
to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and
sung with exultation;
to know even one life has breathed easier;
this is to have succeeded. |
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Exploring
by Wendell Berry
Always in the (wilderness) when you leave familiar ground
and step off alone into a new place,
there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and
excitement,
a little nagging of dread.
It is the ancient fear of the Unknown,
and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going
into.
What you are doing is exploring.
You are undertaking the first experience,
not of the place, but of yourself in that place.
It is an experience of our essential loneliness;
for nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone. |
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Grand
Canyon quote
by Frank Waters
"In
this eternal palingenesis by which continents themselves are
forever laid to rest and reborn anew out of their dead selves,
nothing is static, nothing is still. Not even the great
pyramid of the Colorado.
Everything is alive, dynamic with constant change. Even
the stones breathe; water is electric; the air is luminous…
…the great red river, as the instrument of change, has
written its ultimate meaning on the vast palimpsest of the living
land.
Here, if only for an instant, we can sometimes read it, still
engraven on the pages of its uncovered terraces…...we measure
minutes. The river ignores millenniums. " |
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Everyone
Sang
- from Counter Attack by Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white orchards and dark green fields;
on - on - and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears;
and horror drifted away...
Oh, but everyone was a bird;
and the song was wordless -
the singing will never be done. |
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Count
That Day Lost
by George Eliot
If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard;
One glance most kind,
That fell like sunshine where it went
Then you may count that day well spent.
But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay
If, through it all
You’ve nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost
Then count that day as worse than lost. |
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