“When the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.”
— Doc Sarvis
Tag Archives: writing
“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”
—John Muir, “Travels in Alaska”, 1915
Tidbits from the Dutch Harbor Telegraph
Police Blotter:
Suspicious Activity—
“The middle-aged man with a large plate of cookies was spotted again, engaged once more in the dodgy act of giving away cookies and drinks. An officer this time located the culprit, and determined his random acts of kindness were simply a means to dispose of leftover snacks prepared for a corporate meeting.”
Editorial:
“The mountain formerly known as Cleveland Volcano….”
Some people have objected to (The Telegraph’s) arrogance in deciding to call the mountain by its old name, Chuginadak. As if the Telegraph is this powerful steamroller that flattens everything in it’s way. “Cleveland Volcano” is an awkward name….and Grover Cleveland never saw it. He’s got a city in Ohio named after him. Isn’t that enough? The Telegraph will continue to call the mountain Chuginadak or else “the mountain formerly known as Cleveland Volcano.”
Infantile:
Alaska tops nation for neonatal and infant survival rates
Alaska’s neonatal survival rate dropped to an all-time low of 1.92 deaths per 1000 live births, the best in the USA. This according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The state’s infant mortality rate of 3.75 deaths per 1000 live births is also the lowest in the nation.
————————————————
Buy a Spectre a Drink
Happy All Hallows’ Eve
“All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid.”
–Washington Irving “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Everett Ruess
In 1930, Everett Ruess, at the age of 16, started his travels into the American Southwest. Usually walking, or occasionally riding one of his burros, Ruess traversed across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. He left behind a prolific bundle of writing, in both letters and journals, documenting his travels.
Everett was one of the first Anglos to venture into this desert wilderness solely to immerse himself in its beauty. He wasn’t a prospector or a rancher, just a young man who investigated cliff dwellings, painted water colors, cut linoleum prints of landscapes, and he wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
In November of 1934, Everett Ruess walked his two burros into Davis Gulch near Escalante, Utah, disappearing into history at the age of 20. He was never seen again. His body, paintings, equipment, and gear were (allegedly) never found. A search party found his two burros in a makeshift corral that Everett made in the canyon bottom of Davis Gulch.
Sadly, at least two of his journals are missing. One was stolen by a huckster who had claimed to a distraught family that he was going to write a biography on the young vagabond. That journal is in the hands of a private collector from Indiana who refuses to let anyone read it, including the Ruess family. The other, of course, disappeared with Everett.
Ruess packed a lot of life into 20 years; more than many do in a lifetime. His tale is a fascinating one. In his last letter to his brother Waldo, Everett wrote, “This had been a full, rich year. I have left no strange or delightful thing undone I wanted to do…”
Photo Courtesy of EverettRuess.Net All Rights Reserved
NEMO 1934
“The perfection of this place is one reason why I distrust ever
returning to the cities. Here I wander in beauty and perfection.
There one walks in the midst of ugliness and mistakes. …
Here I take my belongings with me. The picturesque gear
of packing, and my gorgeous Navajo saddle blankets make
a place my own. But when I go, I leave no trace.”
“As to when I shall visit civilization; it will not be soon, I
think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its
beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time.
I prefer the saddle to the street car and the star sprinkled
sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the
unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the
wild to the discontent bred by cities.
“
“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!”
“I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a
lone wanderer of the wilderness. God, how the trail lures
me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me.
After all the lone trail is best. I hope I’ll be able to buy good
horses and a better saddle. I’ll never stop wandering. And
when the times comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest,
most desolate spot there is.”
— Everett Ruess
Something Rather Adventurous…
“Now, I don’t know if you’ve got it in your heads yet, but the Pott family wasn’t a very conventional family — that is, they were all rather out of the ordinary. …
So when it came to buying a car, they were all determined that it shouldn’t be just any car, but something a bit different from everyone else’s — not one of those black beetle sedans that looks much the same back and front so that, in the distance, you don’t know if it’s coming or going, but something rather special — something rather adventurous.”
——— Ian Fleming
Illustration courtsey of ianfleming.com
Space I
“Those parts of the earth not yet trodden by the foot of man, where nature is left to itself, are becoming more and more rare at the end of the nineteenth century. Future generations will only find in fossil traces of those gigantic animals which an unknown law is sweeping little by little from the face of the globe, giving preferences to races smaller and better adapted to lack of space and to the ever-increasing invasion of humanity.”
— Edouard Foa, F.R.G.S.
“After Big Game in Central Africa” c.1899
Wild Black Mamba
“With a hiss like some weird, ice-cold version of a steam boiler rupturing, a sound I’ll hear in sweat-soaked dreams for many years to come, first one, then a second dull, gunmetal length of murder appeared, as if by witchcraft, four feet in front of my face. The larger snake was directly ahead, the other facing me also, but within reach of Silent. I remember wondering idly if, like many reptiles, the female was the larger. I stood frozen, watching the mouths agape, showing the terrible black lining, strings of saliva hanging like delicate wet cobwebs between the upper and lower jaws.”
— Peter H. Capstick
“Mamba Means Death” c.1979
Creative Commons
Circle to Circle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Like the Stories & Photos? Help Keep the Rover Rolling.
