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Cedric Wright (1899-1959) http://tinyurl.com/C-Wright

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Intimate Spirit

From "Trail Song," 1927.

Reader: Daniel Maloney

Snap a picture, miss a moment. Sometimes it's better to put down the camera and just take a breath—especially in that natural cathedral we call the Sierra Nevada.

While musician, poet, and photographer Cedric Wright knew well our limited capacities to capture the experience of Sierra beauty, he also knew well our infinite capacity to be part of it.

Sierra Club Bulletin, cover detail, 1928. Larger.

No one's writing, no one's pictures, ever tell the intimate spirit of a camping trip in the Sierra. They are too much in love with the big mountain and the big tree, and what they did. But when we see the exquisite charm of little intimate rivulets, the moss gardens and little separate worlds, is it any wonder to feel the need of being closer in spirit to this sort of thing, to collect into ourselves all the intimate touches of a mountain trip—the pictures that have never been taken—and to try to translate the phrasings of mountains into the phrasings of music and human life? To love this beauty so that one becomes it! To see in each rock, each weather-beaten dead tamarack and juniper, each bit of needle-strewn earth, a beauty inviting a lingering look. A mountain trip distills this love of rustic free beauty, sculptured and formed by majestic momentums and laws divine.

Cedric Wright wrote "Trail Song" for a 1927 issue of The Sierra Club Bulletin.