Salutations, bibliophiles.
Today, I’m very excited to bring you
.Sonny writes
, which may be the best-named substack I’ve yet come across. He writes about his travels, but it’s more than that. In Sonny’s own words: “This page will not solely consist of travel writing, this is merely the highest form of procrastination from writing fiction, my true passion, I could come up with. There may be anything from essays to book reviews, scattered thoughts to poetry, cries for help, though all writing is only a thinly veiled cry for help, and, if I get my act together, fiction.”Here, Sonny shares with us the book that made him — A Vagabond for a Beauty by Everett Ruess. Enjoy!
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Widdop Reservoir, West Yorkshire, Age 5.
When I look back over the far, misty reaches of memory, past shimmering visions of a sea of clouds glowing pink with the setting sun, surrounding the snow-capped Himalayas of Langtang Valley, over 4000m above sea level yet still the mountains reached higher and higher; of watching dozens of gulls soaring over the waves on Dingle Peninsula, as I run alongside the frothing Atlantic swell, glimmering red with the fading light; of jumping across the stepping stones at Jack Bridge on one of those long summer days that I never wanted to end; one of the first things I can recall is bounding after a sheep, over rocks and babies’ heads, the wind blowing in my face; big grey sky and sweeping, endless moors on one side, and the scarred face of Our Mountain on the other; birds swooped above, and it was as though I was flying too.
I turned a corner, and, breathless, I came face to face with a great, horned ram, protector of the ewe I’d been chasing. I stared into the wise, age-old eyes; the eyes of the forgotten hills, the eyes of the weathered rock. A primordial awe rushed through me, and I felt small in the gaze of the wild old god of the moors. I walked back to the path, the lonely, windswept hills stretched off into the distance; and I was but a speck of dust falling across their vision.
Dad was waiting. I hadn’t told him I was going to run. I hadn’t know I was going to myself. He didn’t tell me off, in fact, he seemed to understand.
We moved south, away from the hills, and Dad worked abroad. Mum was never a lover of mud, so I soon got used to pyjama days. I got my fix for adventure from the chasm of Xbox and YouTube instead.
Dad would come back and wonder what had changed. Walking bored me, I wanted to be back in front of the screen. My finer senses had been calloused by technology, the trees no longer breathed and pulsed like they once had, and some deeper part of me was forgotten.
I got older, and, with the freedom to wander with my friends, I found joy in the outdoors again. Days passed cycling country lanes, making shelters in the woods; nights spent drinking on the hill, waking up cloudy headed and fuzzy tongued.
I read As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush, Into The Wild, The Worst Journey In The World, On The Road, The Old Patagonian Express; images of Patagonia, the Hindu Kush, Antarctica filled my head, and I longed to go on my own adventures and breathe the wild air again. I worked sixty-hour weeks, from the care home to the bar, saving money, taking refuge in the thought that soon I would be free.
Once more I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty. I have the devil’s own conception of a perfect time; adventure seemes to beset me on all quarters and without my even searching for it; I find gay comradeships and lead the wild, free life wherever I am. — Everett Ruess
Rota Vicentina, Portugal. Age 19.
For three weeks I stayed and worked the land with Gonzalo at La Negra, his home in a wild valley with no neighbours, on the border of Spain and Portugal. The hills were steep, rocky and dry, only small shrubs could grow on them, yet a river flowed through the middle, and from it, sprung life; eucalyptus trees and wildflowers, fish and frogs.
One evening, I lost my phone while scrambling on the rocks, and, despite the initial worry of how I would ever survive, a brave seed of thought sprouted, and I decided not to get another. In the long, quiet days that followed, unmediated by constant distraction, I heard the roar of my mind for the first time overpowering everything; my connection to others, my connection to the world around me.
It came time to leave Gonzalo. Near-paralysed by fear of what might happen, I slung my rucksack over my shoulder and, following maps I’d drew into my journal, I walked across, and beyond, the border to Portugal. Those first, scared steps out of Gonzalo’s valley and into the unknown are some of my proudest.
A few weeks later, I followed the rugged Atlantic coast of Portugal for 10 days with my friend, Torgrim, who I’d met only the day before starting. In those stretched out days of walking, swimming in the sea; eating porridge and pastel del nata’s for breakfast - rice, soup and bread for dinner, I felt the most connected to nature since being a child. We slept in hammocks and woke as the sun came up. I came to sense, without thinking, the time based on the position of the sun.
Day by day, step by step, away from the rude intrusion of technology, I felt my mind begin to shed the shell it had built up over the years, and I began to hear the faint whisper of the song of the wild.
I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one’s true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover one’s self? — Everett Ruess
Soon enough I was home again, working again, stuck again; where I fit neatly back into the rigid conceptions people had of me. The adventures I’d had seemed like a distant, golden dream, like they’d happened to someone else; someone braver, more open, more sure of themselves than I could possibly be. That Christmas, Dad gave me 'A Vagabond For Beauty', a collection of letters by Everett Ruess. The book had been long out of print when Dad was my age, and he’d looked, but never found it. He said he was too old to read it now, too old to be reminded of what life could be.
Deep into the January blues, I read Everett’s letters, sent to family, friends and lovers, chronicling his wanderings of the American West across the 1930s in the the search for what lay beyond the pale brink of the horizon. He left home aged sixteen, traversing forgotten tracks in the far reaches of the canyonlands, and the high trails of the unforgiving Sierra Nevada, with two burros to carry the essentials; blankets, a dutch oven, art supplies, and plenty of books.
There was a sweeping vitality to his life and words; the bold way he lived entirely on his own terms, again and again taking the steep rocky path and facing starvation, illness, dehydration, and surviving, seemingly the better for it. The visionary way he felt the Beauty of nature deep in his soul, and transcribed the nigh-indescribable experience of being the only soul to fall at the alter of the church of the wild.
Alone I shoulder the sky and hurl my defiance and shout the song of the conquerors to the four winds, earth, sea, sun, moon, and stars. I live! — Everett Ruess
In 1934, aged twenty, Everett toppled over the edge he’d long looked out from. He disappeared in Utah, a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. His was a life tragically cut short, yet lived to the full with the reaching highs and the bottomless depths of a life truly lived. Yet Everett’s spirit lives on in that distant, misty mountain far off at the edge of sight, beckoning all who dare go beyond.
Like a hand pulling me out from the bottom of a dark well, Everett’s words took me into the light, and reminded me of what life could be. I had a choice, and I did not have to choose mundanity and the predictable; adventure, spontaneity, and the serendipity that occurs when one takes a bold leap were all out there, waiting.
I thought that there were two rules in life - never count the cost, and never do anything unless you can do it wholeheartedly. Now is the time to live. — Everett Ruess
Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Nepal, India. Aged 21.
That June, I took a one-way flight to Hanoi, Vietnam with 10 days notice. On bicycle and on foot, amongst snow-capped mountains and verdant jungle, dirt tracks and villages, raging rivers and forgotten temples, I looked out at the mysteries of rock and forest, and found my own glimpses of unspeakable Beauty. And I felt again, what was so natural as a child - the call of the wild.
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.
— Everett Ruess
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Thank you for the introduction of this remarkable book. The inclusion of your own journeys reminds us to live fully, and not be imprisoned by technology.
You are never 'too old to be reminded of what life could be'; but thank you for this- reminds us of why we travel