The Wild 



The wind blew up from the river, fresh and mysterious, against my face. The air was alive 

 with the faint odor of juniper. Far, far away, beyond the river, beyond the canyons, be- 

 yond countless miles of mesa, so far away that they were sometimes mountains of earth 

 and sometimes mountains of an ancient, dried-out moon, rose a snow-covered divide that 

 seemed to bound the universe. Between me and this dimmest outpost of the senses was not 

 the faintest trace of the disturbances of man; nothing, in fact, except nature, immensity, 

 and peace. Robert Marshall, Nature Magazine, April 1937. 



WILDERNESS TRIPS provide under conditions of some hardship a return 

 at once serene and bracing to America's far past. These explorations of the 

 primitive vary widely in respect to the rigors imposed. Dude ranchers 

 frequently trek their customers out through wilderness areas nowadays, with 

 cowboy guides to keep watch upon them with a sort of rough tenderness 

 and bed them down on inflated, rubber mattresses at night. 



But often dude ranch trips, where the dudes are hardier, are very much 

 tougher than that. The job, indeed, is sometimes to hold down robust busi- 

 nessmen who want to push over mountains and engage mountain lions 

 barehanded — to keep them from needless dangers and accidents. 



In the summer of 1938 with three companions the late Robert Marshall, 

 of the United States Forest Service, attempted to climb Mount Doonerak in 

 Alaska, something no one had ever tried. Much the same unusual weather 

 that stirred up the New England hurricane was breeding there in the far 

 Northwest late that August. Rain and flood beat at the party for days and 

 weeks on end. Mount Doonerak is yet to be climbed. Cast under ice in 

 the floodwater wreck of a 30-foot open boat, returning, these wilderness ad- 



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