The City Slicker As Metaphor

Before he disappeared under mysterious circumstances at the age of twenty in 1934, the American artist, writer and naturalist Everett Ruess, spent his last four years exploring the deserts of the American southwest — always alone. His attitude to life can be found in a letter he wrote to his brother shortly before his death: “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 streetcar and starsprinkled 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.” 

How came he upon this manifesto which is so prized not only by nascent New Agers but also embraced down the ages by sadhus , saints and sages? How does such a (chronologically ) young mind reject perceived materialism for a pristine return to nature? Why should, indeed, a saddle be necessarily preferred to a streetcar?

What if some Mongol or Native American tribesmen were to tell someone like Ruess that they prefer the bare back to the saddle because riding in this fashion is natural, allows considerable communication with the horse and improves a rider's balance? Would a saddle become automatically repugnant in that case? Also, in that case, we should be preferring raw food instead of having it flame tempered by fire. And doing all our writing by means of stick marks on sand or a goose quill dipped in waterrubbed inkstone instead of using something like a pencil, Biro or word processor. It would be interesting to know what Ruess used for his writings.

But perhaps we do the man a gross injustice here because it's possible he was using his examples only as personal metaphor. The trouble is, we often tend to take that figure of speech, turn it on its head and begin to idolise it.

That's when we begin to suddenly see ceilings as something made of cement and not as the tops of caves or burrows and desire the elemental but essentially unprotective star-sprinkled sky. And what if a person were to find deep peace amidst a herd of people he calls his city? Would such a claim be any more falsifiable than that discovered in the wild? As for nature trails, it's the natural product of walking that occasionally get paved into highways — which, too, can still lead into the unknown. Just like swinging through the trees once did.

Mukul Sharma