In 1937, Edward Weston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a first for a photographer. He was given a two thousand dollar stipend and, with his companion Charis Wilson (whom he would later marry), he would photograph the American West from April 1937 to April 1938. Ansel Adams (pictured above) invited the couple to visit Yosemite, where he would take them to the High Sierra, a place that Weston had never visited. Upon arriving in Ansel Adams country, Weston wrote the following:

We speculated on what gastric adventures lay before us. Back at the start of our travels we had written Ansel to ask if he knew where we could get dehydrated vegetables. He had answered no, but anyway they were an insult to the taste buds; years of camping had taught him the needs of the outdoor diet were few and simple: salt, sugar, bacon, flour, jelly beans, and whiskey.*

Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That’s where the West begins;
Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
That’s where the West begins.

Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where friendship’s a little truer,
That’s where the West begins;
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing,
Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing,
That’s where the West begins;

Out where the world is in the making,
Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
That’s where the West begins;
Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying —
That’s where the West begins.

- ARTHUR CHAPMAN

It seems like every year, as soon as the temperature drops and the snow starts showing its face, I reach for the Robert Frost pocket anthology pictured above. (Sweet, sweet Windsor.) One of his most famous and a personal favorite:

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer 5
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake. 10
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep, 15
And miles to go before I sleep.

Watch: Robert Frost reading “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”

The crazy surprise ending of “Why The Juniper Has Berries” from The Book of Nature Myths for Children by Florence Holbrook is after the jump. And for those of you wondering why the cranberry that hides in the juniper is green, well, juniper berries are green when young, and after about 18 months, they mature to the purple/blue color we’re familiar with. And there you have it…

NIGHT TRAILS

You never have seen, nor you never will see—
The stars at their best and the moon hanging free—
And you never will know what night ought to be—
‘Til you are out on the trail, all alone—
With the call of the West ringing out like a shout—
With the wide, spreading plains all around and about—
And the smell of the sage where the trail’s running out—
And the breeze with a tang of its own.

You never have known and you never will know—
The silence that speaks ’til your soul is aglow—
With, maybe it’s God, and you’re whispering low—
To your bronc, which is proper and right—
For broncs understand, they’re a part of the place—
With stars and the moon and far open space—
And the soft desert wind sort of kissing your face—
The spell of the plains in the night.

You never have found, nor you never will find—
The rest to a heart or the peace to a mind—
Where men can forget and the world is behind—
‘Til you’ve stood on the trail that is dim—
The breeze dies away and the dome of the sky—
Hangs lower and lower ’til stars are close by—
And earth fades away and the heavens are nigh—
On the plains—in the night—just with Him.

- Griff Crawford, June 30, 1931, Amarillo Globe

This Aesthetic Creed was written by Christopher McCandless, and is one of hundreds of pieces of McCandless’ legacy, among photos, letters, postcards, and writings. You can find it in the newly released Back to the Wild by the Christopher Johnson McCandless Memorial Foundation, Inc. Just got it in the mail a couple days ago, and it’s already getting dog-eared left and right.

View the Aesthetic Creed larger here.

“The mountains are all right, I guess, but they sure do block the view.”

- Peter Berglund, retired Saskatchewan farmer living in British Columbia, 1958

“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.” – John F. Kennedy, 1962

John Haines, pictured above in the red V-neck at the 1990 Alaskan Poetry Festival in Fairbanks, died last Wednesday at the age of 86. The NYT has this to say about the poet:

Mr. Haines may have been drawn to the far North in the manner of Robert Service or Jack London, but unlike them he came to stay and carve out a long life. He cleared forest, built cabins, planted gardens, chopped wood, cut trails, traveled by snowshoe and dogsled, trapped lynx and marten, weaved nets for salmon fishing, and had encounters with grizzlies.

Harper’s critic Hayden Carruth labeled John Haines “one of our best nature poets, or for that matter one of the best nature writers of any kind.” Jerry B. McAninch describes Haines in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as a “present-day pioneer,” asserting that the poet “speaks as a man who not only lived on one of the nation’s few remaining frontiers but who, both through long association and innate artistic sensibility, has come to embody that frontier in his writing.”

Read “If The Owl Calls Again” from his 1966 book of poems, Winter News, after the jump.

If The Owl Calls Again

at dusk
from the island in the river,
and it’s not too cold,

I’ll wait for the moon
to rise,
then take wing and glide
to meet him.

We will not speak,
but hooded against the frost
soar above
the alder flats, searching
with tawny eyes.

And then we’ll sit
in the shadowy spruce
and pick the bones
of careless mice,

while the long moon drifts
toward Asia
and the river mutters
in its icy bed.

And when the morning climbs
the limbs
we’ll part without a sound,

fulfilled, floating
homeward as
the cold world awakens.