A poignantly
beautiful variation of the theme in This Is the American
Earth appears in this book (of the same format) by a man who
was a musician, a poet, a photographer --- and also a man who
could see more than beauty in the mountains he loved.
On a page he wrote in 1954 to preface one
of the many early versions of Words of the Earth. Cedric
Wright said: "I have been unusually privileged in knowing
intimately those wilderness areas where the intangible values
sing clearly. It has seemed important to conserve the
significance of that singing, to understand its significance not
merely in some art, but rather to try to clarify what it could
bring to human life in general. The artist seeks fundamental
beauty, the voice of concord, in a world which is presently
dominated by opposite types of understanding are the foundations
not only of art, but also of a peaceful human world. It is
imperative that in such times as these the artist should use his
words and his thought in addition to his art."
With the sensitive aid of
Nancy Newhall, Cedric Wright has posthumously made an integral
whole of words, thought and art. How this could all happen is a
long story that should be told --- later. A story that might
begin with his birth in Alameda, California, in 1889, that would
tell of the various schools he was exposed to, of his studying
the violin in Praque and Vienna under Sevcik, of his two
marriages and his three children, of his teaching of the violin
at Mills College early in the 'twenties, of his beginnings in
photography early in the next decade.
I think this will all be
told one day, when people seek out the beginnings of the beauty
in this book. But for now, I'd like to start merely with my
recollection that in the summer of 1953, at a camp high on the
Kern, Cedric told me that this was his thirty-third High Trip
(the eleventh we had shared) --- which is to say that he had
spent almost three years of summer days on the species of Sierra
Club outing that has taken people of widely ranging means far
back into big wilderness, mostly in the Sierra Nevada, since
1901. All too soon after that camp there was a sad task, an
obituary to write for the November 1959 Sierra Club Bulletin,
that said this:
* * * * * *
In the High Sierra
wilderness country that is the climax of what John Muir
liked to call the Range of Light, Wright fell in love with
the high world even as Muir had, and each summer brought him
closer to its forms, its moods, its tones, its light --- and
to the thousand textures that unfolded as the trail turned
or as a tailless slope opened up on a broad sweep or
an intimate glen that no man has seen before.
Oh, others may have
stood there, yes. But none could see what he saw, not until
with black cloth and box he had worked his magic, had
captured and carried away the essence of beauty without
harming a hair of it, had printed and fixed its image, had
let others see it at last, far from where it was, and had
led them, in that way, to look for it and find it next time.
On many of these high
trips Wright served as official photographer, meaning that
the check he sent in for a reservation on the trip was
returned to him in gratitude for what he had already
contributed, worth many times a trip's cost, in exquisite
display prints of the previous year's trip. These became the
mainstay of the club's permanent photographic collection;
they were augmented by Wright's gift to the club of all his
Sierra negatives.
From these prints and
negatives will come the illustrations for Cedric Wight's
book which the Sierra Club plans to publish as a memorial
next year, "Words of the Earth" --- the High Sierra earth.
The text comes from the same piece of terrain. People who
knew Wright in his mountains --- and there are hundreds who
did --- know that the text came to him by osmosis as he lay
upon some choice piece of Sierra, in between his exposures
of film, and was himself exposed to inaudible words and
music. The book will contain the best of his poetic
expression and of his photographs. It will be of fairly
large format to let the photographs be big enough to speak
clearly, and they will be reproduced just as handsomely as
present-day achievements in graphic arts will permit. To aid
this major project and to widen the audience for his
artistry, the club is accepting, with Rhea Wright's
permission, donations to a Cedric Wright Memorial Fund.
One of the nicest of
all memorials to Cedric Wright, however, is the picture so
many friends carry in their mind's eye of Cedric before the
first of a series of strokes grounded him and impaired his
eyesight. For in that picture he is the Good Samaritan of
the trailside, bringing music to a campfire, pouring a
warming cup of tea from his billy-can for the weary,
brightening the tired end of a day with his good humor and
his good heart. Above all, we his friends are grateful that
because he saw clearly, we can begin to see clearly, or at
least be less unseeing.
* * * * *
As a postscript, we should
share with you two of the notes written on odd-sized pieces of
paper, that turned up in the vast collection of splendid
negatives. One note says:
"Explanation of my
filing system. All the best negatives from over 3
or 4 years past are in this box. Recent years' negatives
have been left in the straw basket --- each High Trip, 1949
on --- in packings by themselves. It might be well to give
all my negatives to the Sierra Club."
And the other:
"It's been beyond me,
to figure out how to file all negatives intelligently. Most
all my portrait negatives are in the cellar in fruit boxes."
It has been almost beyond
the Sierra Club, too. All friends who hold this book should also
hold themselves in readiness for an emergency call from the
Sierra Club to attend a gigantic identification party, to pass
in review of all the examples of evanescent beauty that Cedric
stopped and fixed, and to tell us, while human memory still can,
where he was at the time, and what or whom he was photographing!
David Brower
San Francisco
September 28, 1960
__________
Brower,
David. "Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth." Front-Inside
Book Jacket.
The Sierra Club, 1960
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