In 1873, a group of explorers led by Clarence King found and photographed a legendary mountain in Colorado called the Mount of the Holy Cross. Prior to their documentation of the mountain’s actual existence, an aura of mystery and myth had surrounded it. No one was sure of its actual location, and many maps of the time placed it at least 30 miles away from its true position. But the real cause of the mythology around the mountain was the cross of snow, formed by intersecting couloirs, that remained on its ridge even after the rest of the snow on the mountain had melted.

Americans were thrilled with King’s discovery of the Holy Cross, and were dazzled by William H. Jackson’s photograph (perhaps his most famous photo of all).

William Henry Jackson: Mount of the Holy Cross (1873) . Photo courtesy of Idaho State University

They were even more impressed when, three years later, Thomas Moran’s painting, ‘The Mount of the Holy Cross,’ was awarded a medal at the Centennial Exposition (1876).

Thomas Moran, Mountain of the Holy Cross, 1875, oil on canvas. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Gene Autry. Museum of the American West, Autry National Center.

And it turns out that one day, in 1879, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking through an illustrated book of western scenery. There he saw the Mount of the Holy Cross, and he subsequently wrote this poem, The Cross of Snow, about the death of his wife in a fire eighteen years earlier. The poem was only published after Longfellow’s death.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died, and soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Image courtesy of Gutenberg.org

(Note from My-West:  The following is a comment sent to us through Facebook in response to one of our posts about the desert. Ms. Putnam’s descriptions were so striking and poetic, we asked her if we could post them in our poetry section. She graciously agreed.)

I have lived in the desert for thirty years. I started out thinking it was dry, hot, desolate and a place God didn't forget ... He never even knew it was here, with good reason.

Credit: My-West.com ©

It took me awhile to discover that even the most desolate of deserts is vibrant with life and strength. I have seen a quiet creek explode into a 500 year event flood rampaging past my home. I have heard boulders bouncing through the water and watched trees float like barges through the chaos with a calm serenity.

Credit: Gina Putnam

The desert changes its shape but never its form. 

Credit: My-West.com ©

I've watched brush fires and timber fires thunder all around and envelope the desert in burning heat; Pinion pines exploding into towers of red flame leaving all the desert blackened and dead.  

Credit: Arbyreed

And then, a flash of color! A shout of hope! A prickly pear blossoms in neon defiance.

Credit: Fool-On-The-Hill

Credit: Gina Putnam

[Finally: video of a flash flood in Southern Utah by David Rankin Rankinstudio.com – listen to the sound of the boulders crashing together.]

“Lingering Leaves” Credit: Courtesy of Connie Borup ©  

1

At evening an old angler

greets us in rolled sleeves

and gestures past the lake he comes up from:

yonder long folds of earth rising.

Snow deep down the sides clear through June,

he says, proud like he’d snowed it himself.

Now only peak shadows hold white

Bridgeheads for winter.

A still face, creased below white wisps.

“Mirrored Tranquility” Credit: Courtesy of Connie Borup ©

2

A slight purling wash

plays the bound of pebbled shore. 

Gnat clouds at pier’s end

as the cool sets in.

You, sprightly, here and there,

with your camera, seeing pictures;

I’m braiding these lines to hold us fast.

“Rocks and Ripples” Credit: Courtesy of Connie Borup ©

Film full, page full:

our crafts to fuse the hour through

to hours that come, prepared for here.

This served up to look on, then,

in albums, catching this waning light.

“Floating” Credit: Courtesy of Connie Borup ©

Credit: Bam's Blog

“He was every burnt out cowboy that I’d seen a million times
With dead man penny eyes, like tarnished brass
That reflected accusations of his critics and his crimes
And drowned them in the bottom of a glass.”

- The Buckskin Mare, Baxter Black

Credit: The Selvedge Yard

The New York Times lauds him as ‘…probably the nation’s most successful living poet.’

Credit: NPR.Org

Baxter Black describes his success this way…“There will always be a need for someone who can think stuff up.”

Credit: GoNomad.com

His repertoire includes humor, song, poetry, homespun wisdom and a good portion of outright foolishness, tinged sometimes by a hint of melancholy. Black is a rare crossover talent (Pioneer Woman is another) whose multi-faceted talents play well in ranch houses across the west even while stirring hearts and tickling big city funny bones. So on any given day Uncle Jules might be reading his column in Western Horseman while my buddy Paul listens to his NPR bit in Yonkers. And all the while, Black maintains a fierce fealty to the cowboy mystique and an authenticity that is the very key to his popularity.

Credit: CBSVegas

Black deprecatingly refers to himself as a ‘large animal veterinarian’ but he is first and foremost an entertainer, on the road throughout the year (he appears in Evanston, Wyoming on May 14^th) along with a newspaper column, bountiful CDs and five books including one called ‘Croutons on a Cow Pie.’ Here’s an Emmy Award winning profile that you won’t want to miss…especially the million dollar view from his outhouse down in Arizona border country.  His money quote…”Ya gotta like a place where the town seal is a cow, a locomotive and a box of dynamite.”

Wabi Sabi from Dan Sheffer on Vimeo.

Credit: WantItAll.co

Check out Black's website at: www.baxterblack.com

Where every wind turns round my sails,

I stand where summer sunbeams rest,

And where the winter flings his gales.

Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

High on this hill I see below

The ripening ears of golden corn,

But when the winter zephyrs blow,

I look upon this scene, forlorn.

Magdalena, New Mexico. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

My arms, they seldom rest they turn

With every tidal wave of wind,

Deep in my bosom I discern

The grain that I must slowly grind.

I work from morning till the eve,

My years of toil unending are,

But quiet winds of night will leave

Me still beneath the evening star.

Sheridan County, Kansas. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Lo, I stand out against the sky,

Where the horizoned purples leap,

And as the shades of evening die,

I slowly still my arms in sleep.

Baca County, Colorado. Courtesy of Library of Congress.

Everett Ruess, Monument Valley. Image courtesy of Gibbs Smith Publisher.

Onward from vast uncharted spaces,
Forward through timeless voids,
Into all of us surges and races
The measureless might of the wind. [...]
In the steep silence of thin blue air
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air has a clear, clean rarity,
I give to the wind...my pledge:

”By the strength of my arm, by the sight of my eyes,
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.”
__________
published in On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess, G.J. Bergera & W.L Rusho (Eds.), Gibbs Smith Publisher.