Everett Ruess: "Pledge to the Wind"

Everett Ruess was  15 years old when he wrote "Pledge to the Wind," a moving and heartbreaking harbinger of a short, yet well-lived life.

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.