Wilderness Song

This poem by Everett Ruess just about sums it up for me:

Wilderness Song

by Everett Ruess

I have been one who loved the wilderness

Swaggered and softly crept among the mountain peaks

I have listened long to the sea’s brave music,

I have sung my songs above the shriek of desert winds. 

On canyon trails when warm nights winds were blowing,

Blowing and sighing through the star tipped pines,

Musing, I walked behind my placid burro,

While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.

  I have known green seas heaving,

I have loved red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,

Slow sunny clouds and red sand blowing.

I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall. 

In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard the ghostly murmur of regretful winds,

In aspen glades where rustling silver leaves whisper wild sorrows to the green gold solitudes,

I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high. 

Singing, I rode to meet the splendid shouting storm,

And fought its fury until the hidden sun foundered in darkness,

And the lightning heard my song. 

Say that I was tired and weary,

Burned and blinded by the desert sun,

Footsore, thirsty sick with strange diseases, lonely

And wet and cold,

But that I kept my dream.

Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness.

Swaggers and softly creeps among the mountain peaks.

I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music.

I shall sing my songs above the shriek of desert winds.

From "Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty" by W.L.  Rusho

'I have loved red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies' 
Photo by DL Newbold, 2013.