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The Magic of Wild Places

by Bruce Taylor

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"This was life and despite its hardships and trials, there is something that penetrates one's blood and makes him breathe deeply and say, 'Boy, it's great!'" -- Clarence Mason Taylor (From a personal narrative about backpacking up the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Trail, with his brother, William H. Taylor, circa l935-37)

 

Dedications

To Brian Herbert: Some of those hikes were bruisers but hey, while clambering up Bull Tooth Ridge was arduous, the view down to the Doelle Lakes and over Stevens Pass country was fabulous as was the trek up to the Enchantment Plateau. Great to have you on the trail with me. And as I put those experiences into words, you've always been there to help me say it the best way I could. So, thank you and it is a pleasure to have you as one of the people I could so honor in The Magic of Wild Places. To be friends with you is such a pleasure. Ands I am so glad of your writing success and career. Thank you so much for your help with mine.

To Todd Christoffel:
"TODD!"
"BRUCE!"
"TODD! WHERE ARE YOU?"
"I'M OVER HERE! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"
Boy, we really did pass by each other without knowing it in that rocky, brushy mess at the head of Colchuck Lake on our way up to Asgaard Pass. How'd we do that? But wow, the Enchantment Plateau was great, and so was the Wind River Range, The Sawtooths, Mammoth Lakes, the Sierra and the Beartooths-- and then there was that amazing summer of '03 when we hiked the Cascade Crest in that long stretch of perfect weather and soaked in Kennedy Hot Springs before they disappeared forever under the landslide as a result of the deluge from Global Warming Rains the following November. God, so much of the Magic of Wild Places we've seen Thanks for such fabulous memories and the fine music of your band, don't ask, to boot (pun unintentional but funny--).

And last, but not least, my father, Clarence Mason Taylor, 1911-1983: When you talked of Snow Lake, the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River, Dutch Miller Gap and The Necklace Valley and other fine places in the fabulous Cascades, I saw you come alive, I saw how the Magic of Wild Paces cast a spell over you and by so doing, you gave me something I shall always covet and admire; when you were in this place of wonder and taking such delight from those memories, you gave me a view of you that, for the most part, I seldom saw, but when I did see it, I knew that whatever the magic was in those wild places, I had to know of it for I could tell that it was a powerful, powerful magic indeed. Thank you for showing me just how powerful it was, for knowing of it, and how it nourished and sustained you. Seeing that, helped heal my life as it helped it transform. Taking that lesson from you, I drank in that magic as though truly the nectar of the Gods, for nectar it was, and is-- and of such nectar, there is never enough, never ever enough, for we can never, ever have enough of the perspective on life and our lives which is, in the end, the true gift of The Magic of Wild Places.

 

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