Category: Questers and Other Oddballs
-
Walter Morris: Bourgeois Bohemian
Walter Morris may count as an early bourgeois bohemian, a 'BoBo' to adopt and adapt a coinage of David Brooks. Morris is an exceedingly obscure diarist, known only to a few, but a kindred spirit. An e-mail from a distant relative of his caused me to dip again into the stimulating waters of his journal. I have…
-
Jabez Clapp: A ‘Philosopher’ of the Superstitions
The mountains attract misfits, oddballs, outcasts, outlaws, questers of various stripes, and even a few 'philosophers.' Here is the story of one of them, one of many who found his way into the mountains but never found his way out. He who marches to the beat of a different drummer, in the famous phrase of Henry…
-
Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold
Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. And out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time…
-
Dis-tracted
We are pulled towards the world, towards property, progeny, position, power, popularity, pleasure. But in some of us the pull toward the spirit is stronger and will triumph — in the end. Meanwhile we are pulled apart, dis-tracted, torn between lust for the world and love of the spirit. This is 'par for the course'…
-
The Supreme Enigma
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 4: Every puzzle that fascinates innumerable persons and induces them to attempt its solution — be it mathematical and profound or ordinary and simple — is an echo on a lower level of the Supreme Enigma that is forever accompanying man and demanding an answer: What is he, whence and whither?…
-
Who Are the Oddballs?
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, vol. II, The Quest (Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1986), p. 24: We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living…
-
A Note on Into the Wild, the Movie
Into the Wild, the movie, impressed me and held my attention for its two and a half hours. But I'm understating: it moved me and ought to be added to my list of most memorable movies, there to rub shoulders with the likes of Zorba the Greek and La Strada. Not that I would rate it…
-
Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz
One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name 'Ron Franz.' He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless's paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so…
-
The Strange Case of Gene Rosellini
Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild is not just about Chris McCandless and the people he met during the two years he was incarnating 'Alexander Supertramp.' It also about other oddballs such as Gene Rosellini. The term 'oddball' is not necessarily one of disapprobation in my mouth: most of the people I remain in contact with…
-
The Seeker
What is the seeker after? He doesn't quite know, and that is part of his being a romantic. He experiences his present 'reality' as flat, stale, jejune, oppressive, substandard. He feels there must be more to life than work-a-day routines and social objectifications, the piling up of loot, getting ahead. He wants intensity of experience,…