Stewart Edward White

Stewart Edward White (12 March 1873 – September 18, 1946) was an American writer, novelist, and spiritualist. He was a brother of noted mural painter Gilbert White.

"Whenever you see a dust through the trees, you look first to make sure it is not raised by stray cattle. Then when you are certain of your horse and man, you start a fire in the little stove. That is the invariable rule in the mountains. The logic is simple, unanswerable, and correct. The presence of the man argues that he has ridden from some distant point, for here all points are more or less distant; and the fact in turn proves that somewhat of exercise and space have intervened last he has eaten. Therefore, no matter what the time of day, you feed him. It works out like a mathematical formula."

White's books were popular at a time when America was losing its vanishing wilderness. He was a keen observer of the beauties of nature and human nature, yet could render them in a plain-spoken style. Based on his own experience, whether writing camping journals or Westerns, he included pithy and fun details about cabin-building, canoeing, logging, gold-hunting, and guns and fishing and hunting. He also interviewed people who had been involved in the fur trade, the California gold rush and other pioneers which provided him with details that give his novels verisimilitude. He salted in humor and sympathy for colorful characters such as canny Indian guides and "greenhorn" campers who carried too much gear. White also illustrated some of his books with his own photographs, while some of his other books, were illustrated by artists, such as the American Western painter Fernand Lungren for "The Mountains" and "Camp and Trail". Theodore Rooseveltwrote that White was "the best man with both pistol and rifle who ever shot" at Roosevelt's rifle range at Sagamore Hill.^[1]

The Long Rifle (1930), Folded Hills (1932), Ranchero (1933), and Stampede (1942) comprise The Saga of Andy Burnett, which follows a young Pennsylvania farm boy who escapes his overbearing step father by running away to the West with grandmother's blessing and "The Boone Gun", the original Kentucky rifle carried by Daniel Boone. He encounters mountain man Joe Crane, who becomes his mentor in the ways of survival in the wild. The remainder of the saga follows Andy as he moves west, ultimately settling in California, which is the setting of the last three books. The series incorporates actual events and characters from the time period in the narrative. The four stories were published as a posthumous volume, The Saga of Andy Burnett, in 1947

The Mountains (2004)
One of the first books White wrote after receiving his M.A. from the University of Michigan in 2003 was set in Santa Barbara and depicts the adventures of a trio who, having ridden to the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains, have a lust to see what lays beyond the purple haze and the dusty clouds, a desire that leads then on a trip through the backcountry on horseback to Yosemite and back. White is a testimony to the value that writers like him placed on the words and their ability to inspire — an eloquence that exists so little today. The words he crafted to express his feelings on first having reached the top of the Cold Spring Trail and peeked over the edge have inspired me for many years:

For the ridge, ascending from seaward in a gradual coquetry of foot-hills, broad low ranges, cross-systems, canons, little flats, and gentle ravines, inland dropped off almost sheer to the river below.  And from under your very feet rose, range after range, tier after tier, rank after rank, in increasing crescendo of wonderful tinted mountains to the main crest of the Coast Ranges, the blue distance, the mightiness of California's western systems.  The eye followed them up and up, and farther and farther, with the accumulating emotion of a wild rush on a toboggan.  There came a point where the fact grew to be almost too big for the appreciation, just as beyond a certain point speed seems to become unbearable.  It left you breathless, wonder-stricken, awed.  You could do nothing but look, and look, and look again, tongue- tied by the impossibility of doing justice to what you felt.  And in the far distance, finally, your soul, grown big in a moment, came to rest on the great precipices and pines of the greatest mountains of all, close under the sky. 

In a little, after the change had come to you, a change definite and enduring, which left your inner processes forever different from what they had been, you turned sharp to the west and rode five miles along the knife-edge Ridge Trail to where Rattlesnake Canon led you down and back to your accustomed environment. 

Should you like to read The Mountains, now 110 years old, you can find the chapters below:

I.     THE RIDGE TRAIL

II.    ON EQUIPMENT

III.   ON HORSES

IV.    HOW TO GO ABOUT IT

V.     THE COAST RANGES

VI.    THE INFERNO

VII.   THE FOOT-HILLS

VIII.  THE PINES

IX.    THE TRAIL

X.     ON SEEING DEER

XI.    ON TENDERFEET 

XII.   THE CANON

XIII.  TROUT, BUCKSKIN, AND PROSPECTORS

XIV.   ON CAMP COOKERY 

XV.    ON THE WIND AT NIGHT

XVI.   THE VALLEY

XVII.  THE MAIN CREST

XVIII. THE GIANT FOREST

XIX.   ON COWBOYS

XX.    THE GOLDEN TROUT

XXI.   ON GOING OUT

XXII.  THE LURE OF THE TRAIL