John P O'Grady

O'Grady views the nature writers Everett Ruess, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Clarence King, and Mary Austin as engaging in spritual "pilgrimage" and their writings a contribution to American spiritual autobiography. This can be seen most cogently, perhaps, in the story of Everett Ruess, who at age 20 disappeared in 1934 in southern Utah, as a "vagabond for beauty." He was one pilgrim who never came back.