On the Loose

First published in 1967 by the Sierra Club, On the Loose went on to sell more than one million copies. Now Gibbs Smith, Publisher, is re-releasing this underground wilderness classic for a new generation of readers.

On the Loose is a journey through the American West, led by two adventurous brothers, Terry and Renny Russell. It is a chronicle of triumph and tragedy-the triumph of gaining an insight about oneself through an understanding of the natural world; the tragedy of seeing its splendor increasingly threatened by people who don't know or don't care. The color and black-and-white photographs, all taken by the authors, capture Yosemite, Point Reyes, the High Sierra, the Great Basin, and Glen Canyon in the 1950s and 1960s.

Terry Russell, the older of the two brothers who authored On the Loose, learned about wilderness early, especially about the Sierra Nevada, the Pacific shore, and the Plateau province of Colorado and Utah. He was a brilliant student at the University of California, Berkeley, and a staunch advocate of free speech there and elsewhere. He passed away in 1965 on a trip down the Green River, shortly before the original publication of On the Loose.

Renny Russell co-wrote On the Loose with his older brother, Terry. His memoir about growing up with Terry, called Rock Me on the Water, is forthcoming from Gibbs Smith, Publisher.