The Cult of Everett Ruess: A Freakish Person

I have been one who loved the wilderness:

Swaggered and softly crept between the mountain peaks;

I listened long to the sea's brave music;

I sang my songs above the shriek of desert winds.

On canyon trails when warm night winds were blowing,

Blowing, and sighing gently through the star-tipped pines,

Musing, I walked behind my placid burro,

While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.

I have known a green sea's heaving; I have loved

Red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,

Slow sunny clouds, and red sand blowing.

I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall.

In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard

The ghostly murmur of regretful winds

In aspen glades, where rustling silver leaves

Whisper wild sorrows to the green-gold solitudes.

I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high;

Singing I rode to meet the splendid, shouting storm

And fought its fury till the hidden sun

Foundered in darkness, and the lightning heard my song.

Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary;

That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;

Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;

Lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!

Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness:

Swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;

I shall listen long to the sea's brave music;

I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.

-Wilderness Song by Everett Ruess

Everett Ruess, you may ask… am I supposed to know who this person is? Is he more than just a writer of poetry?

To the author Maurice Stegner, who dedicated an entire chapter to the man in his Mormon Country, wrote of Everett, quote:

Everett Ruess was one of those, a callow romantic, an adolescent esthete, an atavistic wanderer of the wastelands, but one of the few who died--if he died-with the dream intact. End quote.

In 1934, at the age of 20 years old, and after wandering, exploring, and adventuring thousands of miles throughout California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, so the American Southwest. After wandering thousands of miles by extended thumb, on foot, and on the back of a mule… all the while painting, writings, singing… after thousands of miles throughout the American Southwest and California, Everett Ruess, the ultimate freedom loving adventurer, traveler, writer, amateur archaeologist & artist vagabond, who would go on to influence many a later nature lover and writer but whom you may have never heard of… At 20 years old, Everett Ruess, disappeared. He simply vanished from the face of the earth. His last known camp was in the wild and woolly Davis Gulch area of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of Southern Utah. A beautiful and rugged place with red rocks, twisted trees, and gorgeous turquoise skies. A place filled with secrets, ruins, ghosts, and dreams. A place every lover of the American Southwest knows intimately. Or should… But not as intimately as Everett Ruess got to know it.

Our story today and this series, focuses on this incredibly inspirational AND cautionary tale of this young man who wrote well, adventured freely, and lived as so many of us wanderers in strange lands wish we could. In Bud Rush’s Vagabond for Beauty, he writes, Everett’s story is the universal story of discovery of self. End quote.

Everette wrote to a friend on one of his journeys, quote, As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. End quote. I think, especially if you’re listening, we all share that sentiment. That desire to never tire of the wilderness and the vagrant life. The desire to escape into the unknown… at least for a little while. I too, become more keenly aware of it all the time.

Since his disappearance, an almost… cult like group have sprung up in his footsteps, pouring over his writings, his artwork, his journal entries and his many letters. They’ve traced his footprints and wanderings in the wilderness. They’ve laid their sleeping bag where he has. They’ve cast their vision on the same landscapes he so admired. People have wondered what drove him, what he was thinking, and what he was experiencing. For a while, when these things were in vogue, people thought of him as a mystic. Someone who knew him in 1931, and whom I will talk about later, a man named Pat Jenks said of him, quote, Ruess was the most sensitive, the most intuitive person I have ever known. He could certainly see intrinsic and unspeakable beauty to a degree that could not always be put into words. But I can’t say whether or not he was a mystic. End quote. Authors, such as, the often quoted and read by yours truly, the late David Roberts have even searched for the writer and possible mystic’s remains.

In this series I will quote extensively from Ruess’s own fantastic and beautifully descriptive writings as well as from some articles and especially from two books, one of them being David Roberts, Finding Everett Ruess, and the other, W.L. or Bud Rusho’s, Everett Ruess, a Vagabond for Beauty. But there are other famous authors of the American Southwest that mention him, like the great Edward Abbey, who I will also quote from. The author of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer learned of Everett Ruess from David Roberts while Krakauer was writing his book about Chris McCandless. If you don’t recognize that name, that’s the man who shared a similar fate with Everett. Except, Chris McCandless’ emaciated remains were eventually found in that famous bus in Alaska. While Everett’s are… still out there. They’re still out there somewhere in that place named after one of the stars of my last series, Escalante.

I’ll outline some of the adventures and misadventures of Everett, the time period he was exploring in and the people he met, and obviously I’ll detail the landscape since I have seen it… explored it… and misadventured in it myself. Except I’m still here to tell my tales. And tell my tales I do… I hope you don’t mind me interjecting quite a few anecdotes and stories from my own time wandering in this immaculately created landscape that is the American Southwest. Maybe I’ll influence some of you to visit. Or help you reminisce the times you already have.

This series is more than a biography of Everett and his mystery, it’s also a reflection on the act of adventuring itself and why we do it despite the danger and the potentiality of death. It’ll make you grateful for your friends and family. It might make you sad. I promise it will choke me up a few times. But most of all, this retelling of Everett’s tale will absolutely make you want to tear off into the unknown and explore the American Southwest.

If you enjoy hearing about grand vistas, the challenge of adventure, resilience in the face of hardships and loneliness, if you like to listen to descriptions of beauty, and if you like a good mystery, this is the series for you. If you like what you hear and you want to hear more, feel free to leave a 5 star review on the platforms. And most importantly, tell everyone you know about this podcast and how every episode makes you want to explore, the American Southwest.

Without further adieu, The Cult of Everett Ruess.

The cult of Everett Ruess is not one that he started, No, this is not that kind of story. The cult is one that has grown up around his works, his life, and indeed, trying to find the last clues he left at the end of his short but sweet adventure. Some time after his disappearance his father would write, He has truly lived, and more than most people do in a century. End quote. The mystery of his life and death that swirls and surrounds Everett Ruess like a wind through the gnarled trees of the Colorado plateau, that mystery is the key to the myth and the Cult. But Everett’s life is what keeps the cult alive….

David Roberts, the late author I have read for many episodes, and an author I will read for future ones because like I have said before, we apparently enjoyed the same things. Well, Roberts said of the Cult in his Finding Everett Ruess, quote, the Ruess cult ultimately springs from the young man's ecstatic vision of the wilderness, tied to an insatiable wanderlust that drove him to one solitary challenge and ordeal after another, as he traversed the deserts and canyons of what in the I930s was the wildest landscape in the United States. End quote.

Much like previous episodes though, when I discussed the distortion and caricature of pueblo life that defines Pueblo Mystique, Everett’s story also suffers from Ruess Mystique. Even the name Ruess! It is honestly unknown if it was originally pronounced as Roos, like Kievan Roos, or Ruess, which is the way I will pronounce it.

I knew nothing of Everett Ruess until I was prompted to pick up a book about him in Moab by a bookstore clerk… and I’m so grateful she pointed it out. Despite having read his name in books by Edward Abbey and others, Me, Thomas Wayne Riley, the host, the speaker of all things Southwest, the non historian history writer and non practicing archaeologist speaker on archaeology, who has explored more of the southwest than anyone I know personally, if I didn’t know of the Cult of Everett Ruess, is it really all that mystified? Is the Ruess Mystique as veiled and hidden behind half truths, legends, and falsehoods as is Pueblo mystique?

The more I read about him and his story and the cult… the more I thought… actually, no. I think Everett’s life and story is exceptionally interesting and I believe if he had continued to live, he would have served even more as an inspiration to those who learn about him or come into contact with him. His writing is beautiful and his art is gorgeous. His adventures though, are what lies at the heart of the Mystique. And they are glorious. The brightest stars burn the fastest.

Maybe part of his inexplicable life can be blamed on the fact that he was born in California. Oakland, to be exact. He was born in the year 1914 to artsy and religious parents by the names of Christopher and Stella Ruess. I love the name Stella. I named my first motorcycle Stella.

I mentioned earlier that even the last name is a mystery. Today, relatives say BOTH pronunciations! Roos and Ruess! It’s probable, and this can attest to the artsiness of Stella, but it’s probably pronounced Roos but because she wanted it to be prettier, she pronounced it Ruess.

Everett also had an older brother named Waldo.

From the very beginning, Everett and the Ruesses were deeply pursuant of art. They made poetry, Stella taught the boys to paint watercolor, and they even had a family motto. Quote, Glorify the hour. End quote. It was accompanied by a sun dial she created. It’s a rather good motto, really. 

Beyond just making art, poetry, music, and mottos together, Everett’s parents, Christopher and Stella would actually be deeply involved in their boy’s lives. Stella, specifically, would have a profound impact on Everett. Her life philosophy was that one must participate in art, to be truly alive. She clearly would pass that on to her wandering son.

And he was truly a wanderer, even from the beginning. At three years old, he walked over a mile and over a bridge and some railroad tracks before the police were called in to find Stella’s missing son. The police would tell her though, not to worry, because he had already been reported. Later, he’d escape his father but that next time, he’d walk himself to the police station… where he waited while being plied with many chocolates.

After that incident, it seems, Stella would tie Everett to objects to keep him in place like a dog on a chain. Sometimes it was the porch railing, sometimes it was a chair or tree by the creek where they learned to swim. At night, to keep him from stealing away into the darkness, Everett’s parents would tie his feet together in bed. Stella would write in her journal that Everett, so in love with walking and wandering had even named his feet. Jerry, and Jupiter. They had a mind of their own, he said.

Speaking of names, his parents apparently gave Everett up to 33 nicknames which were recorded in the families diaries and journals. Among them were some greatest hits like Bounceritis, Leonardo da Vinci Everett, and the amazing Lord of Misrule!

From California, when Everett was 4 years old, the family moved all the way across the continent to Massachusetts, but it wouldn’t last too long.

All the while, Everett and his brother Waldo remained inseparable even though the two were quite different in temperament, personality, and dang near everything else. And would remain so throughout their lives. During one of Everett’s journeys, he’d write to Waldo who he hadn’t heard from in a while and say, quote, Whenever I think of you, I feel glad to have a brother like you. End quote.

From Massachusetts, they next headed to New York. And then New Jersey. In New Jersey, in 1920, Everett was enrolled in a prestigious art school where he learned wood carving and pottery making.

In 1923, in an adventure that may have sparked his love of the American Southwest the family travelled by car from New Jersey, all the way to California because Stella’s father had fallen ill. On this massive trip, they visited the Grand Canyon AND the Sierra Nevadas! It seems, at nine years old, the impression that the Grand Canyon and Yosemite left on him would last his for his entire short lifetime.

In 1924, they’d move to Indiana. His father at that time worked in Chicago, 50 miles away. Despite that though, he was NOT an absent father and he could not wait for the two boys to grow up, marry a righteous woman, and become moral men. Or as Christopher called it, PGs, or Perfect Gentlemen. He was a very bright man who had graduated from Harvard in only three years and he was quite fluent in philosophy and theology. The whole family was quite the quartet.

At 10 years old, Everett discovered that he could roam freely the trails and the forests that surrounded his Indiana home. These hadn’t existed around his New England homes so they infinitely fascinated him. And on these trails he would become obsessed with all things nature including insects and mammals. And also, all things American Indian.

Already, by 11 years old, Everett was an exciting and adventurous kid. He wrote about ding-dong ditching and honking car horns on the street. Back then, you didn’t lock your cars or even roll up your windows so little annoying punks could come by and honk the horns before running away… Boy do I miss our high trust society…

During this time he named his turtle Prince Crawlaway the Second, just to give you an idea of his imagination. Also during this time Everett would be punished for mischief and told to stay in as a punishment but in his journal he wrote quote, I forgot all about it. End quote. Nothing in life, could make him stay in, it seems.

In 1926, his wise father noticed this obsession and wrote in a letter to Everett, quote, You have a good mind. Now you need to observe people as you observe things and learn to make many friends. Try to please people. You are a little like your daddy, who gets so interested in ideas at times that he is absent-minded about people. That is bad. Because people have feelings.  End quote.

Everett would never truly learn this lesson and for the rest of his years, which are less than 10, he would not quite master the art of understanding people’s feelings. I will read plenty of quotes from him to that effect shortly. Including one passage from his journal I named the episode after when he wrote quote, After all the lone trail is best, because I'm a freakish person. End quote.

I’m not sure if he was freakish or not, despite him believing it but he was definitely unusual. Bud Rusho would write of Everett quote, when those who encountered Everett remarked later that he was strange, they did not refer to his visionary experiences, but to his fearless, unhesitating manner. Some people liked it; some people thought he was crazy. Some navajos thought he was a witch. But nobody thought he was anything less than highly unusual. End quote.

As I mentioned earlier, Everett was obsessed with Indians and especially Arrowheads. In 1927, at age 13, he would write a poem called The Relic, which he wrote about finding one of these arrowheads and its a rather good poem for such a young man. I’ll read it for you:

In a deserted field I found an arrowhead.

Worn by the rains and snows of many a year, It had survived its maker, buried here,

For he who shot the arrow from his bow was dead.

How far this chisled piece of stone leads back the mind!

By careful Indian craftsman it was wrought, For many purposes had it been sought.

To me it was a very precious treasure find.

See! Pretty good for a 13 year old. Not to sound too jealous but I have somehow… never found an arrowhead. In all my wanderings in northern Georgia, Oklahoma, and the entirety of the American Southwest, I have yet to find an arrowhead. Thousands of miles walked and nothing yet. Plenty of other amazing and awe-inspiring finds though. And more potsherds, that I left in place, than I can imagine. But those arrowheads escape me.

Another piece from this time period that is extremely interesting and rather… prescient was a short story he tilted Vultures. I’ll read some of it:

It starts out…

A man lay sprawled on the stinging hot sand beneath a twisted Joshua tree in the desert. Its crooked shade made a fantastic pattern, and fell in sultry stripes across his weary body. The shadow moved, and with a tired lurch, the man moved his head into a band of shade.

The third paragraph is as follows:

The man was an artist. He had come here to die-or to recover his lost ambitions. His sensitive eyes roved over the unreal landscape; the barren wastes of sand, the desert cliffs, the bleak, bent cactus trees darkly outlined against the moon, over which there passed a ghostly wraith of cloud.

But the artist's soul was dead within him; the weird beauty was not reflected in his face, stoical and hopeless.

You see, the artist is searching for some enlightenment. An epiphany. And he does find it. The story continues:

Though he had not found the inspiration he sought, the desire to live was suddenly reawakened. Tortured flesh complained insistently and would not be denied. In sudden frenzy he turned about and began in tottering haste to retrace his way.

But it’s too late for our wanderer. He is out of water on day three. He has nowhere to go but up a butte which he crawls on to die. He then witnesses a huge rainstorm erupt across the landscape everywhere except for on him. It continues:

The rain passed, leaving the desert glorious and cool. As the vultures poised in the air and came to tear him to pieces, he looked toward the horizon. All that was left of his anguish now vanished, and a light shone in his eyes, as he saw the dying sun flood the waste lands with splendor. The last thing he saw was the burnished bronze of a vulture's wings, glinting in the sunlight, as it snatched his eyes out.

He did not feel the pain. A moment later, the blood hued sunset passed swiftly to night.

Talk about… foreshadowing. Or darkness. Either way it is eerie.

In 1928, the family would move again. This time, to Los Angeles. It’s not a move I suggest for any of my listeners but at that time, I imagine the city was an immensely different place. Well, not too different, I guess.

Two years later, when Everett was 16 and attending Hollywood Highschool, he would begin his very first adventure and it would set the precedent for all further excursions into the wild and woolly unknown. It wouldn’t be an adventure to the Southwest though, this one was a journey through California, mostly on the Pacific Coast of that still untainted state. He had decided he was going to hitchhike up the Pacific Coast highway from Los Angles to Carmel, which is just south of Monterey Bay, the place the padres of Escalante and Dominguez never made it to! Monterey Bay is also just south of San Francisco.

Rusho wrote of the purpose of Everett’s journeys, beyond just seeing the landscape:

When Everett Ruess headed into the mountains or out onto the desert, he did so with two overall objectives. First, he wanted to absorb impressions; to experience, even to revel in natural scenes. Second, he wished to record the scenes, either visually, in sketches or watercolors, or in his writing. End quote.

So, off Everett goes, to see and absorb, while still a student and only 16, off he goes hitchhiking up the Cali coast 40 years before this feat becomes popular among a certain morally bankrupt long haired group of addicts. And when he reaches the city of Carmel, the first thing he does is walk straight up to the studio of the at the time famous photographer Edward Weston, he knocks on the door with no shame, and introduces himself to the legend.

Now, I was not sure who Edward Weston was prior to reading about Everett so naturally, I had to look him up. What I found were a bevy of beautiful black and white photographs. Many of them were close ups of sea shells and bell peppers. Absolutely beautiful and striking photographs. Leaves, pomegranates, twisted trees, nude women, and incredible landscapes of sand dunes and the desert. They’re beautiful photos. I don’t blame Everett for tracking down their creator, even if by some rather unconventional means.

Weston though, would invite him to dinners, and invite him to stay in their garage and all the while, Everett would play with his sons so it all worked out for him in the end.

Clearly this excursion was a warmup for his later ones. He was only 16, after all. Sure that meant a bit more before the infantilization of our young adults that has destroyed adulthood for us now, but still… he was in school and he still depended highly on his parents. And he would… depend on them for everything from books, to food, to money, right up until his final excursion.

From the Ocean he’d write to his parents:

I slept in the middle of a pocket in the sand dunes, building my fire just at dusk.

and then…

In the morning my blankets were very wet with fog and dew. End quote.

While in Carmel, Everett, worked as a caddy at a golf course to make some money for food but after three weeks, he hitchhiked up into Big Sur which I read in Roberts book, wasn’t very heavily travelled back in the 1920s… what I wouldn’t give to be exploring these lands as they were back then.

While there he continued to work odd jobs, sleep on the beach, hike the hills and forests, sleep among the pines, and paint many a scene using watercolors.

Here’s another scene he eloquently spells out for his parents and brother in a letter:

So I slid and slipped and tumbled down the mountain 'till came to a valley at the bottom, through which a small stream meandered. At the beach there were large quantities of driftwood, prob. ably from some wreck. I ate my lunch perched on the arch of a small cave, under which the sea came splashing in. Below me were many brown seaweeds, waving their strands with every motion of the sea, and writhing like octopi. End quote.

But something was stirring in him… this just wasn’t wild enough. He needed… more. So, he hitchhiked east, towards Yosemite. Maybe thinking about that trip from 7 years prior had awakened in him a desire to revisit.

August 5th, Dear Family,

Yesterday night, at sunset, I arrived in Yosemite. The valley hardly seemed real at first. End quote.

Once at Yosemite, he would hike a lot, listen to the bagpipes that were played by a Scotchman as he called him. He didn’t like their sound. He’d notice the deer were as tame as dogs and he’d comment that he better not let the bears find his bacon. He’d also hike to many beautiful sounding lakes in the high Sierras that were topped with patches of snow, even in August.

At one point, Everett met two other people that were visiting the park and they’d straight up.. well, let him tell you, it’s crazy and dangerous:

The three of us then took a log and industriously pried away at a large boulder at the edge. It finally slid off, and with a great flurry of sparks from the friction, it crashed down. There was a short silence, and it struck the ground far below, crashing through the brush and over some trees. End quote. While that sounds awesome and like a lot of fun, I do NOT recommend rolling and crashing large boulders off high cliffs in any mountains anywhere lest someone below meets a pancake fate. I couldn’t imagine getting caught doing that today. I got yelled at a few weeks ago for leaving a skillet and some plates out in the middle of the day at our campsite by a ranger in the middle of the desert… it was pretty pathetic what people get worked up about.

This does remind me, on a side tangent here of something that Yosemite used to do every night in the summer at 9pm from 1878 to 1968. It was called the Firefall. I guess, Yosemite didn’t do it but the owners of the Glacier Point Hotel would put on the show. Every night during summer, they’d gather an enormous amount of embers and logs and brush and head up the arduous path to the very famous Glacier Point, they’d light these trees and brush on fire and then they’d just kick it over the side where it would tumble and everyone would witness what looked like a waterfall of fire. Even President Kennedy witnessed it! Although they delayed it thirty minutes for him. Since it was unnatural, they put a stop to it. I have no doubt though, that Everett saw it.

One of the nights at Yosemite, he’d excitedly set up camp but… it would prove to be a disastrous night’s sleep. I can absolutely feel for his anguish too… Here’s what he wrote of the experience:

At first it was so hot that my blankets were covered with sweat. But I had to swathe my face in a towel to keep out a few of the millions of mosquitoes. Burrs got stuck to my blankets. After a fitful night's sleep, I woke up in the hot sunshine, and found that thousands of ants were swarming through my pack. End quote.

I can attest to how mosquitos can ruin a night of sleep. During my very first solo trip westward, almost a decade ago, in 2014, on my first night, I slept at bottomless lakes state park east of Roswell. I had no tent because I just wanted to sleep in the bed of my truck under the endless stars, the many planets, and the bright band of the milky way. I wanted to enjoy the breezes and the air and being in the wild west. But as soon as the beautifully violent tornado spawning thunderstorm and its strong winds and lightning left the scene, heading east towards the panhandle and the llano estacado, once the storm had passed, a swarm of mosquitos descended upon me with infinite zest and zeal. My goodness it was the most miserable night of sleep still probably to this day. I experienced the same thing. I was pouring sweat in my sleeping bag which kept the pests away. And then I’d have to get air and dry my face but they’d return again with vengeance. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat, until eventually I slept in the captain’s chair of the truck but, for only a few hours.

And as for ants. I once awoke from a nap in a field on the outskirts of the jungle in Belize with a line of fire ants going across my stomach. I escaped from that without a bite but it was… discomforting to say the least.

At this time Everett was 16 hitchhiking all over the California landscape. He’d disappear at only 20 but in his young life it’s curious that he never learned how to drive but had to rely on his thumb and his friends and family, or his feet, and actually his many mounts he will cycle through. I suppose that’s part of his charm. He travelled so extensively and so thoroughly without a vehicle. Maybe that explains how he was able to be so free… Eh, I’ll never give up my truck.

At Yosemite he’d hang out with the many other tourists which were already there, even in 1930. He’d also get into serious shape through hiking. He’d find arrowheads made of obsidian and he’d pocket them… naturally. Of the time he spent there he said, quote, I sleep quite well on the ground here and don't mind it at all. . .. I could very happily keep up this life indefinitely if I had the money. End quote. You and me both, brother.

By the third week of August, he had worn down the souls of his shoes to quote unquote paper. His socks were full of holes. His blankets were too heavy but he couldn’t afford a $15 sleeping bag. Life as a vagabond was tough work.

The entire time he continued to meet people in Yosemite despite his love of the lonesome trail. He met Okies, insurance salesmen from LA, Australians, and even homesteaders living off the land after the onset of the Great Depression.

While there, he’d write, quote, It seems that my ambitions are always to be allied with the A's--artist, author, archaeologist, and adventurer. Lately, the arrowheads have preceded the art, but I expect to get back to sketching quickly. End quote.

On this first journey, he would indeed learn the lesson of having a light load. At this time, his pack weighed 50 pounds and it often times cut off the circulation to his arms and fingers so much so that he couldn’t tie his shoes or even unbuckle his pack. It is here in august in Yosemite that he learns you can rent a burro for $1.50 a day. Or buy one outright for $15. And those guys can haul. And they’re smarter than horses and less prone to suicidal flailings.

Eventually though, he had to return home to his parents and to his high school, he was dreading that part, but at least he would graduate in 1931, at 16 years old. Despite his parents hoping he would soon go to college, after graduation, Everett immediately set out on his second adventure! My man! He had graduated in January so in early February, Everett packed up his bags and stuck out his thumb. Except this time, he was going east!

Here’s Roberts to sum up the beginning of this solo trip:

The rides he got from strangers amounted to a cross-country adventure in its own right: a Buick Eight driven at seventy-five miles an hour by an old man with a dog; a lift in a potato truck; a harrowing lift from "a couple of Long Beach toughs" who drove through the night without headlights and kept running out of gas; and a final jaunt over "a very wild road" from Flagstaff to Kayenta in the car of an Indian mail carrier. End quote.

Good to know that road is still as wild and rough as it has been for 90 years. But that does indeed sound like it could be its own adventure series. I’ve hitchhiked once and it was only out of necessity.

I was riding my motorcycle from Oklahoma City where I lived to Eagle, Colorado where my friend and college roommate was working for the Forest service. I decided to take state highways until Denver instead of doing I-35 to 70. This was all well and good except the little two lane highway in the Panhandle of Oklahoma got me so close to passing trucks, both of us doing 70 in the Oklahoma wind which comes sweeping down the plains. These trucks liked to have blown me clear off my bike! The very first time I passed one head on, I nearly did lose my balance and my life. I quickly learned after that to duck.

After crossing over into Colorado from Boise City, I saw a small little rain burst of a storm straight ahead, miles away. But I figured I’d intercept it if the road didn’t turn. The roads out there don’t turn. It was June and it was over 100 so I relished the idea of a cool wet ride before the blowdryer air sapped the moisture off me again. So naturally I unzipped my leather and welcomed the air and rain, only for me to drive into a swarm of bees which stung me at least 6 times, some of them in the armpits. At the next gas station I screeched to a halt, leapt off my bike, and tore off my jacket all the while swearing and jumping. I got me some ice from inside and sucked down some poisonous energy drink and thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t allergic. What I didn’t do was fill up. I then drove north towards 70, getting about 50 miles or so before realizing I needed gas. I should have filled up back there and I would have if it hadn’t been for those blasted bees. 

I didn’t have a gas gauge on the tank but I had an internal one and it was flashing empty behind my eyelids. The town of mustang was coming up though, that’s good! Except, no gas. No nothing except a trailer for the USPS. Kit Carson! Surely that will have some gas. Nope… and then it happened and I sputtered to a stop. I left my jacket on my bike because again, it was over 100, and I set out towards the next town which I would learn was… 26 miles away. I was hot and thirsty. My thumb was out.

Thankfully, a trucker pulled over and off we went. I was so thankful. He then asked if he could use my cell phone. I was surprised my Motorola razor had service but it did! So I said sure and handed it over. He spoke on it to his Jamaican buddies the entire time until he dropped me off at the gas station, thanked ME, handed back the phone, and off he went. That was easy.

The ride back was even easier when a sherif deputy from North Dakota or Montana, I forget now, picked me up and took me to the bike.

I think I got pretty lucky in my story, to be honest.

Everett, too, would get lucky every time he stuck out his thumb.

The day before Valentine’s Day, February 13th of that year, 1931, Everett, after those harrowing and interesting but ultimately fun sounding hitchhiking adventures, was ready to begin the next leg of his journey. And that would begin in Kayenta, Arizona.

That place today is in the heart of Navajo nation, just like it was back then, I suppose. I only ever drive through it, really. Although I love Agathla Peak which sits just outside of town as you head towards monument valley. I’ve pulled over and taken many a pictures of the volcanic relic. On a later adventure, Everett would paint it. He’d also say of it, quote, the longer I know it, the more I like it. If I were wealthy, I'd build a castle like it. End quote. A picture of it will be at the site.

E’s first goal was to purchase a burro, which he had realized in Yosemite were the much easier and smarter way of getting around.

But first he had a few illusions about native Americans shattered. He was quite surprised at how poor the Navajo were at that time and remarked that the average family lived on $13.40 a year. He also thought well… that they, the Navajo, were dishonest and prone to thieving. Although that view would change with time. 

While he was staying in Kayenta though, he was using a Navajo hogan although how he was able to snag that is unknown, since they aren’t meant to be shared with outsiders and sometimes aren’t ever meant to be used again if someone dies in them.

While there he also bought a burro for only $6, which was much less than the $15 at Yosemite. He named the Burro, Everett. And he, himself, would change his name.

I would say for some strange reason but the boy was 16 and he had quite the imagination and he spent A LOT of time outdoors alone so he had plenty of time to think and reflect on all that he had studied and read, and he loved to read. So it is here, when Everett Ruess uses his imagination to create his first, first of at least three, Pseudonyms. He chooses out of the blue to begin calling himself and signing his letters as Lan Rameau.

To help explain the significance of this name to y’all, I will quote from Roberts:

As others have pointed out, l’ane is French for "the donkey." It also has, as a second meaning “the ass or "the idiot”- suggesting a self-deprecatory joke on Everetts part. Rameau may have been a nod to the eighteenth-century composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, for since childhood Everett had been passion

ate about classical music. End quote.

Apparently his family and friends weren’t sure of what to make of this second name which he wrote to them insisting on them using it and not his given name. It’s possible that the discomfort he had in using his own name was the the first of quite a few hints of Everett’s more melancholic and sad side as some have suggested… but I think it may have just been mere fun and when he was out in the wilderness, where he truly felt alive and free and happy, he felt like a different person! I think he hadn’t quite squared up the boy that sits in school and at home with his parents who have always been a very important part of his life, he hadn’t connected the fact that the way he felt outdoors on the lone trail and who he was there was the same as the boy in the city.

That being said, he does indeed becoming quite the brooding and melancholic young man… as all young men do for however brief a time.

In a letter to a good friend, a friend who will pop up a lot in the series, this friend’s name being Bill Jacobs, well in a letter to him he wrote quote:

As to my pen name, although it is really a brush name, I am still in turmoil, but I think that I will heroically stand firm in the face of all misunderstandings and mispronunciations. I'll simply have to lead a dual existence. ... The name is LAN RAMEAU, and the friend who helped me select it thought it was quite euphonic and distinctive. Personally, I felt that anything was better than Ruess. End quote.

I don’t know how many nicknames and pen names I gave myself when I was young and writing horrible poetry and songs and bad James Bond plots and short stories. I couldn't stand my last name and I knew it was phony and adopted. Now I don't mind it at all and my wife likes it so that’s good. I only say all of this becomes sometimes the cult can confuse and create secret meanings with Everett just being a kid. A very intelligent and imaginative kid at that.

As to his first weeks in Arizona in February of 1931, he claimed the weather had been quote unquote atrocious with wind, rain, snow, hail, ice, and heavy lead colored clouds. He is on the Colorado plateau in the winter, after all. If you’ll recall the weather the padres had in October just to the west of this spot then you’ll understand. I’ve been to this area in December, January, March, and April and I’ve seen it all as well. It’s still always beautiful though.  And to Everett, he wrote to his family the quote, the territory, however, is all that I hoped it would be. End quote.

Everett didn’t let this weather stop him from being excited at the prospect of exploring the four corners and the American Southwest though. And much like the reasons I began going out west, he was there to explore for some Anasazi ruins. His fascination with all things Indian hadn’t wavered. It had, as it always does with those who catch the bug, but it had probably only strengthened. In Kayenta, he even got to trade one of his watercolors for an Anasazi bowl!

Remember, Kayenta is a Navajo town and the Navajo are not descendants of the Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloans. And outside of a few oral traditions, it’s unlikely the two groups ran into each other in the past. Although, I go back and forth on that, but, especially at that time a hundred years ago, The Navajo had no compunctions with giving away that old Anasazi stuff that had bad spirits associated with it.

Also while in Kayenta, Everett ran into John Wetherill! The man I spoke of during my ancient ones series who discovered for the Anglos, Mesa verde and Rainbow Bridge. He’d also find and excavate a ton of other ruins. And yes, I will be doing an episode on he and his family as I have said many times. But probably not until after I revisit the Anasazi.

But in Kayenta, the 64 year old explorer and discoverer and amateur archaeologist was glad to share all his knowledge with this precocious 16 year old. He told him where ruins were and how to look for ruins in canyons and how to climb and the best way to see and explore them, he even drew him a map… lucky Everett. Except… looking for ruins may have been his undoing…

Unfortunately, the journal Everett kept has been lost to history but his letters to his friends and family remain, thankfully. And this won’t be the last lost journal. And by lost… as I will cover later, after his disappearance, many people will come forward to promise certain things and one of them will promise to write a book about Everett so his family… mails this man this journal… this lost journal from this epic time… as of 2023, it remains hidden from public.

In those surviving letters though, Everett tells that he learns that a poster he entered into an art competition had won him $25, which was great because in that first month he’d already bought the burro, a Dutch oven, a sack, some rope, and food. He was probably running out of money. He is truthfully, always… running out of money. He also wrote that since he couldn’t buy bread in Navajo land, he’d perfected making quote squaw bread, corn bread, and biscuits in my Dutch oven. Yesterday the biscuits were perfect. End quote. He’d also in that letter ask for more, bread, peanut butter, pop, and grape nuts. As they were quote unobtainable luxuries in this country. End quote. He would ask A LOT of things from his parents the entire time he is out adventuring, well at least until his very last excursion. He’d write Bill, quote, day by day the questionable virtue of poverty has approached me. End quote.

It does seem, although the letters FROM his parents and friends haven’t survived, probably because he didn’t want to carry them around everywhere he went. They probably honestly ended up in fires… but it does seem that his parents began to worry about him a little. I say that because in one letter he wrote, quote, as for hunting for me with Dorinda [the family auto], I don't believe you could get the car here. It would sink in the sand, rattle to pieces on the rocks, get stuck in a river bottom, slide off a cliff, or run out of gas miles from a service station. End quote. I do understand his parent’s worry but he’s right about the car. Even with my high clearance 4WD truck, the landscape off the paved roads in the American Southwest can be… demanding. On a vehicle. And it was probably even worse back then. Just this July I punctured a tire in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeast Arizona. If it weren’t for amazingly kind and helpful locals, it would have been a day ruiner. And not JUST a tire killer.

With Everett though, it’s hard not to think of him as a little selfish with the letters asking for things and money. Roberts writes about this point when he said, quote, Everett's vagabondage during a time of such widespread poverty, combined with his material dependence on his parents, hints at a streak of self-indulgence fueled by a sense of entitlement. End quote.

This was after all, the Great Depression! A time when wages were reduced, workers were laid off, investments ceased, people were hungry, homeless, penniless. Everett was lucky his family had steady income and steady income enough to send him what he asked for and more… every time he asked.

Apparently Everett and Waldo even quarreled over this matter and in a long letter to Waldo, Everett would call him a cop out and say that his work was totally unnecessary. At this time, Waldo worked for Fleischmann’s Yeast Company… as a husband who loves my wife’s homemade baked bread which uses that very same yeast company… I would argue that Waldo’s work was necessary then just as it would be now. Everett wrote to his brother though, quote,

I feel that you are worthy of a better position than the present one. The idea put forward by some, that all necessary work is honorable and beautiful because it must be done, means nothing to me. As far as I am concerned, your work is quite unnecessary, since I can keep very healthy without Fleischmann's yeast. . . .

I myself would sooner walk a whole day behind the burro than spend two hours on the street car. End quote.

Waldo is absolutely right. All Necessary work IS honorable and beautiful when it must be done.

In that same letter to Waldo, Everett also adds, quote, I am very glad not to be home, where civilized life thrusts the thought of money upon one from all sides. With an adequate stock of provisions, I can forget the cursed stuff, or blessed stuff, for days and weeks at a time.

Your censure was quite deserved in regard to providing my needs, but remember that I have asked for no money, and that most of the equipment I asked for was unprocurable here, and necessary to my life. End quote. He may not have asked for money YET… but he does, many times in the future and his parents send it. His older brother is right to scold him a little, in my opinion. But this scolding would make no difference to Everett. He wouldn’t change his mind nor would it hurt his feelings. And their relationship as brothers and friends stays strong throughout their lives.

Everett’s true desire for this southwestern trip though, like I said earlier, was to discover Anasazi sites that no white American had ever seen, hence his meeting with the Wetherills. Even by the 1930s though, finding untouched sites was tough. He would start where John Wetherill pointed though, and that was Monument Valley and Tsegi Canyon.

On March 9th, Everett would write to his friend Bill Jacobs and say, quote,

l am going to pack up my burro, and take a jaunt thru Monument Valley to a row of cliffs I know of, explore every box canyon, and discover some prehistoric cliff dwellings. Don't laugh. Maybe you thought they were all discovered, but such is not the case… Most of the country is untouched.

Only the Navajos have been there, and they are superstitious. In the event that I find nothing, I shall do some painting and have some interesting camps. End quote.

Near Monument Valley, on the eastern side, there are… certain sites that lay in alcoves among bends in a certain row of cliffs which… one can visit if they receive a permit from the Navajo Nation to explore the land… but sometimes those amazing sites are off limits to non-navajos… and sometimes the people exploring don’t know that and although they have a permit, and thought that permit would work for everywhere, that is not the case. Sometimes people put up pictures and videos of those ruins that they should not have visited and then they are scolded in the comments by Navajos about how those ruins are off limits and should not be visited so the person that posted the really cool photos and videos have to take them down… sometimes that happens to some, theoretical people… who love and explore the vast American Southwest…

At this time though, in the 1930s, nothing was off limits for Anglos or non-Navajos so Everett got to explore until his heart was content. Honestly, no one in the United States really even knew about Monument Valley to begin with. I’m actually surprised it was even called that at this time. Roberts makes the point that since the endless string of westerns filmed at Monument Valley had yet to be shot and released, the area was virtually unknown to the rest of America. It’s a mystery how Everett even knew to go there.

Roberts would write of Monument Valley, quote, Navajos lived among the monumental geologic formations, as had the Anasazi before them, but the sole permanent Anglo presence was the trading post established by Harry Goulding in 1924. It would not be until John Ford shot the film Stagecoach in Monument Valley in 1938 that the place got pasted onto the tourist map. Only in 1958 did it become an official tribal park. End quote.

By the way, if you ever visit or stay at Monument Valley, Gouldings absolutely is a must visit! I have stayed there twice and both times I woke up early to watch the sunrise on the monuments and mittens which you can see from your balcony and… breathtaking. Truly rewarding. Sunset’s amazing as well. Obviously the Navajo’s hotel there would probably be even better but at their prices, I have yet to stay.

For Everett, coyotes, winds, and snow storms made his first visit of two nights to the valley a miserable adventure. He even called it a quote, gloomy sunless place. End quote. If you’ve listened to me or read my short story up at the site, I also despise the desert haze, the dishwater days gloom that can sometimes roll in over the Colorado Plateau. I find it worse than the extended cloudiness of the upper Midwest I experienced for weeks on end in Wisconsin. Maybe it’s because expectations are ruined when Mother Nature turns on you during adventures. Everett would blasphemously name Monument Valley, gloom canyon.

It wasn’t just the bad weather that was troubling him though. On top of the gloominess, his burro was acting up and being stubborn. At one point, Everett, the burro refused to go with the pack on him and he just sat in the middle of the path. The water hole he was hoping for was dry. The next one was filthy. The coyotes yipping and howling kept him awake all night. His watercolors would turn to ice and make it tough to paint with. And to top it all off, quote, all the ruins I saw had been investigated before. End quote.

To epitomize his troubles, here’s a quote from the boy himself:

After sunset I kept going, trying to reach an old Navajo hogan of which I knew. Finally I tied the burro to a tree and floundered around in the darkness and sandhills until I found the hogan. Then I couldn't find the burro. Then I couldn't find the hogan, after locating Everett (that’s his burro, remember). After two more searches for each, I made camp with the burro. A flying spark burnt a hole in my packsack. My knife got lost, somehow. End quote.

Without the tough times, there would be no fun times.

Later he would talk much more lovingly about the area when he would write, quote, This country suits me nearly to perfection. End quote. Amen, brother. And then to add a further amen, quote, The only things I miss are a loyal friend to share my delights and miseries, and good music. End quote.

Seriously, Everett and I would have been best friends. That is also why I am so glad my wife loves sharing my adventures with me. She’s not quite as… daring or hearty on the trail as I am but one day…As for the music, thank goodness for the fantastic sound system in my Tacoma which I blast loudly on my way to and from places in the region. Although I never ever ever play music on the trail. And neither should you! Please, dear god, do not do that yourself either. It’s an affront to Mother Nature. Do not play music from speakers on hikes…

This whole time, while Everett is wandering around Monument Valley and Kayenta, he constantly meets Navajos. Some sit on their horses and watch him as he cleans his pack of crushed water colors. Some of them stop and talk to him. Some of them invite them into their hogan for a sing and some grub. Some of them tell him stories. Some of them steal his things and laugh when they get caught. It’s really quite awesome and important to remember later when he goes missing. Obviously, these Navajos, the residents of this land, would have seen him… certainly.

On march 28th, 1931, for his 17th, Everett had a birthday feast of food that his parents had mailed to him. He then set off for the Tsegi Canyon system in northern Arizona. This place, the Tsegi, which is Navajo for… canyon. The Tsegi Canyon or canyon canyon system houses the Navajo National Monument and in that monument are the amazing ruins of Betatakin and Keet Seel, among quite a few others. A lot more, really. It’s an incredibly interesting place, which I have talked about in other episodes. It features 600 foot deep sandstone quote unquote lordly canyons with massive alcoves filled with impressive ruins. It was a nice well defended spot that produced enough food for the Anasazi that very briefly lived there. Those two ruins, along with inscription house make up Navajo national monument. In reality though, almost every canyon in the system has Anasazi ruins. Back then, as you can imagine, this place was a veritable true wilderness. It won’t be the first time Everett visits the area. But this visit won’t be easy on the poor boy.

The area was first discovered in 1895 by… yep, John and Richard Wetherill. Roberts writes of this discovery, quote, The Wetherills spent two seasons digging in the ruins, bringing back an immensely rich trove of artifacts, mummies, and skeletons that ultimately found their way to various museums. Betatakin, tucked away in a short side canyon, was first visited by Anglos only in 1909. The party that discovered it included a prominent archaeologist, Byron Cummings, and was guided by John Wetherill, who learned of the ruin's existence from a Navajo living near the mouth of the Tsegi.

It was natural, then, that John Wetherill would point Everett Ruess to one of the landscapes he most cherished. End quote.

Everett headed there in April of that year, 1931. And he camped there for two weeks. During his exploration he found and sent home a shell from the pacific that may have been part of a necklace and also… part of a human jawbone with teeth he found amongst the ruins. Yikes, would NAGPRA have a field day with that one…

After leaving the Tsegi canyon system and arriving back in Kayenta he’d write his friend Bill, and he’d say, quote, I feel very different from the boy who left Hollywood two months ago. End quote. He’d also say to him, quote, these days away from the city have been the happiest of my life, I believe. It has all been a beautiful dream, sometimes tranquil, sometimes fantastic, and with enough pain and tragedy to make the delights possible by contrast. But the pain too has been unreal. The whole dream has been filled with warm and cool but perfect colors. End quote.

We don’t ever learn what this unreal pain was but at least he recognized you must have one to enjoy the other. In that same letter he also wrote:

Music has been in my heart all the time, and poetry in my thoughts. Alone on the open desert, I have made up and sung songs of wild, poignant rejoicing and transcendent melancholy. The world has seemed more beautiful to me than ever before. I have loved the red rocks, the twisted trees, the red sand blowing in the wind, the low, sunny clouds crossing the sky, the shafts of moonlight on my bed at night....I have been happy in my work, and I have exulted in my play.

I have really lived. End quote.

Makes me want to pause recording, pack up, and head there with my companion right now.

Shortly after that letter, Everett finds and adopts a much needed companion. He found himself a rezdog that he would name Curly! If you haven’t been to an American Indian reservation out west, then you haven’t gotten to experience the phenomenon of rezdogs.

In 2017 on my first two week trip out west and my first truly ambitious one, I drove through the Chuska Mountains in the darkness and snow, a feat I do not recommend for anyone, but I arrived at Canyon De Chelly around midnight. As I was setting up my sleeping bag in the freezing air with the full moon floating above I nearly leapt out of my skin after noticing a dog had quietly ambled up behind me and had sat down to watch me. He really wanted to sleep in the bed of the truck with me but I didn’t want his fleas so I kindly shooed him away. That night I would hear coyotes and dogs playing or fighting or chasing one another. Since then, I have seen hundreds of the ubiquitous critters scampering about the Navajo and Hopi nations.

Everett wrote to Waldo about Curly:

He is a little roly poly puppy with fluffy white fur, and blue brown patches on his head and near his tail. His eyes are blue, and his nose is short. I found him last night, lost and squealing for help. When I stroked his fur in the darkness, electric sparks flew off.

I haven't yet decided about his name, but may call him Curly, because of his tail. When he is large enough, I am going to train him to go behind the burro, occasionally nipping the donkey's heels, so that we shall be able to go faster. End quote.

Curly would stay with Everett for the next 13 months and would even learn to ride the burro!

A few weeks later Everett wrote to Waldo the following:

I must pack my short life full of interesting events and creative activity. Philosophy and aesthetic contemplation are not enough. I intend to do everything possible to broaden my experiences and allow myself to reach the fullest development. Then, and before physical deterioration obtrudes, I shall go on some last wilderness trip, to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return. End quote… ominous foreboding words…

At the end of this letter, he decides, he’s had enough with the pseudonym he’d been using for the last three months and adopts an entirely new one. He tells Waldo in that same letter, quote,

Once again, I have changed my name, this time to Evert Rulan. It is not as euphonious or unusual as Lan Rameau, but to those who knew me formerly the name seemed an affectation. Evert Rulan can be spelled, pronounced, and remembered, and is fairly distinctive. I changed the donkey's name to Pegasus. End quote.

Everett also admitted to Bill that his last pseudonym was a little too Frenchie.

From Kayenta, Everett’s plans were as follows, and I quote:

After the Grand Canyon, Kaibab and Zion, I shall go South for the winter, perhaps pausing in Mesa [Arizona], where a friend has relations. After working in the cactus country of southern Arizona, I may go northward thru New Mexico, Rocky Mt. Park, and Yellowstone to Glacier. ... At all events I intend to spend a year or two in the open, working hard with my art. Then I shall wish for city life again, and to see my old friends if they still exist. End quote.

That… is one HECK of a journey, there Evert. That would have been an unbelievable one thousand 700 miles to cross either on foot or with his newly named Pegasus. That’s probably why he named the burro that, in the hopes that with the new name, it also sprouted wings.

In this same letter to Waldo he also lays out the plans for the next few years. A blueprint, if you will. It’s interesting enough to read to y'all.

After having lived intensely in the city for a while (It may not be in Hollywood), I feel that I must go to some foreign country. Europe makes no appeal to me as it is too civilized.

Possibly some unfrequented place in the South Seas. Australia holds little allure for me now. Alaska is too cold and Mexico is largely barren, as is most of S. America. Ecuador is an interesting place with its snow capped volcanoes, jungles, and varied topography. As to ways and means, that problem will be solved somehow.

He goes on to talk about his plans in art:

It is my intention to accomplish something very definite in Art. When I have a large collection of pictures, done as well as I can do them, then I am going to make a damn vicious stab at getting them exhibited and sold. If this fails, I'll give them away to friends and those who might appreciate them. End quote.

The best laid plans and all that… speaking of mice and men, that book hadn’t even come out yet. It wouldn’t come out until 1937, years after Everett’s disappearance. But the phrase in question is from a 1785 poem by the Scot, Robert Burns. That phrase goes:

But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Rather fitting for our tale of Everett Ruess, really.

The last two lines of the poem also work:

And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

That letter was actually full of other stuff he wrote to Waldo including other ominous words like, quote, “On all sides, people are being murdered, run over, are dying and committing suicide. It may be our turn next. End quote.

Everett would leave Kayenta in May and head towards Canyon de Chelly. Like I just said, I have been there and it is amazing. My campsite lay near the rim of the south canyon which offers a perfect view of Spider Rock but… I didn’t know that. Despite, the name of the campground being SpiderRock Campground. So at sunrise, like an excited golden retriever, I woke up, packed up, said goodbye to the rezdog who had slept near my truck, and sprinted off towards the White House Ruin Trail, which is now frustratingly closed due to vandalism of cars at the trailhead… I mean, come on Navajo youths… that’s not cool. Anyways, despite that amazing hike, one of my top five still, and the amazing view points in that storied canyon… the MAIN thing, the thing I was MOST excited about seeing was Spider Rock. I never did see that towering spire. Still ain’t neither.

Of Canyon De Chelly, Roberts wrote, quote, only a month before Everett set out, on April 1, 1931, President Herbert Hoover had declared Canyon de Chelly a national monument--in celebration of the Anasazi ruins, not of the Navajo presence. (The people who lived in the canyon were never consulted about the governmental decree.). If Everett was aware that the place had just been made a national monument, he did not mention the fact in his letters. Eighty years after Hoover's fiat, Canyon de Chelly remains unique in the National Park System, the only park or monument devoted to prehistoric ruins but inhabited solely by Native Americans who endure the uneasy compromise of leading their private lives while tourists tramp and truck-ride through their backyards. End quote.

They may endure, but they also profit from these truck rides… and maybe the car vandalism is a ruse. No, certainly not…

  After four days of traveling through the canyon, the ruins, and among the Navajo, he arrived at Chinle, which is the town at the mouth of the canyon. Once he’d arrived, he wasn’t thrilled with the Navajos yet again. He wrote quite a scathing report I shall not repeat for it is necessary to the story but he believed the Navajo had stolen quite a few things from him and it irked him something fierce.

From Chinle he then headed to the northern Canyon system of Canyon de Chelly which is called, Canyon del Muerto. Death Canyon. He spent nine days there looking for Anasazi ruins and painting when he could. He wrote to Bill Jacobs, his friend that he quote, saw a goodly portion of the 1200 cliff dwellings, & made half a dozen paintings. End quote. There are actually even MORE than 1,200 Anasazi sites in the canyon. Which is awesome. He would go on to write, quote, many of the ruins are well nigh inaccessible. End quote. That inaccessible fact won’t stop him this time, although it’ll try, and it won’t stop him in the future… at least, until, it may have stopped him altogether permanently. He wrote, quote, I made a foolhardy ascent to one safely situated dwelling. Part of the time I had to snake my way along a horizontal cleft with half my body hanging out over the sheer precipice. End quote.

Back in 2009, on that first motorcycle trip I mentioned earlier, my friend and I climbed a 700 foot cliff in the Colorado Rockies near Rifle. Back then I was a competition winning rock climber. I climbed every day. I worked at the university of Oklahoma’s rock wall and I worked at a private gym briefly in Edmond, Oklahoma setting routes. I breathed and dreamed of rock climbing.

I believe this route in Colorado which was just off Highway 70 at a reststop, I believe it is called MudFlap and one of those mudflap girls was nailed to the start of the route. It was challenging due to its length but not too technical. Regardless, it was fun but tiring and we didn’t quite make it all the way to the top. My friend was the lead climber the entire time as I didn’t feel comfortable and that fact ate up his energy, naturally. On the way back down though, while pulling the rope through the loops, it got stuck in a crack. My friend, too tired to climb up and get the rope, understandably, since he had been lead the whole time, well he was too tired so I had to find a way up the rocks to unstuck the rope. Of course the rope got stuck on the crux or hardest part of the entire long climb. The only part where there was an overhang or where the wall juts out above you instead of vertically up or even at a very small angle. My hands are sweating just telling y'all this story. So, basically free climbing without any rope to catch my fall, I climbed back over the lip about 200 feet above the deck, praying and swearing at the same time the whole way, until I found the stuck rope and made my way just as difficultly down to my friend who… was taking a well deserved nap at the lip where he was clipped in safely.

You will never feel more grateful to be alive then after pulling yourself up over a lip, 200 feet above the ground with absolutely nothing stopping you from falling seemingly forever.

Once the climb was finished and he was at the ruin, he realized that it had indeed been rifled through by pot hunters or archeologists or other adventurers like himself. Regardless, it was at these ruins that he made an incredible find. A truly remarkable discovery… he wrote about it saying, quote:

One room, however, was rocked shut, & on opening it, I thot for a moment I saw a cliff dweller in his last resting place. But the blankets, tho mouldering with age, were factory made, & a Navajo baby was buried therein. Odd, because the Navajos are superstitious about the Moquis [Anasazi]. However, in sifting dirt in a corner, I found a cliff dweller's necklace, a thousand or so yrs. old. About 250 beads, 8 bone pendants, 2 turquoise beads, & one pendant of green turquoise. End quote.

I mean… that’s incredible. It leaves me speechless honestly. He would mail that Anasazi necklace home. No one is sure where it is now, unfortunately.

About the burial, the Navajo seriously do avoid the Anasazi ruins so that is indeed quite strange.

Nearby, he also found an Anasazi baby’s cradle, but he left it in place. I wonder where it is now.

Back in Chinle, he sold a painting for a dollar, which must have been enjoyable. I’ve only ever sold a handful of paintings and each time, it is a triumph. At one point he laments to his brother that only artists are buying art. All the while, Everett’s writing his parents with letters talking about his lack of funds and sarcastically writing budgets that include zero dollars for rent, electricity, and burro insurance.

After Canyon de Chelly, Everett made his way to the Hopi mesas, where… he was a little disappointed. Later, he’d charge his mind about the old villages but this first visit did not impress him.  Unfortunately for him, he was a little disappointed in that first visit.

From the Hopi Mesas, he would head west with his burro in the heat of early June in the Arizona desert and near Cameron, that trading post with billboards galore, there at Cameron, he would run into some trouble. Roberts perfectly sums up what happened to our adventurer:

On June 7, somewhere near the outpost of Cameron, a pair of teenage boys driving a pickup south toward Flagstaff encountered the loner with his burro and his dog. One of them, Pat Jenks, nineteen at the time, never forgot this chance meeting. In 2009, at the age of ninety-seven, he recounted it to a Tucson newspaper reporter. Jenks and his friend Tad Nichols were surprised to see quote, a boy hunched over without a cap to protect him. He looked forlorn and he looked very sad.

We stopped the car," Jenks went on, "got out and talked to him.

He told us who he was. He was discouraged because he hadn't been able to sell his woodblocks.

"We asked him, 'You want a drink of water?' He misunderstood.

Handed us his canteen- it was almost used up. "I said to Tad, 'We're not leaving him out in the desert this way.

We can't do that. End quote.

The boys tied Everett's gear to the roof, unloaded the back of the pickup, and managed to coax Pegasus onto the flatbed.

They drove on to Jenks's family's Deerwater Ranch, west of Flagstaff.

"I guess he stayed about a month," Jenks recalled in 2009. (The actual stay, according to Everett's letters, was less than two weeks, but ranch life among the cool pines and aspens at eight thousand feet on the slopes of the San Francisco Peaks served to rejuvenate a badly depleted youth.). End quote.

The desert heat can truly sneak up on you! Always bring plenty of water or know where to get you some naturally.

Of course in his letter home he totally played down the mishap although he did admit his burro was in a bad way. He would write of Pegasus, quote, Peg is old and broken down, and his broken leg scrapes the other and bleeds. Tho I gave him a couple of days rest, his back is sore. He is really only half a burro. End quote. Broken leg?! Poor Pegasus…

In that same letter to Bill Jacobs he also writes, quote, a host of misadventures have occurred, and while they were very unpleasant at the time of happening, I don’t regret one of them now. End quote.

That’s often how misadventures are. Great to retell, but harrowing in the moment. Like my rock climbing near disaster. Hands are sweating again…

At the Deerwater Ranch in the high country, he built fences, cut down trees, and helped with the chores. In between helping though, he would hike the gorgeous San Francisco peaks. The place the Kachinas emerge from for the Hopi.

He gave a painting to one of the boys that picked him up, Jenks, and as of 2009, he still had it. I’m sure he has passed on now and is adventuring with Everett and David Roberts in the great beyond.

In December of that year, so around 6 months or so later, Everett would write to Jenks:

Those were great days at your ranch-idyllic days. There I seemed to feel the true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, lying in the long, cool grass or on a flat-topped rock, looking up at the exquisitely curved, cleanly smooth aspen limbs, watching the slow clouds go by. I would close my eyes, and feel a coolness on my cheeks as the sun was covered, and then later, the warmth of the sun on my eyelids. And always there was the soft rustling of aspen leaves, and a queer sense of remoteness, of feeling more beauty than I could ever portray or tell of. End quote.

On June 20th, Everett left the ranch and headed to the Grand Canyon with a nice six day stop to chop wood and brand lambs. He said the camp was full of interesting characters and an abundance of burros. One of those burros became his after he traded his shotgun for it. He would name this guy, Pericles or Perry for short. He wrote to his friend Bill quote, the new burro, though older than Pegasus (about 25), has four sound legs, a strong back, and is far handsomer… his ears are longer, too… end quote.

Later, he’d write about Perry, quote, Perry is a constant source of amusement. Once he stepped into a tin can and made an undignified spectacle of himself before he freed his foot. When he was tied to a tree, he scratched his chin with his hind foot, but then the foot got caught in the rope and he hopped about on three legs for a while. End quote. Truthfully, the various burros and horses he uses throughout his travels become main characters and a source of entertainment not only for himself but also for us as readers.

During his travels he’d write of a curious sight he saw and told his family about in June:

The next day I saw a weird thing, the dance of the tumbleweeds. A small whirlwind picked them up and tossed them in large circles. They would slowly float to earth and then bounce up again. Around and around they went in fantastic spirals. End quote.

By June 30th, 5 months into his amazing travels, he was camped at the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

He still, amazingly, would be on the road for 5 and a half more months.

Letter from Everett:

I throw my camps in all manner of places. I have slept under cedars, aspens, oaks, cottonwoods, pinyons, poplars, pines, maples (not the typical maple), and under the sky, clouded or starry. Right now I am under cedars [junipers], with pines all around. Cedar bark is excellent tinder.

Desert rats have told me few camping secrets, but here and there I've gleaned some. I can take care of myself rather well now. End quote.

He spent 5 weeks in the Grand Canyon. Two on the south rim. Two in the canyon. One on the north rim.

He wrote:

I followed obscure trails and revelled in the rugged grandeur of the crags, and in the mad, plunging glory of the Colorado river. Then one sunset I threw the pack on the burro again and took the long, steep uptrail. I traveled for several hours by starlight. A warm wind rushed down the side cañon, singing in the pinyons. Above--the blue night sky, powdered with stars. Beside- the rocks, breathing back to the air the stored up heat of the day. Below--the black void. Ahead- the burro, cautiously picking his way over the barely discernible trail. Behind- -a moving white blotch that was Curly. End quote.

During this time, he wrote that the temperature reached 140 degrees… not likely but not too far from an exaggeration. 120 is the record for the Grand Canyon. It no doubt felt like 140. I have hiked down to Skeleton Point on South Kaibab multiple times. Every time, I have started with many many layers, dodging ice and snow as I descended to watch the sunrise on that sacred for me, spot. Then I begin the ascent and at regular intervals I am shedding layers and liquids until at the top, the pack is full of coats and undershirts and all the water I brought is nearly drained as the sun beats down on the forever rocks of the canyon.

To alleviate the heat, Everett would go swimming in the violent and muddy red of the Colorado River. But one time he swallowed an unhealthy amount of the soupy liquid.

At phantom ranch, which is nestled at the bottom of the canyon below the two trails of South Kaibab and Bright Angel trail, and where you can stay the night, recoup during the day, and even post letters from. Well at Phantom Ranch there’s a suspension bridge still up today that allows you to cross the south side to the north side over the Colorado River. If the weather’s right you can then head up to the north rim. Everett was wanting to cross this bridge but Pericles his mule did not fancy the idea. Eventually he wrote in a letter to Bill Jacobs, quote, I finally banged him across with an old shovel. End quote. That’ll do it!

On august 1st he cryptically wrote to Bill, quote, recently I had the most terrific physical experiences of my life, but recovery was rapid. End quote.

That’s all we get… We’ll never know what happened. In the meantime his parents were writing to request they meet him in Arizona and bring him back, even if they had to bring his burros but he declined and said, quote, I have no craving for the city life. End quote. Amen kid. No wonder he’s influenced so many like me.

From the north rim, Everett traveled nine days towards Zion National Park. That’s some rough territory to be sure. If you listened to the D&E Expedition episode I covered the land extensively. It’s right before the crossing of the fathers. This is the Uinkaret plateau and the pink sands and the hurricane cliffs.

He wrote of Zion, quote, Zion Canyon is all I had hoped it would be. End quote. But that’s really all we get from there. Except for this line about him possibly being a little tired of the Vagabond life. To Bill Jacobs he wrote, quote, I write by firelight. The crest of the sandstone cliffs is bathed in moonlight. I know it is beautiful, but I can't feel the beauty. End quote.

Some of this burnout was because he got a bad case of Poison Ivy, which he was VERY VERY allergic to! Like hospitalized twice in his life allergic to. To Bill he wrote, quote, for six days I've been suffering from the semi annual poison ivy case- -my sufferings are far from over. For two days, I couldn't tell whether I was dead or alive. I writhed and twisted in the heat, with swarms of ants and flies crawling over me, while the poison oozed and crusted on my face and arms and back. I ate nothing. There was nothing to do but suffer philosophically… he would go on to write later… I get it every time, (poison ivy) but I refuse to be driven out of the woods. End quote.

To be clear, he may have been confused on what caused Poison Ivy at this time in his life… he may have thought it was a seasonal allergy. Although later in life he will recognize that it’s something you touch and are afflicted with. While the US may be awash in poison plants that irritate the skin, at least we don’t have the Gympie Gympie stinging tree… which causes intense pain for weeks or months and makes you wish you were truly dead as it fills you with anguish and despair… No thank you, Australia.

For this poison ivy affliction, he’d actually secretly be hospitalized for 8 days after the Zion superintendent took him in. Everett would fail to inform his parents about that.

In one of the letters he wrote of the hardship:

Yesterday morning I managed to pry my lips far enough apart to insert food. I thought my eyes would swell shut, but not so. Even now, they are mere slits in the puffed flesh. End quote.

Because of the pain and the lack of movement during this bout of dangerous ivy, Everett writes a rather reflective letter that is still discussed among the cult members today. It goes:

My friends have been few because I'm a freakish person and few share my interests. My solitary tramps have been made alone because I couldn't find anyone congenial--you know it's better to go alone than with a person one wearies of soon. I've done things alone chiefly because I never found people who cared about the things I've cared for enough to suffer the attendant hardships. But a true companion halves the misery and doubles the joys. End quote.

I don’t have to imagine how lonely his travels are because for the first 7 years of my travels through the American Southwest, I too traveled alone for weeks on end. Not months, mind you. It wasn’t until 2020 that I started traveling with friends who shared my love of the Great American Outdoors. First my Basque friend and my Belarussian Friend. Then my French friend who married my wife and I. And finally my future wife.

Despite the poison ivy, the lonesomeness, the heat, in a letter at the end of August that he wrote to his parents, he said, quote, I expect to continue my wanderings for a year more at least -my itinerary is planned, & I have work to do. End quote. Gotta love the grit and determination of this kid.

I’ve bailed on journeys before because of being lonely. Because of the weather. Because of being sick! And even because.. I just wasn’t feeling it. Something was off. Maybe I should have kept going… But it all worked out in the end.

Everett just seems to be built different, honestly. Unlike E though, I had bills and a dog at home and a job and friends, true friends who wanted me back.

There is something to his struggle with both wanting a companion and wanting the solo adventure and this isn’t the first time he’s written about wishing to share the trail. A few months before he wrote Bill, quote, 

I have had many sublime experiences which the presence of another person might well have prevented, but there are others which the presence of a perceptive and appreciative friend might have made doubly worthwhile. End quote. Every adventurer has come to this same conclusion once or many times before. It’s something I struggled with right up until I met my wife. Now the question is settled. The trail no longer solo. You don’t know what you’re missing when traveling by yourself until you are with a true companion.

At the end of that revealing letter I keep quoting from that he wrote to his friend Bill, he does mention that he will soon be reverting to his old name again. So maybe he knew his time on this trip was coming to an end. He just wasn’t willing to accept it. Wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. Because at this time he was still expecting to head down south from Zion as the weather began to turn. He intuited that southern Arizona and its cactus country would be warmer and that’s where he’d spend winter. Plus, as he said, he’d never been there before. I hear that.

I can tell you, I’ve been to central and southern Arizona in December, January, February, and march and it gets cold. One of those days, I was on the border of Mexico in 2020 driving from tombstone to Coronado national monument. It was march. The night before a rainstorm with plenty of beautiful lighting swept through the desert. The next morning was foggy. Gloomy but winter picturesque with layers of thick dark clouds. Not just grey. I headed towards the tortilla curtain and the mountain where the monument is and lo and behold, snow. As I headed up the mountain there was more of it. Then a lot of it. I was the only one there. Or so I thought.

I hiked to the top of the lookout and took truly amazing pictures. A time lapse video. It was very cold. Windy. Snow fell quickly and was swept down to the Sonoran floor below the mountain. Desert vegetation, cacti, yucca, already alien looking were now white with snow. Even more extra terrestrial. I couldn’t say for certain where I was. The sun broke through the fog and highlighted the mountains. I snapped many pictures. Returning to my truck I was stopped by a voice coming from a small pavilion by the restrooms. He needed a ride to town please. It was too cold and snowy to start his trek on the Arizona trail. He was in shorts. He looked unprepared. Frail. His name was butterfly. He didn’t know how mountains were formed. He didn’t like my gun which sat in the center console. I should have hid it. At the gas station in town he hinted he could go a little further. I replied it had been fun. It hadn’t. But it had been interesting. I rearranged the truck back to my liking and off I headed towards Tucson. I felt I had repaid my hitchhiking debt. North near the Saguaros, it would be 80 by the end of the day.

Everett was right to think it was warmer down south. Spending the winter down there was not a bad idea. At the same time, despite wanting to be out for another year, he had no funds. No money. Not a lot of food. His parents graciously sent plenty of all of that to him despite the raging of the Great Depression and their lack of funds. He couldn’t continue to sustain himself. He was only 17! He was truly grateful to his parents for all that they sent but by now he was solely depended upon that gratitude. And he was expecting it to continue forever… maybe he knew he couldn’t do that to his parents. Roberts wrote of this conundrum, quote:

The unabated affection in Everett's letters to his parents does not ring of cynical manipulation, as if he were posing as a dutiful son in order to keep up the flow of his allowance. The love sounds genuine. One must chalk up Everett's fending off his parents' attempts to control his life at the same time as he pleaded for supplies and cash to the sense of entitlement in which he had basked since childhood.

At his most selfish, he treated his parents almost as though they were patrons committed to supporting a budding artist through thick and thin. End quote.

But that certainly couldn’t last indefinitely. He was truly and honestly attempting to make it on his own but to quote him about the difficulty of making a living being an artist he wrote:

Not for God's sake, or yet for Hell's sake can I sell any of my paintings. The world does not want Art--only the artists do. End quote.

He was indeed aware of the Great Depression, don’t get me wrong. He constantly wrote about the poverty and lack of work in nearly every town he travelled through. Makes me a little shameful for complaining about the economy these days. We have so much but still complain. I guess, it’s all relative.

At the same time he was asking for money he was refusing to go to college. It was not something he ever envisioned himself doing, despite his love of learning. He would write to his parents in September saying, quote, I studied the Junior College pamphlet, and I don't feel enthusiastic. The place must be like a jail, with all the rules and regulations. What an anticlimax it would be after the free life. There was nothing in the art course that seemed worthwhile. End quote.

You can’t blame him. His parents although disappointed, were still understanding. They would then ask him if could send his journal home at least so they could read it. Which had been tradition up to this point in their lives. But alas, Everett rebuffed them again and said he could not send it. For it was too personal for anyone but the author to read. He was becoming a man. With his own thoughts. And dreams. And feelings. Unfortunately, this journal has been lost like so many other treasures of this earth.

In early October he’s stranded on the south rim of the Grand Canyon where he writes this to Bill… it’s a long quote, but it’s fantastic:

For eight days I traveled from Zion to the North Rim, a distance of 150 miles by my route. If only you could have seen what I saw then-but you didn't and as a picture is supposedly equal to a thousand words, I'll send you that when I reach the South Rim.

One of those sunsets will always linger in my memory. It was after a day of struggle-of violent hailstorms that beat down like a thou sand whiplashes, and of ferocious, relentlessly-battling winds.

Then sunset, at my camp on a grassy spot in the sage. Far to the north and east the purple mesas stretched. Cloud banks arched everywhere overhead, stretching in long lines to the horizons. There was an endless variety of cloud forms, like swirls of smoke, like puff balls. Here and there where a sunshaft pierced a low hung cloud bar, the mesas were golden brown and vermilion. Then the treeless western hills were rimmed with orange that faded to green and deep blue. A cold clear breeze caressed me and the full moon rolled through the clouds. The lunatic quaver of a coyote-silence and sleep.

Winter is close at hand; the maples are crimson, and flurries of yellow aspen leaves swirl about with each breeze. On many hillsides the yellow leaves have blackened, and the trees stand bare and silent.

Soon the snows will be here, but I won’t. End quote.

I love that line… soon the snows will be here, but I won’t. Something he writes his brother at this time time while at the North Rim, combined with this hauntingly good line, they leave something like the taste of sadness in the reader’s mouth. Because this is what he wrote to Waldo:

Whatever I have suffered in the months past has been nothing compared with the beauty in which I have steeped my soul, so to speak. It has been a priceless experience and I am glad it is not over. What I would have missed if I had ended everything last summer! End quote.

Ended everything last Sumer?! Ended how? The wanderings? The adventuring? His life? This has become a famous passage to his devotees, to the cult members who suggest this ended everything last summer line is about his contemplation of suicide. And that his brother knew about this contemplation. This has influenced many people into believing he committed suicide less than three years later in the Utah desert…. But I don’t know. Ended everything for that young man could have meant ended his journey and dream of traveling! Given up the vagabond lifestyle and chosen school and a career. I’m not convinced the boy was suicidal. And how could we ever know what the boy was really thinking…

Also in that letter he quotes from this long lost journal and it’s beautiful… so well written and it puts you right there where he is journeying in the Southern Utah and Northern Arizona high desert badlands and sandy canyons. I will not quote it because you should all read A Vagabond for Beauty or better yet, the combined letters and journal, sequel to Vagabond.

I will quote once more from this letter as it is pretty much the only thing he ever wrote about the Grandest of all canyons, quote: Nothing anywhere can rival the grand canyon. End quote. I think sometimes I take it for granted I have seen it so many times but… there’s some truth to that statement.

Before arriving at the north rim of the unrivaled Grand Canyon, it seems he ran into some trouble with a few hints that he had to sell or give away the old burro Pericles. For he couldn’t move his equipment further south at that moment. Plus he mentions his clothes are in tatters. Maybe he had to pay that 8 day hospital bill somehow…

He then wrote home begging for money for real this time, and apparently for the first time, and it seems his parents dutifully sent it. This sending of money would lead to a month of bickering in his letters….but… you can’t blame his parents. With that money, Everett did buy two burros in the Hispanic mining town of Superior, Arizona after catching a ride with tourists down below the Mogollon Rim. One of those tourist was 6 and a half feet tall, Everett wrote. Roberts writes of this part of the journey:

Before acquiring his new burros, however, Everett made his way to Mesa, Arizona, probably by hitching a ride with Grand Canyon tourists. Today a suburb of Phoenix, Mesa even in 1931 was far from wilderness. After the solitary remoteness of the Tsegi, Canyon de Chelly, the Grand Canyon, and backcountry Zion, southern Arizona must have seemed bland and civilized to the vagabond. End quote.

The next two months are filled with small jaunts and excursions through the desert east of Phoenix. He was leaping gullies and avoiding cactus with his burros. He was killing rattlesnakes and trying to sell his art… He does check out a place I plan on seeing in October of this year, 2023, the Tonto Cliff Dwellings or Tonto national Monument as they are known today. He actually spent nine or ten days at the ruins. They were built by the Anasazi’s neighbors and cousins the Salado culture, a people I talk about in previous episodes and will talk about again in the future. They built the ruins above the Salt River but what is today Lake Roosevelt. He also acquainted himself with some New Yorkers who he convinced to hire him as a guide and burro packer for their three day stint into the Four Peaks near Phoenix. They were looking for amethyst or some such mineral apparently. He also sold some firewood to other tourists to make even more money. But that spark, that flare for adventure, that thirst for the wilderness, it wasn’t quenched by these small outings to make a buck. But at least he was meeting cool people. He wrote to Bill about some of these people and said, quote, I have been meeting all types of people: artists, writers, hoboes, cooks, cowmen, miners, bootleggers. ... The bootlegger said that as soon as he sold his stock on hand he could offer me a job guarding his still in the mountains and packing barrels to the retreat. End quote.

Alas, that awesome yet illegal job did not pan out but it does get my novel gears turning… nobody better steal my idea…

During this time he’d write his friend, quote, Bill, you don’t know what you’re missing. This life is the only one, and the only disagreeable thing has been the financial uncertainty. End quote. I could not agree more. I am begging… is anyone listening willing to pay me to wander, photograph, and write about the American Southwest?! Or willing to sponsor this humble little podcast?! Stupid money… always getting in the way of fulfilling my dream of being a desert rat artist bum…

Everett then had a Christmas card scheme with a local Arizona shopkeeper where he sent drawings home to his mom who made a block print and printed a thousand of ‘em but when she sent them to Everett he only complained at the quality! It must have cost a fortune for her to do all of that at a time when the family was pinching pennies… along with the rest of the nation. In the end he probably sold only a handful of these cards. But, I guess, at least he tried.

By now he’d been out for 10 months. Essentially ever since he graduated high school. He’d sold some works and he’d met artists who taught him some tips about his budding craft but his dreams of making it as a Vagabond Artist hadn’t panned out yet. He’d write Bill around this time and say, quote,

I am confident that I can make something of my work--the problem is how to keep alive until I have succeeded in a larger measure. My plan is to ramble about the Southwest with donkeys for a couple of years more, gathering plenty of material and mastering water color technique then to get some windfall so I can work with oils and do things on a larger scale, perfect my field studies, and then do something with what I have. End quote.

I love that he’s got big dreams and goals.

By the end of November though, the steam and the money had run out. He was ready to go home. He asked Bill if he’d come pick him up in exchange for his everlasting gratitude and respect and his best painting. But… Bill declined. This will set the precedent of Bill letting Everett down. Actually, that precedent may have already been set because it seems that Bill also refused to meet him in the wilderness as they had planned. AND he apparently bailed on a Christmas trip a year prior. Everett’s patience with bill was waning. But it was still saintly patience, really.

Speaking of saintly patience, Everett’s parents saintly patience seems to have ran out. And he may have sensed it. For by the end of December, Everett had hitchhiked back to LA. He may have done so also on account of the approaching winter. A season that can be more punishing than summer, even in the desert.

Everett had left his burros, which he had named Cynthia and Percival in Roosevelt, Arizona with a local Apache man who promised to winter them warmly. But Everett did bring Curly, the white rezdog from up north, he brought him home to LA with him.

On canyon trails when warm night winds blow

Blowing and sighing gently through the star-tipped pines,

Musing, I walked behind my placid burros

While water rushed and broke on painted rocks below.

Opening of a December 13th, 1931 letter to Waldo. The last paragraph of the letter reads:

Winter has set in. For days the sky wept. Drizzles and drenching downpours were accompanied by lightning and rainbows. Love from Everett.

That is where I will end this first part of the tale of Everett Ruess. I hadn’t planned on it, actually, but this is a perfect spot. In the next episode he will leave LA after only three months at home and adventure right back out to the American Southwest… He’ll also head to the California Sierras again and San Francisco where he will continue to meet and rub shoulders with artists. His adventure, although, he disappears at 20, is only just beginning.

Putting Everett Ruess to Rest: Perhaps a Final Conclusion to a 1934 Desert Mystery, By Andrew Gulliford Fort Lewis College

Mormon Country by Wallace Stegner

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty by W.L. Rusho

Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer by David Roberts