The Cult of Everett Ruess: Beauty Has Always Been My God

This is part 3 of the 4 part series over our adventurer and vagabond for beauty, that is Everett Ruess. If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, I suggest you do so before the intro music starts. And if you haven’t done so already, a nice 5 star review and some kind words on your app of choice would be very appreciated. Big things are coming for our humble Southwest podcast…

When last we discussed Everett, he had just left San Francisco after trying to make it as an artist and after his Sierra Nevada adventure. He didn’t spend much time at home in Hollywood though, before he was already rip roaring and ready to get back on the lone trail in the four corners.

By April of 1934, Everett was 20, his bags were packed, and he was about to embark on his grandest adventure so far. To begin, he hopped in a friend’s car to San Bernardino where his older brother Waldo picked him up and the two headed to the American Southwest. But not before Everett said goodbye to his parents… unbeknownst to any of them, it was to be their last goodbye. For this grand trip would be his last adventure.

There is one anecdote from his month in LA that I feel I should comment on before we jump into his final adventure. He would write Waldo of what he was up to and at one point he tells him that he had attended a Young Communist League demonstration, I know, I know, but it was the 30s, during the Great Depression, and I forgive him. He doesn’t buy into the evil propaganda anyways, he writes. But while he was at this meeting, the cops show up and break it and they tear up the posters that read we can’t eat battleships, good point. War is stupid, I’ll give the commies that. But Everett writes how the cops kicked the girls in the legs and chased the boys with clubs down the street. He’d finish this story by writing quote, such are free speech and free assemblage in America. End quote. Something to ponder on 90 years later. Except it now appears to be opposite. Time indeed does seem to be a flat circle as Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence suggests.

After that letter, Waldo would agree to pick up Everett and take him to the American Southwest, despite Waldo’s fears of his car not being able to make the trip. Everett would reassure him and say, no it totally can make it. The worst I’ve seen is a flat tire and an empty gas tank… which, is a far cry from telling his parents not to pick him up because their car wouldn’t make it! Remember that? Way back when? Well Waldo’s fears were abated and the two would arrive in Kayenta, that Navajo town just south of monument valley, on April 14th of 1934. Waldo would leave shortly after they arrived not knowing he would never see Everett again. Everett would write his parents about their adventure, quote, Waldo enjoyed his part of the trip very much, I think. I was sorry I could not show him more of the country. End quote.

After Waldo departed, E would walk 18 miles and buy himself two burros he’d name Leopard and Cockleburrs. He’d write, the country here is all that I could wish it to be, and I am happy again. End quote. He and that land were becoming inseparable. I know the feeling.

He would indeed keep a journal on this trip but… it’s with him somewheres out in the desert. Or at the bottom of a river or… the abomination that is lake Powell. Or maybe the aliens that abducted him took the journal with them. Or a local rancher’s descendants still have it tucked away somewhere…

So, just like way back in 1930 and 1931, all we really have of his writings are the letters he sent home and to friends. And it’s through those letters that we’re able to piece together his last remaining months on this last grand adventure.

Roberts writes of these letters that they are, quote, strikingly different from the ones he mailed to family and friends from the Sierra the previous year. They amount, in fact, to a kind of high-wire act, for as never before, in 1934 Everett strove to match the beauty of the landscape with beautiful, crafted prose. The letters neglect the homely but concrete detail of daily life in favor of transcendent statements of spiritual belief, distilling the hard-won insights he had gleaned from his relentless vagabondage since the age of sixteen. End quote.

Like most of his adventures, it started out with a righteous mishap. But as he wrote to a mrs Emily Ormand, that’s what it was all about. He’d write to her on May 2nd from Kayenta, and no, I don’t know who she is, but he’d write, quote:

Vilhalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, says that adventures are a sign of unpreparedness and incompetence. I believe he is talking of misadventure, but he continues: I think he is largely right, nevertheless I like adventure and enjoy taking chances when skill and fortitude play a part. If we never had any adventures, we would never know what stuff was in us. End quote.

Right after he began this final adventure, he does in fact get to see what kind of stuff is in him as he was hit by a raging sandstorm that covered his tracks in the pink monument valley sand and made the going rather tough. After it passed, he would stop and paint Agathla peak. It is rather worthy of painting, or as he put it, quote, it is a splendid rock, with spires and pinnacles of black volcanic stone. End quote. He’d then look for an old hogan another 5 or 6 miles away that he knew of to stay the night in but once it was dark, both of his burros quote bolted into the night. It was probably Leopard’s idea, but Cockleburs took the cue instantly, and they were off like a shot. End quote.

Despite hearing the saddle bags slapping against their beastly hides while he chased them down, his lungs afire, Everett could not catch them. And eventually he lost the trail entirely.

With no other choice, Everett found the sand covered road from Monument Valley to Kayenta and took it into town. He would write of the affair, quote:

I started to walk there to ask help of my Mormon friend, but a mile away, I turned about and went back. It was not that I couldn't stand being laughed at by the whole town, for it really was funny, and such things don't bother me. But it would be asking too much of the Mormon, and anyway, for a long time I had flattered myself that I could "take it," and always had, without complaint, so I thought this was a good time to show myself. End quote. Good on him!

Back near the hogan he was gonna use in the first place, he found two blankets that had been snagged by the fleeing burros. He then made a fire, and he slept. To his bad luck though… in the morning, it would rain on him. Yes. Rain. In the desert at monument valley. Just his luck.

Everett would set out soon after sunrise to look for his two animals in the rain, which… he would thankfully find.

He’d write of them that Cockleburs was, quote, standing stock still, looking very foolish. Leopard was nearby, equally sheepish, his saddle under him, but unhurt. End quote.

In the end, all of his missing gear and tools were found and the worst of the bad luck had been avoided. He would return to the Hogan with the two burros and all his stuff and he would get a blazing fire going and he would feel, quote, perfectly delighted with everything. End quote.

Two weeks went by and Everett wrote Waldo that quote, I had many other thrills when I trusted my life to crumbling sandstone and angles little short of the perpendicular, in the search for waterholes and cliff dwellings. Often I was surprised myself when I came out alive and on top. End quote. It seems, the man was tempting fate at the regular nowadays… He would write something similar but better to a friend named Emily Ormond. Roberts elaborates further when he writes, quote, He repeated the formula almost verbatim to Emily Ormond, but added, in his characteristic perfect tense, a grandiloquent boast that has nonetheless become one of Everett's signature mottos: Now quoting Everett: I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear. End all quotes.

What a glorious line. I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear. But not one that I hope he truly felt…

Although, his careless recklessness, this tempting of fate where he comes out, quote, alive and on top… he was possibly starting to think he would always come out alive and on top. He would write to Bill around this time period, quote:

I have the devil's own conception of a perfect time; adventure seems to beset me on all quarters without my even searching for it. End quote. What another banger of a line… seriously. [repeat it]

In the same letter to Bill, he’d say further:

And I'm lucky too, or have been. Time and again, my life or all my possessions have swung on the far side of the balance, and always thus far I've come out on top and unharmed, even toughened by the chances I've taken. End quote.

To another friend around this same exact time period, an Edward Gardner, Everett would write, quote:

Day before yesterday I narrowly escaped being gored to death by a wild bull, and there was a harrowing sequel when he discovered my camp that night, somewhile between midnight and dawn. Yesterday I did some miraculous climbing on a nearly vertical cliff, and escaped unscathed, too. One way and another, I have been flirting pretty heavily with Death, the old clown. End quote.

I wish we had more on this run in with the bull but alas, that is all the harrowing hints we have. It really does seem that Everett was truly tempting fate and laughing in the face of death on this last adventure of his… even more so than on his previous ones. Last adventure being the key words here. And I don't think he would learn to be smarter, anytime soon. As a matter of fact, as we’ll read about, he is only going to get more reckless.

Everett wouldn’t spend long at Monument Valley and by May 5th, he was Southeast of Kayenta at a place known as Chilchinbito. He told his parents it’s Navajo for bitter water. I couldn’t find out if that was true or not. As of today, the town, Chilchinbito, it has the world’s largest Navajo rug. There, Everett met a Hispanic trader named Jose Garcia. The two would become instant friends. [did we just become best friends?! Yep!]

This is what he would write about the Spaniard, quote:

When I came here last night, Jose's kindness and courtesy almost brought tears to my eyes, for there is something very fine about him, and I have not met many of his kind in this country. His father, a wizened old pioneer of the Spaniards, is here too. They are good, simple people without sophistication, living happily in this at present untroubled part of the world. Jose speaks four languages English, Spanish, Navajo, and Zuni. End quote.

With this new friendship kicking off, Everett offered to paint a triple tower of rock known as the Three Fingers for Garcia. And offering someone a free piece of art… that is the mark of a true friendship.

While hanging out in the little town and painting for his new friend, Everett would comment on some of the nice sights he would see, namely, the quote, handsome, lithe young girls among the Navajos. End quote.

Interestingly, there is a picture of Everett that has survived the test of time, well there are a few, but in this one in particular, he is standing next to a Navajo Hogan and a presumably Navajo woman who was holding a baby and the caption of the photograph says, quote, My Navajo Wife. End quote.

Since it doesn’t appear he wrote about her, she is most likely just an acquaintance and the photograph was for fun. But… later speculation will incorporate this photo and its implications into his disappearance.

Unfortunately, Everett’s new Spanish best friend, Jose Garcia, out of the blue, in a freak accident… was killed when he was riding on the back of a fully loaded truck. It seems, a wheel came off of the truck, which caused the truck to topple, and when it fell over, and rolled, the entire load… crushed him. He was squarshed. A horrifying end.

As is the norm when these things happen, Everett reached out to someone he felt a real connection with. He would write Frances after the accident and he would inform her of the death of his friend… but he would also comment on he and Frances’ brief intimacy. He wrote:

I do not know if I shall ever return to the cities again, but I cannot complain that I found them empty of beauty. End quote.

After all that talk of hating the city… he found the one thing that could make him feel compelled to enjoy them. I mean… I hated southern California but I live here because I deeply love my wife so…

After saying that to Frances though, about finding them filled with beauty because of her, in the very next line, that’s when he says the haunting quote that makes me shudder at Everett’s possible end… I’ll repeat it cause it’s something. I’ll repeat it at the end too, no doubt.

I was sorry, though, that our intimacy, like many things that are and will be, had to die with a dying fall. End quote.

He then goes on to tell her about the rest of his time in the American Southwest so far, including, quote, There has been deep peace, vast calm and fury, strange comradeships and intimacies, and many times my life and all my possessions have tottered on the far side of the balance. End quote.

He’s really leaving less and less doubt about his ultimate fate…

He closes the letter to her with, quote, But much as I love people, the most important thing to me is still the nearly unbearable beauty of what I see. I won't wish that you could see it, for you might not find it easy to bear either, but yet I do sincerely wish for you at least a little of the impossible.

Love, from Everett. End quote.

After he sent off these letters he wrote one more to Bill which started, quote, once more I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty. End quote. It reminds me of another of his writings, which is in his journal and which says, quote: I have been filled for three days with a dreamy intoxication from the serene beauty and perfect solitude. End quote.

Everett would then set out on an epic 170 mile loop from Chilchinbeto to Chinle and Canyon de Chelly, and then to the Lukachukais and the Carrizos mountains. The Lukachukais mountains are just southwest of the four corners in northern Arizona in Navajo land. These mountains are filled with ruins, red rocks, and uranium ore. You’ll need a Navajo permit to explore the area today.

I have only ever driven through these mountains, on that harrowing snow filled night in April of 2017 that I described in the last episode but the last time I drove near them, on the eastern side, on highway 491, I told my wife, I must explore that wilderness. She agreed, yes yes, one day.

The last time I was there though, I truly feared my truck would get stuck in a creek of melting snow when I floored the peddle, dipped violently down the sand embankment, splashed and crashed and bumped through the muddy snow melt creek before barely making it blindly back up the other side, hoping all the while I wouldn’t hit a tree on account of the road turning abruptly on the far side… My windshield and my headlights were coated and darkened as my spinning tires fish tailed me left and right through the moonlit night. But… I came to a stop, clear and safe on the far side of the water flow. I leapt out the car, roared happily into the night and thanked my lucky stars… I Indian and rebel yelled and hooped and hollared and fired a few shots into the air. The gunpowder and my breath lingered around on account of the cold alpine air and the total stillness of the windless night.

Little did I know, it wasn’t the last water crossing I would be doing in that isolated mountain range on the border of Arizona and New Mexico…

Again, I made it down… only to not see Spider Rock. I swear, I’m still kicking myself for that.

During this stint though, Everett, after crossing the Canyons and the Lukachukais, he’d head to the Carrizos, which are small circular volcanic mountains just north of the Lukachukais. I’ve never been to these mountains, nor have I ever really thought of them. Ive driven by them but they didn’t register. But now I am curious to explore them as well. Roberts says they are quote, still today one of the most unfrequented regions in all the southwest. End quote. Obviously, now I must go. Both are part of the larger Chuska mountains. A place the Chacoans got over half of their timber from, especially after 1050.

Since, like Everett, the journal for this seven month adventure, has been lost, and since in his letters he grew less and less detailed of the day by day and more philosophical and grandiose, we are left with only gasps and hints at what happened to him personally and physically.

But in a long letter that Bud Rusho described as being one of the, quote, most sensitive, image filled letters that Everett ever wrote, end quote, in that letter, Everett describes to Frances, the mysterious lover girl, Everett describes an amazing scene that, although long, is absolutely beautiful and a scene that transports the reader directly to the landscape of that beautiful story:

So the other night at twilight, unwilling to drown my consciousness in slumber, and dissatisfied with life, I packed and saddled my burros, and left my camp by a rushing stream at the edge of the desert.

The half moon had an orange glow as I rode on the trail up the mountains. Behind us, thunder boomed on the open desert, and black clouds spread. Moaning winds swept down the canyon, bending the tops of the tall pines and firs, and clouds hid the moon. Silently old Cockleburrs, my saddle burro, carried me upward through the night, and Leopard followed noiselessly with the pack. Grotesque shapes of trees reared themselves against the darkening sky, and disappeared into blackness as the trail turned.

For a while the northerly sky was clear, and stars shone brilliantly through the pine boughs. Then darkness closed upon us, only to be rent by livid flashes of lightning, and thunder that seemed to shake the earth. The wind blew no longer and we traveled in an ominous, murky calm, occasionally slashed with lightning. Finally the clouds broke, and rain spattered down as I put on my slicker. We halted under a tall pine, and my sombrero sheltered the glow of a cigarette. The burros stood motionless with heads down and water dripping off their ears. In half an hour the rain was over and the skies cleared. By moonlight we climbed to the rim of the mountain and looked over vast silent stretches of desert. Miles away was the dim hulk of Shiprock-a ghostly galleon in a sea of sand.

We turned northward on the nearly level top of the mountain, and winding through glades of aspen we came to three peaceful lakes, gleaming silver in the moonlight. Under a clump of low sprawling oaks we stopped, and there I unpacked, turning the burros out to graze on the tall meadow grass.

In the afternoon I went for a long leisurely ride on Leopard, skirting the edge of the mountain, riding through thickets of rustling aspen, past dark, mysterious lakes, quiet and lonely in the afternoon silence.

Two friendly horses were belly deep in a pond, swishing their tails and placidly chewing rushes and swamp grass. Flowers nodded in the breeze and wild ducks honked on the lakes. No human being came to disturb the brooding silence of the mountain.

Last night I came down the mountain, and as the sunset glow faded it was weird to see the orange moon seemingly falling down, down, through the pine boughs as I descended.

End quote.

I apologize… I have to take a breather after that… I mean… Doesn’t this writing make you want to go out and explore and find peace and see storms and watch wild flowers sway in the breeze and hear the thunder or the wind through the trees. To watch the light flicker off a dark secret lake in the high desert mountains where few follow the lack of a trail by only the dim moonlight.

Author John Nichols, in the intro to A Vagabond for Beauty writes of Everett, quote, ultimately, it was his life that was his greatest work of art. End quote. He couldn’t be more correct. And part of that is because of his greed for life, as Frances accused him of having. But as Everett himself said, quote, I… don't like to let opportunities for living slip by ungrasped. End quote… amen partner.

No more letters to Frances have emerged in the record.

Here are some of his other writings from that time period of May, 1934:

Then in wild, whirling fury, the storm rises, boiling and seething until with a furious upward rush, the whole horizon is submerged, and it fills the air with swirling, stinging, blinding snow. With this black dawn I perish.

I am drunk with a searing intoxication that liquor could never bring- drunk with the fiery elixir of beauty.

I am condemned to feel the withering fire of beauty pouring into me. I am condemned to the need of putting this fire outside myself and spreading it somewhere, somehow, and I am torn by the knowledge that what I have felt cannot be given to another. End quote.

If only I could have told him that you truly can share it with another.

By the middle of June, Everett was back in Kayenta where he wrote that he would soon be heading off towards Navajo Mountain. Ah, Navajo Mountain, that place that seems so visible from so many different spots. I talked about it briefly in the series over D&E but I’ll briefly talk about it again, or rather I’ll let Roberts sum it up:

Rising to a summit of 10,388 feet just north of the Arizona-Utah border, Navajo Mountain has long been a sacred location for the Diné. It stands, moreover, in what is still today one of the most remote regions of the Southwest. The sharp, twisting canyons that crease the mountain's western and northern flanks are among the ruggedest in the United States. Near the mouth of one of those tributaries of the Colorado River, hidden in a bend of sandstone, looms Rainbow Bridge, the largest natural geological span in the world. End quote. He also says of it in his D&E book, that the mountain is, quote, one of the lordliest landmarks in the four corners region. End quote.

Yet again, I have to mention John Wetherill, for he guided the first party of whites to the massive Rainbow Arch in 1909. He also built the Bridge Trail which traverses the northern slopes of that sacred Navajo Mountain. Roberts describes it as, quote, one of the most cunning horse packing routes in the country which traverses miles of slick rock slabs. End quote. Some of the tourists that John Wetherill guided to the Bridge were Teddy Roosevelt, and the future episode star and historical best seller and all around fascinating guy, Zane Grey. My wife and I are currently collecting all of his books, although she’s the one doing all the reading of them. I need to get on it. I think we have 18 of them. I know we do, I just paused and counted.

So Everett’s plan was to go up to Monument Valley and then to the San Juan river before turning due west, climbing no man’s Mesa, and approaching the mountain from that very rough and rugged seldom trekked landscape. A landscape off limits to us these days, frustratingly so. Although, you may be able to travel if you have a permit…

In a letter Everett wrote to his buddy who continually stands him up, Bill, he wrote, quote, often, alone in an endless open desert, I find it hard to believe that the rest of the world exists. End quote. That’s part of the draw of being there. So you can forget about the rest of the world. I just wish cell service wasn’t creeping into every part of the wilderness. Soon there will be nowhere to hide and when you look up in the night sky, all you’ll see are satellites buzzing across slowly, obscuring the heavens.

In that letter, Everett also said he had no desire to be a famous artist or writer any longer… Now, that may be on account of his failings in San Francisco. Or the desert just brings this feeling out of him. Hopefully it was nothing sinister he was admitting. He’d also rail against the white traders of the region who seemingly want nothing more than money. He would also say one of his most oft quoted lines when he wrote, quote, beauty has always been my god. End quote. It is necessary scripture mastery for the cult members today.

While he was in Kayenta in between excursions, he also remarked in a letter that there was an archaeological dig in town and some of the people he met turned out to be pretty decent, likable, and intelligent young fellows.

He would leave for Navajo Mountain on June 17th.

Only two letters and just pieces of a third letter exists from this adventure to that remote region. One of those letters was to Bill and in it, he describes a near disastrous accident while ascending 2,000 feet onto No Man’s Mesa from the San Juan River:

Near the rim it was just a scramble, and leopard, whom I was packing, in attempting to claw his way over a steep place, lost his balance and fell over backwards. He turned two backward somersaults and a side roll, landing with his feet waving, about six inches from the yawning gulf. I pulled him to his feet. He was a bit groggy at first; he had lost a little fur, and the pack was scratched. End quote.

That would be a horrifying heart-stopping sight to see.

From there he somehow made it past Nokai and Paiute Canyons, places still barely traveled today. But no word survives of this daring jaunt that is filled with canyons where Navajos hid from Spaniards and Americans alike.

Everett did make it to the Navajo Mountain though. At 8,700 feet up at a place known as war god spring. In that one letter to Bill, he would write a few things I absolutely love:

The wind is in the pine trees; what other sound is like it!

He’s right, it’s one of my favorite sounds. He also writes:

The beauty of this place is perfect of its kind; I could ask for nothing more. A little spring trickles down under aspens and white fir. By day the marshy hollow is aswarm with gorgeous butterflies. ... There are a hundred delightful places to sit and dream; friendly rocks to lean against- springy beds of pine needles to lie on and look up at the sky or the tall smooth tree trunks, with spirals of branches and their tufted foliage. End quote.

This was late June, the 29th to be exact, so monsoon season hadn't quite started so it was very difficult for him to get water but he apparently never went more than two days without it. That’s some tough living. Two days is still a long time for us water drinkers of the 21st century. I’m still not convinced they don’t put something nefarious in our water…

He would go on to write:

The perfection of this place is one reason why I distrust ever returning to the cities. Here I wander in beauty and perfection.

There one walks in the midst of ugliness and mistakes... Here I take my belongings with me. The picturesque gear of packing, and my gorgeous Navajo saddle blankets make a place of my own. But when I go, I leave no trace. End quote.

I couldn’t really find any hard evidence for this but I would not be surprised if this exact quote is the origin of the Leave No Trace that the NPS and BLM and everyone uses today. Maybe not, but…

The next day, June 30th, 1934, Everett wrote to his parents. He was only one day away from rainbow bridge.

The country between here and the San Juan and Colorado rivers and beyond them is as rough and impenetrable a territory as I have ever seen. Thousands of domes and towers of sandstone lift their rounded pink tops from blue and purple shadows. To the east, great canyons seam the desert, cutting vermilion gashes through the gray-green of the sage-topped mesas. End quote.

Three weeks after Everett had left, he was back in Kayenta and now… he was working for that archaeological crew! I’m beginning to see Everett as the 1930s version of Forest Gump. For this archaeological expedition, he was officially their cook and packer. But unofficially, he was there to learn and admire… and climb and paint.

Roberts writes of this archaeological dig:

The team outfitting in Kayenta was part of a massive, multi-year project called the Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition. Between 1933 and 1938, researchers undertook an extensive survey of Anasazi ruins ranging (as the title indicates) from Monument Valley through the Tsegi Canyon system, and across the Rainbow Plateau to Rainbow Bridge all in country that was part of the Navajo reservation. The rationale for the project, run by the National Park Service, was to lay the groundwork for a new national park encompassing those scenic and cultural wonders. Had such a park come into existence, it would have torn out of the reservation some three thousand square miles, or about one-eighth of its total area. End quote.

Thank goodness that never happened! Besides the loss to the Navajos of land they call theirs, think of the trails and tourists and traffic and trash and roads! All the roads. And posters and books and cheap souvenirs made overseas… makes me shudder. It would have been a tragedy. Thankfully, only Rainbow bridge and Navajo national monuments came out of it and Navajo is barely visited and Rainbow Bridge I believe is only accessible by boat. Unless you have a permit from the Navajo Nation.

For this dig, Everett signed onto the 38 year old Lyndon Hargrove’s team, but, Lyndon’s boss was H Claiborne Clay Lockett. The director of it all was Ansel Hall who was a Park Service archaeologist. Ansel had got his start at Yosemite as Chief Naturalist and and he spent almost all of his time before and after this in California.

Everett called Hargrave a, quote, grizzled young chap of 28, widely experienced and a magnificent humorist. He is an ethnologist and something of an artist as well. End quote. Ben Wetherill, John Wetherill’s son was also on the team! I do promise a John Wetherill Episode in the future. Probably after I re-examine the Ancient Ones again. John though, was missing an eye from a horse kicking accident, although that wouldn’t stop him from being a lifelong adventurer. He also was prone to melancholic mood swings, much like our Everett.

Instead of paraphrasing and combining sources here, I’ll let Roberts tell the story of the dig:

In July 1934, Lockett's team had returned to Kayenta from the Tsegi Canyon system to resupply before tackling a remote cliff site they had discovered earlier in the summer. In Dowozhiebito Canyon, six hundred feet above a well-known Anasazi ruin called Twin Caves Pueblo, just beneath the rim of Skeleton Mesa, the team had found a Basketmaker burial cave. (The Basketmakers were the phase of Anasazi before AD 750, who built not masoned roomblocks such as their descendants specialized in, but underground pithouses and slab-lined storage cists.) "Its discovery," as Lockett later wrote of the new ruin, "was the result of a Sunday climb by some of the more daring members of the Expedition who worked out two routes up the cliff to the cave. The more hazardous parts of both routes were found to have hand- and toeholds pecked into the cliff, evidence that the trails were used in prehistoric times. End quote.

The Tsegi Canyon System, the same as Navajo National monument and betatakin and Keet Sill, is filled with ruins and mokwi steps. They named the site Woodchuck Cave. And Everett was one of those daring members that climbed the dangerous cliffside. Although, he wouldn’t actually be listed as a member of the team on the final report published 19 years later of the dig. We do know though, that he was there because of the many photographs of him with Hargrave Such as the one where they’re forcing burros up the scary carved incline that led the pack animals in and out of the canyon system. Lockett would later comment on Everrett’s lack of caring about the archaeology side. But, in letters to his parents and friends he does a very good job talking about the Basketmakers and Pueblo Eras so he must have retained something. Everett would write his parents about this archaeological adventure on July 22nd:

There is a very precarious way down the face of the cliff with footholds in the stone hundreds of years old. The only other way is the horse ladder, six miles up the canyon. We came that way with pack burros, passing the carcass of a horse that slipped. After two days of wandering on the mesa top, in the trackless forests, we crossed the bare rock ledges in a heavy cloudburst and came here. End quote.

He really can paint a picture.

This Woodchuck Cave was estimated by the Archaeologists to have been inhabited during the Basketmaker II period, which is roughly 1200 BC to AD 500. And please, if you’re interested in that, check out my series on the Ancient Ones if you have not already. This team figured it was around AD 200. Maybe, as Everett wrote his parents, 500. The archaeologists then found in Woodchuck Cave, animal bones, pieces of woven baskets, yucca sandals, wooden dice, and the real exciting finds of… the remains, both whole and partial, of 20 individuals. Seven of them were infants. And some of these 20 were mummified from the desert’s aridity.

I can indeed imagine what finding human remains is like since I have been a part of a team which did just that in the Maya Jungles of Belize. It surprisingly wasn’t as creepy as one would think. Although after breaking one of the leg bones on my descent into the man made cave that represented their Xibalba or underworld, after breaking the leg bone, I did contract malaria and almost die.

What WOULD have creeped me out in Belize though, is if the heads of the dead we discovered were missing. You see, in Woodchuck Cave, every adult body was missing its head. They’d been beheaded. The skulls were nowhere to be found.

I personally don’t know what to make of that and neither did these researchers but they did make the comment that the cave had been ransacked later but specifically for bones. Since jewelry and other grave goods hadn’t been taken, but the skulls and some long leg bones had been confiscated… the researchers figured the cave had been very specially looted. I DEFINITELY don’t know what to make of that either. Although, I have my suspicions.

During the dig, Everett was paid only in meals but he seemed to absolutely love the experience. He wrote his parents, quote, we have great fun up here by ourselves, discovering something new every day and looking out over everything from our sheltered cave. End quote. Much like the Anasazi used to do, I imagine… I mean, when they weren’t looking out for the enemy who would come to eat them. Or at least burn them alive.

In 1982, Bud Rusho, the author of, A Vagabond for Beauty, tracked down Lockett, the man in charge of the team, and interviewed him to see if he remembered Everett… Rusho had this to say of the interview, which I hinted at a minute ago:

Everett did not impress Lockett with his interest in archaeology, for Ruess spent most of his free time, which was considerable, in gazing out over the landscape. Lockett noticed also that Everett seemed careless about his safety when climbing around cliffs, citing as an example the time Everett wanted to make a watercolor sketch of rain-spawned waterfalls shooting off from several points. According to Lockett, Everett nearly got himself killed finding a vantage point on the wet slickrock. Needless to say, the rain-streaked watercolor sketch was not one of his better efforts. End quote.

Could this be a clue to his disappearance? These clues seem to be piling up… and we are nearing the end of his exciting life. That being said, Roberts does hint that maybe the sorta painter Lockett, who would eventually abandon archaeology and become the head of the Museum of Northern Arizona’s Gift Shop, maybe Lockett was envious of Everett’s painting ability. Or his ability to just wander around life as he pleases without a care in the world. It could also be that Lockett knows that Everett died and possibly by a fall or some accident so he saw his actions back then as being a prelude to the future… the reality of what happened distorting the reality of what he had witnessed happening… Like, maybe Everett wasn’t as dangerous as Lockett is suggesting but his mind has made it so in the interim after he found out Everett’s fate… Either way, Everett does indeed seem to revel in retelling to his friends and brother how dangerous his adventures can be and were becoming.

Such as the letters he would send shortly after this archaeological dig. Some of the stories he writes state, quote, I have seen more wild country than on any previous trip. I almost lost one burro in the quicksands- he was in up to his neck. End quote. In another he wrote, quote, In my wanderings this year I have taken more chances and had more and wilder adventures than ever before. And what magnificent country I have seen. End quote. With that daringness was coming experiences that truly made him feel alive though. He’d write, quote, Though not all my days are as wild as this, each one holds its surprises, and I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear. End quote. He’d echo that sentiment with an even grander one, quote, I have constantly known beauty so piercing as to be almost unbearable. End quote. I do wish we had that journal…

From this awesome dig I am infinitely jealous of Everett being able to participate in, from The Tsegi Canyons, he travels south towards the Hopi Mesas once again. If you’ll remember, he did visit them in 1931. On that trip he had not been impressed so he wanted a redo. This time, maybe because he had matured a little, on this visit to the Hopis, he’d find it incredibly valuable. He even got to witness some of the Hopi Dances. Including the Snake Dance! What a sight that must have been. Most of these dances are closed to outsiders today, but in the 1930s, the Hopis were much more welcoming to people witnessing the spectacles. Probably because so few came to attend. I imagine they’re closed now because they’d be flooded with tourists who would be clambering to view the dances, filming them, and putting them everywhere on social media. That would be a nightmare. They would need facilities and tickets and parking and… anyways, Everett got to witness some of these in August of 1934, in Hotevilla, which is on the Third Mesa.

Roberts has this to say of his time there in this town of Hotevilla:

Everett did not write home again until August 25. The day before, he had watched the Snake Dance in Hotevilla, a village on the Third Mesa that had been founded in 1907 by a group of natives who had seceded from Oraibi, resolving a religious schism that had threatened to tear apart what is often called the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the United States. Hotevilla was thus one of the more "progressive" Hopi towns, in which Everett seemed to have been openly accepted as a guest. "I have been having great fun with the Hopis here," he wrote his parents, "and just finished a painting of the village. The children were clustered all around me, some helping and some hindering. End all quotes.

Then, he even got to participate in the Antelope Dance at Mishongnovi on Second Mesa! He would write to his parents, quote, My Hopi friends painted me up and had me in their Antelope Dance… I was the only white person there. End quote. That’s quite an honor. I really wish we had his journal.

From Hopi land, Everett was then off to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He’s basically the Energizer Bunny mixed with Forest Gump. Except much less annoying. By September 9th, he was at the Desert View Tower area of that National Park. Unfortunately though, while he was traveling from the Mesas to the Grand Canyon, he was following the Little Colorado River where he lost, Leopard, the burro, with some of his pack. As in Leopard died… but that’s all we know. But he would quickly find a replacement with a bigger burro, he told his parents in a letter. Everett named the Burro Chocolate, but would later change it to the more appropriate, in my opinion, Chocolatero. He would tell his parents that Chocolatero is quote, young, strong and good natured, inexperienced, but bound to learn from his experienced comrade. End quote. The burros really are characters in this story in their own right.

His stay at the Grand Canyon is a complete mystery, but we do know he went and visited Lockett, the very same archaeologist who led the team. Everett would head down to Flagstaff and hang out with Lockett and his wife for a week or so before Lockett’s wife jested that, quote, either he goes, or I do! End quote. That’s on account of E’s voracious appetite apparently. Everett would check out some ruins upon Lockett’s request… command?

While exploring ruins and the San Francisco Peaks he’d write to his mother a beautiful line about the autumn mountains, quote:

The San Francisco Peaks soar high in the afternoon sunlight. The slopes are golden with yellowing aspen. Love from Everett.

He’d quickly return to the Lockett couple giving each of them a book. Lockett would later suggest to Bud Rusho in the 80s that Everett was just a quote unquote free spirit who, quote, loved the Navajos and everybody, loved animals, burros, dogs, kids, and everything. End quote. He’d shortly thereafter return to the Desert View Tower.

And it is here, speaking of the Navajos that he loves so much, here at the Desert View Tower, he received a letter from one of the high school friends he had climbed Mount Whitney in California with. In his response to this friend’s letter, Everett would write:

Evidently you overheard something of my adventures with my friends the Indians. I have a great time with them, especially the Navajos. I once spent three days far up in a desert canyon, assisting and watching a Navajo sing for a sick woman. I drove away countless hordes of evil spirits but after I went away the girl died. The sand paintings, seldom seen by white men, were gorgeous.

In my wanderings this year I have taken more chances and had more wild adventures than ever before. And what magnificent country I have seen-wild, tremendous wasteland stretches, lost mesas, blue mountains rearing upward from the vermilion sands of the desert, canyons five feet wide at the bottom and hundreds of feet deep, cloudbursts roaring down unnamed canyons, and hundreds of houses of the cliff dwellers, abandoned a thousand years ago. End quote.

We have no idea when this event with the sick girl happened or where but it is quite the experience for a white man in the 1930s to have… Or any white man, ever.

Roberts says this of the whole affair:

There is no evidence that Everett ever made up imaginary adventures to regale his friends and family with. He may have exaggerated here and there, but he had no trace of the liar about him, or even of the spinner of tall tales. Yet this Navajo scenario is so unusual that it must bespeak a profound trust that Everett had won from natives somewhere in Arizona. For a traditional family- and any Navajos living "far up in a desert canyon" were traditional--to let an Anglo see the sand paintings that a medicine man would have composed on the ground, and then effaced shortly after they were finished, would have been extraordinary. And to let that Anglo not only attend but participate in a sing intended to cure a fatally ill woman would have been even more extraordinary. End quote.

From the Grand Canyon, Everett went… we don’t know. It’s now mid October so it’s too cold to be hanging out up there. But Bud Rusho in Vagabond guesses that he actually heads north, crosses the Colorado near Lee’s Ferry, that place that almost killed the D&E Expedition, and then makes his way to Bryce Canyon where… it’s also very cold in the winter. Rusho comes to this conclusion on account of Everett’s return address on a letter he sent his parents.

In these letters over the past few months he was actually suggesting and then almost demanding that his parents stop sending money because his paintings were beginning to actually sell. Maybe he would have made it as an artist after all…

Once at Bryce Canyon, he befriended the chief Ranger, a Maurice Cope, so we do know he was there. Everett would write to his mother about the hoodoos and landscape of Bryce and say, quote:

I enjoyed riding down from Bryce Canyon, through the grotesque and colorful formations. Mother would surely enjoy the trees; they are fascinating, especially the twisted little pines and junipers. I had never seen the foxtail pine before. It is a ridiculous caricature of a tree, with gangling limbs and most amusing foxtails lopping about in all directions, with no symmetry at all. There is a natural bridge called Tower Bridge. End quote.

He then suggested that he was going to head towards the most intriguing and one of my favorite places in the world… a place near the Kaipirowitz Plateau… the straight cliffs or Fifty Mile Mountain… Hole in the Rock Road… the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument… although of course it wasn’t that yet.

After leaving Bryce, he sent a long letter to his parents from Tropic, the town just south of the Park and down the mountains. Maurice Cope, the Head Ranger, and a mormon, invited Everett to stay with he, his wife, and his nine children, in that little Mormon farming town. Rusho would comment that with that many kids, Everett could hardly have been a burden.

In this first long letter he wrote about hanging out with the children, scouring the hills for a lost cow, gathering delicious apples from the orchards and having apple fights, no doubt charming the girls, and even going to a Mormon Church. He wrote of the service, quote, it was an interesting experience. End quote.

From Tropic, he no doubt passed through the other Mormon farming communities of Cannonville and then Henrieville, where one must pass through to get to Kodachrome Basin State Park. He was essentially traveling on my favorite road in the whole world, Scenic Byway & State Highway 12. For incredible pictures, videos, and history of the place, head to my website and check out the page. A link will be on the page for this episode.

To counter that possible and easiest of paths that he may have taken, it’s possible he also just wandered through the area north of the highway in the blue hills and rugged terrain… at least that’s what he told his parents. But eventually he would indeed reach Escalante! Or, I apologize, Escalant! As the locals call it. And these locals would be the last people to see Everett alive.

That year, 1934, Escalante had actually had the worst drought in 80 years as well as a successive invasion of grasshoppers and locusts. Actually, locusts are just furious and hungry grasshoppers who change their entire form when supplies are low. Basically the entire species in a given area Hulks out and destroys everything it sees in a frenzy to eat… it’s fascinating and horrifying.

Roberts sums up his stay there nicely when he wrote, quote, In Escalante, Everett camped beside the river, rode horseback with the local boys, hunted for arrowheads with them, and treated the boys to his campfire dinner of venison and potatoes. With the ranchers he discussed his plans for the coming weeks, maintaining his insouciant poise in the face of their skepticism. On his last night in town, he took several of the boys to the movie theater. The next day, as he rode away down the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, he left everyone who had met him in Escalate with indelible memories of his brief visit. End quote.

Roberts actually opens his book with interviews from the locals who were still alive about the last time they saw Everett. Here’s some of the quotes:

Another Escalate native, Melvin Alvey, was twenty-six years old that autumn. Decades later, standing in the front room of the house in which he had lived all his life, Alvey pointed out the window. "I talked to Everett over there in the street as he was leavin' town," he recalled. "He had these two little burros. They didn't stand that high." Alvey flattened his palm four feet above the rug. "I don't think either of 'em had fifty pounds [loaded] on 'em. I looked at those two little burros, goin' out in November. He never even had a tent. Didn't have a good camp stove."

Alvey tilted his head back, summoning memories. "He said he was goin' to go down in the Desert and stay six weeks. Claimed he was goin' to be an artist and write stories. He didn't have enough for one week, let alone six. I said, 'It looks like you're travelin' pretty light.? "Yes,' he said, I don't need much.' End quote.

Another, a six year old Arnold Alvey, Melvin’s nephew said quote:

"He came to our place on the outskirts of town. I was standin' out there by the well, here come this young guy with a coupla little gray burros.

I'd never seen burros before.

"He said, 'Could I water my burros in your trough?' I said, 'Sure.' He had on a floppy hat. A light-colored orange shirt that fluttered in the breeze. He had quite high cheekbones. Quite a nice-lookin' guy.

Said he was goin' down in the Desert to spend the winter. I can see it like it was yesterday."

"Last night he was here," Norm Christensen recounted, "he took some of us kids to the picture show. It was called Death Takes a Holiday. Probably cost ten cents. Everett treated us."

Christensen shook his head. "I still remember him wavin' next morning as he passed on down the river."

"I've thought about him quite a bit over the years," Melvin Alvey confessed. "Whenever it gets cold. To go down there and draw as an artist, in November, when you only got three-four hours of decent weather in the day ... I think he had some plans that nobody knew.” End all quotes.

That line… he had plans that nobody knew, sends chills down my spine.. and kinda chokes me up a bit.

I’m still not sure what happened to Everett but, maybe it’s true and he did have some plans. Maybe the only adventure he could look forward to was the next great one…

In the last letters he wrote home, he included a painting he wanted to hang in his room in LA upon his return. He sent that painting to his parents. He also implored them to please for real, stop sending money orders. And in fact, he sent THEM money in his final letter to them. Ten dollars to be exact. He then told them he was well on his way to making his first million… only if money is a thing in heaven, brother.

Also in that letter, he outlined his future plans, future plans that searchers for the man would dissect in detail for years to come. In this letter he wrote:

I am going south towards the [Colorado] river now, through some rather wild country. I am not sure yet whether I will go across Smokey Mountain to Lee's Ferry and south, or whether I will try and cross the river above the San Juan.

The water is very low this year. I might even come back through Boulder, so I may not have a post office for a couple of months. I am taking an ample supply of food with me. End quote.

He means Boulder Utah, not Colorado. When I told people I eloped in a slot canyon just outside Boulder, nearly everyone assumes I mean the big Colorado City but no, I mean the small and beautiful Mormon ranching and farming town just at the end of the Burr Trail, below the Boulder Mountains of Utah on Highway 12. A place that will forever be special to my wife and I and a place I plan on visiting every year until I join Everett in the next great adventure.

In his letter to Waldo at this time, he actually summarized a lot of what he’d been up to which is great for us. I love this letter so I’m going to quote from it a lot:

Since I left Desert View, a riot of adventures and curious experiences have befallen me. To remember back, I have to think of hundreds of miles of trails, thru deserts and canyons, under vermilion cliffs and thru dense, nearly impenetrable forests. As my mind traverses that distance, it goes thru a long list of personalities too.

But I think I have not written you since I was in the Navajo country, and the strange times I had there and in the sunswept mesas of the Hopis, would stagger me if I tried to convey them. I think there is much in everyones life that no one else can ever understand or appreciate. End quote.

About that last part, he’s absolutely right. There is so much in one’s life that they experience that no one else can understand or appreciate… that’s why I’m glad I have such an amazing adventure partner to always experience them with me now. I think… if he had lived longer, he too would have found himself a perfect adventure partner and he would have raised amazing adventurers himself.

And it seems like he ALMOST… just almost found himself that partner. In that letter to Waldo, Everett says, quote, I stopped a few days in a little Mormon town and indulged myself in family life, church going, and dances. If I had stayed any longer I would have fallen in love with a Mormon girl, but I think it's a good thing I didn't. I've become a little too different from most of the rest of the world. End quote.

We aren’t sure who that Mormon girl is, but the Cult of Everett Ruess sure did try and track her down, to no avail.

But then he goes on to dispute my claim about him being happy with a wife when he wrote, quote, I don't think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax. That is one reason why I do not wish to return to the cities. ..

This has been a full, rich year. I have left no strange or delightful thing undone that I wanted to do. End quote.

Maybe he wasn’t yet mature enough to WANT to share his life with anyone else. I know I wasn’t until I met my wife. At 33 years old.

About the city part though, that I can 100% endorse. Cities are not the way in which humans should live… in my, occasionally wrong opinion. But we cannot really live without them these days either. Maybe he knew he couldn’t hide away forever though… Here’s one more long quote from this letter to Waldo that i love:

As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think.

I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.

A few days ago I rode into the red rocks and sandy desert again, and it was like coming home again. I even met a couple of wandering Navajos, and we stayed up most of the night talking, eating roast mutton with black coffee, and singing songs. The songs of the Navajos express for me something that no other songs do. And now that I know enough of it, it is a real delight to speak in another language.

I have not seen a human being or any wildlife but squirrels or birds for two or three days. Yesterday was a loss as far as travel was concerned for I got into an impasse in the head of a canyon system, and had to return almost to where I started. Last night I camped under tall pines by a stream that flowed under a towering orange yellow cliff, like a wall against the sky, dwarfing the twisted pines on its summit and the tall straight ones that grew part way up the face of it. It was glorious at sunrise. Today I have ridden over miles of rough country, forcing my way through tall sage and stubborn oak brush, and driving the burros down canyon slopes so steep that they could hardly keep from falling.

At last I found a trail and have just left it to make dry camp on what seems like the rim of the world.. End quote. 

He would finish this letter with the haunting sentence that states, quote, It may be a month or two before I have a post office, for I am exploring southward to the Colorado, where no one lives. End quote.

From Escalante, he would travel southeast through what the locals simply called the desert but what is today known as Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It was designated that in 1996 by the then Tyrant or President of the United States and it encompassed a whopping one million 870 thousand acres, which is… quite the enormous land grab by the Federal Government. Although, they did just seize a million acres near the Grand Canyon.. anyways, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument includes plenty of slot canyons, including the one I eloped in, but many others with names like Spooky, Peekaboo, Egypt. There is the absolutely amazing Calf Creek Falls which my wife and I saw in March of 2023. It was quite cold and there was a good bit of snow on top of the canyons which made the falls rather full. We got to enjoy it completely alone for quite some time. There are tons of ruins within the boundaries. Arches, like Grosvenor Arch abound. Natural Bridges, petrified wood, fossils, mummies, cliffs, canyons, backcountry byways, and seemingly infinite Colorado Plateau deserts and creeks and rivers that flow through the area. Plus, it’s got the amazing Hole in the Rock Road which sports even more slot canyons and sandstone landscapes. Including the demonic shaped sandstone spires with gorgeous backdrops that is known as the Devils Garden.

The Hole in the Rock Road is 62 miles one way from Escalante until it hits the Colorado River. It’s called that because Mormon pioneers, looking for a route through this rough and rugged canyon filled terrain in 1879-80, blasted a hole in the rock with dynamite & pick axes before lowering their ox & mule train down to the Colorado River. They then forded across what is now Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and that big ole dirty river. It was quite an engineering marvel.

I absolutely love the road, this spot, and the entire Monument, despite the Empirical overreach by Washington in securing it. Well, this is where Everett was heading. This was the landscape that would swallow him whole forever. Or at least, his physical being. Because the cult has kept him alive ever since.

Roberts says this of Everett’s final known moments:

A week later, more than fifty miles down the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail, Everett bumped into the sheepherders, Addlin Lay and Clayton Porter. For two nights he shared their camp near the head of Soda Gulch. On the morning of November 21, as Everett prepared to push on, the men offered him a quarter of mutton, which he declined, telling them he had plenty of food. They watched as he ambled away to the southeast with his burros, Cockleburrs and Chocolatero.

As far as we know-which is not nearly far enough-that was the last time anyone ever saw Everett Ruess. End quote.

A ballad from the point of view of the two lonely burros, Cockleburs and Chocolatero was written by a family friend and journalist named Paul Wilhelm:

At winter dusk they stand and wait-Two burros by a broken gate ...

The poem traces Everett's journeys through late summer and early autumn of 1934, and finally down the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail.

But that was long before we knew That he corralled the burros two,

Showed them the grass and water near

Enough to keep them for a year.

He'd be away, "O not as long As you could bray," he said, "your song.

Just round the bend, up scarped pine belt, A cliff cave hangs, where Indians dwelt, Now wait for me, I'll not be long.

He swung away and sang his song;

"Say that I starved, was lost

On some cold starlit trail agleam-But that I kept my desert dream!"

And every winter dusk they wait-

Two burros by a broken gate,

For one who was their trail friend

But vanished round the canyon bend

When autumn snows swirled off plateaus

Where Escalante River flows.

After all, the lone trail is best. I hope I'll be able to buy good horses and a better saddle. I'll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.

Everett to Waldo Ruess, 1932.

Neither our story today nor Everett’s story is over though. I didn’t name this episode the Cult of Everett Ruess only to stop recording when he disappears. There’s still a good amount of the mystery and the story left. In the next episode we will follow the heartbreak and questions that plague his disappearance as his family and friends search for him in vain. But the episode is so much more than that. I can’t wait for y’all to hear it as the story of everett ruess is concluded.

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