Mystery of Everett Ruess: Southern Utah's Dreaming Vagabond

“As to when I shall revisit 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 street car, and the star-sprinkled sky to the 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. Do you blame me then for staying here where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?” ~Everett Ruess, 1934

Like many young people before and after him, Everett Ruess was a seeker, a dreamer, restless of foot and heart. He craved community, sought answers, and longed for beauty amidst the ugly troubles of life. Unlike most, however, he set off on arduous, solitary journeys into the Southern Utah wilderness in search of those elusive truths. With a ferocious creative output, he dispatched letters, poems, short stories, impressive woodblock carvings, and angst-filled journal entries that detailed his wanderings and his discoveries.

In November 1934, Everett mysteriously vanished without a trace outside Escalante, UT. He was 20 years old when the pristine yet utterly unforgiving wildlands swallowed him whole. In one fell swoop, Everett Ruess emerged as a symbol for many generations to come. His name became intertwined with the unfulfilled longings of youth. His was the classic tale of initiation into adulthood—yet one gone somehow awry, cut short by events still unknown to this day. Despite copious amounts of speculation, scientific analysis, and retracings of his very boot steps, it is likely that no one now alive knows with precise certainty exactly what happened to the young explorer over 75 years ago.

The product of an artistic, genteel family, Everett was raised in Los Angeles. Even though his family escaped the worst ravages of the Great Depression, for Everett something was still missing and unfulfilled. Starting at 16, he took breaks from his upbringing via long jaunts along the California coast, armed only with his feet, smile, and the eye of a budding visionary. In 1931 he first ventured into the heart of Utah and began an intense love affair with its arid yet captivating geography. His letters to family and friends detail a soul-shaking connection with the desolate high desert canyons and mesa tops. In those days, the “Four

 Photo by Dorothea Lange

Corners” area had yet to become wildly mythologized and popular with tourists, so he often had a vast wilderness playground virtually to himself.

Although a recluse by necessity during his long trips into the backcountry, Everett seemed to truly enjoy the company of others. Questing for genuine community made up an integral part of his wanderings, as evidenced by his acquaintanceships with people as varied as renowned artists Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Maynard Dixon; esteemed Southwestern archaeologist John Wetherill; numerous traders, cowboys, wanderers; chief rangers of national parks such as Zion; and the inhabitants of all the small settlements through which he passed. Escalante was the last-known town through which Everett traveled before he disappeared.

 1934 Escalante was home to cowboys, cattle rustlers, Mormon ranchers, traders, and probably the occasional wanderer such as Everett. A tight-knit local community, Escalante sometimes viewed visitors with a skeptical eye. Everett, however, had either a natural charm or a young person's obliviousness to his ham-handed overtures at creating new friends. According to his missives, he thought himself welcomed into the bosom of this insular area. The last letter he sent to his parents, dated November 1934, stated “I have had plenty of fun with the boys of this town, riding horses, hunting for arrowheads, and the like....Tonight I have been sitting by the fire with two of my friends.”

Photo courtesy of Julie Trevelyan

Everett's family did not realize anything was amiss until February 1935, when a packet of letters they sent to their itinerant son was returned to sender. Alarmed, they engaged searchers to comb the vast area in which Everett was last seen, known today as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. His two burros, faithful companions and pack animals, were discovered penned up in remote Davis Canyon, far down Hole-in-the-Rock Road near Escalante. But aside from a few scattered belongings discovered over the years, no other physical trace of Everett was found. The passionate young adventurer had vanished into the “red rocks and sandy deserts...like coming home again.”

Theories cropped up like weeds over the ensuing decades: Everett drowned in the Colorado River. He drowned in a flash flood. He fell from one of the ancient, precariously located Fremont or Anasazi dwellings he couldn't resist exploring. He stumbled upon a cattle rustling operation and was shot. He wooed a Mormon girl and was shot by an irate father. He wooed a Navajo girl and assimilated himself entirely into their culture. He went mad from solitude and mental instability and killed himself. He decided to leave civilization forever and live off the land like a wild man. Whatever the truth, a public hungry for romantic adventure stories would create its own mythology around Everett’s disappearance and embellish to its heart's content. There is little surprise legends sprang up around a young man who uttered such giddy proclamations as “I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty.”

But it seemed the mystery of Everett's disappearance was never to be solved.

Then, in spring 2009, National Geographic Adventure Magazine broke a major story: the remains of Everett Ruess had at long last been found. Nestled under rocks on Comb Ridge, about 80 miles east of Davis Canyon, the fragile old bones were carefully removed, sent to a Colorado lab for analysis, and declared positively to be those of Ruess. At last, an answer. Yet almost immediately upon publication, naysayers piped up their doubts. How did he get there? Was it really the remains of a white man in that predominantly Native American-inhabited area? (The Navajo Times also ran a story that lends even more nuanced insight.) Why would he have gone east when he clearly told his family that he was heading south from Escalante? The discovery of the bones led to even more fruitless questions and fancies about Everett's final days. A groundswell of doubt marred the discovery.

Ultimately, the skeptics proved right. A second analysis by a lab more familiar with techniques used to properly identify old bones that had been preserved in very arid environments found a much greater likelihood that they belonged to a Navajo. Comb Ridge lies less than a mile from the border of the Navajo Nation.

So what really happened to Everett Ruess? Will anyone ever know? If anyone still alive does know, he or she isn't telling. The lure of Everett's short, well-documented life remains forever linked to the awesome magnitude of southern Utah. Today, there are websites, film documentaries, art festivals, lithograph reproductions, Everett Ruess Vagabond Pale Ale beer, a song, and even a partial dinosaur skeleton uncovered earlier this year, Seitaad ruessi, all dedicated to his memory and the lasting questions about the end of his journey.

It seems that many actually prefer the mystery to linger. In this way, modern seekers can each fashion their own highly personal conclusions to a tale that symbolizes individual wild journeys into the hopeful unknown. The truth to his ending may stay forever obscured by history's shadows. Yet Everett's story lives on, testament to the youthful heart in every adventurer that is filled with longing for the wilderness.

 

                                             Photo courtesy of Julie Trevelyan

“Often, alone in an endless open desert, I find it hard to believe that the rest of the world exists.”

~ Everett Ruess

Upcoming Event:

Everett Ruess Days: Escalante Canyons Working Art Festival in Escalante, UT

http://www.everettruessdays.org/

September 24-25 2010

Websites:

Lost Forever: Everett Ruess documentary

http://www.everettruessmovie.com/

Everett Ruess.net

http://www.everettruess.net/

Esca-Latte Internet Café & Pizza Parlor in Escalante, UT (where you can find home-brewed Everett Ruess Vagabond Pale Ale)

http://www.escalanteoutfitters.com/?id=10465

 

Julie is a writer, wilderness wanderer, yogini, and many other things. She has been guiding people in the beautiful yet demanding southern Utah wilderness since 1999. If you ask, she can teach you how to build a fire with a couple sticks, some string, & a rock. Really. Check out her blog at http://www.red-rock-writer.blogspot.com/

Bibliography:

Bergera, Gary James, Editor. On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2000.

O'Grady, John P. Pilgrims to the Wild. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993.

Rusho, W.L. Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1983.

Rusho, W.L. The Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1998.

Taylor, Mark A. Sandstone Sunsets: In Search of Everett Ruess. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 1997.

Books Containing References to Everett Ruess:

Grant, Richard. American Nomads: Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders. New York City: Grove Press, 2003.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York City; Villard, 1996.

Probasco, Christian. Highway 12. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005.

NatGeo article:

http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/04/everett-ruess/david-robe...