Everett Ruess: Western Wanderer

From Everett Ruess's journals, age 18-19

Four Corners Region, 1932, packing with two horses

May 29
"I spent half an hour or so map gazing, marking the places I have been to. A piercing blast blew constantly. I read more of [The Magic Mountain]. It is very depressing, about a young German who visits his cousin at a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Alps, and then finds that he too has the disease. What with the wind, it lowered my spirits considerably. I wish I had a companion, some one who was interested in me. I would like to be influenced, taken in hand by some one, but I don't think there is anyone in the world who knows enough to be able to advise me. I can't find my ideal anywhere..."

July 13
"I read some Arabian Nights Tales and ate peanuts."

July 14
"I hobbled the horses and the rain stopped. I set the rice to boiling and finished reading Sinbad the Sailor."

July 20
"After the rice, the cocoa, and the poetry, there were the long, long thoughts. In the dark I bruised my toe very severely so that I could not sleep. Some rodent gnawed holes in my rice sack."

July 22 (horse Jonathan dies)
"We crossed the river a thousand times."

July 29 (horse Nuflo fell into river, contents of packs were soaked-- camera, food, batteries, artwork and other papers)
"The trader was a jovial, but good natured fellow."

"I ate watermelon and peanut butter sandwiches, then turned in. Though I had not let it show, I really felt overwhelmed by what had happened."

1933 (Sequoia National Park and north, packing with two burros):

May 28
"Seven miles up, we turned off, and rode on with a whiskey-packing, verse writing rancher."

May 29
"[Met] Mrs. Blossom and her daughters, Nora and Dot. Mr. Blossom was killed in an auto wreck, and Mrs. Blossom has a wooden leg."

May 31
"I found a blue jay feather which was delicious to my senses."

June 3
"Trout fried in cornmeal with fried cheese sandwiches widened the horizon considerably."

June 8
"I made a prodigious quantity of tomato, peanut butter and rye sandwiches, and ate them while I read Rabelais, concerning the advent of Gargantua."

June 12
"In the city I sometimes wonder if one has a right to be happy when all around is such strife, discord, misery, and undeserved suffering. Here the thought never intrudes itself."

"I drank at a stream, and strode gallantly up, singing some Dvorak melodies, putting all the volume I had into them. The forest boomed with my rollicking song.... I rocked from side to side in the road, spun round in circles, looking up at the stars, and swung exultantly down the white pathway to adventure. Adventure is for the adventurous. I am young and a fool. Forgive me and read on."

June 23
"My shoes are wearing out, and the sole flapped off one. I bound it on neatly with a copper wire. Then I had a cup of tea."

June 25
"The beans made me sick, as they always do. I was a fool to let myself to be persuaded into buying them."

July 4
"She gave me a milk shake, pineapple, for the fourteen cents I had left. I gave her the print of the live oaks. It turned out that I only had 13 cents, but the cashier let me by."

July 11
"The bacon was mouldy. I fried yams and made tea, then heaped up the fire and read Burton again. The burros strayed."

July 27
"A tall, black mother duck came shooting over the whitecaps and riffles, honking solicitously to her brood of fuzzy young bobbers. I don't know how the ducklings kept topside, but they did, and the little flotilla shot by like submarines in the wake of a transport ship."

July 29
"The trail was long, rough, rocky, and dusty and steep, and the sky was overcast. At last we reached the foot of the trail, at the bottom of a sheer sided ridge. The red cliffs were golden in the setting sun. I loosed the burros and started some split peas to cooking. It grew dark, and the peas tipped into the fire when half done. I had some chipped beef and turned in."

August 11
"Mrs. McKee gave me ten pounds of oats and I gave her the print of the oaks at Morro Bay." [The ol' oaks for oats exchange.]

August 26
"I lost my two pennies."

August 27
"How I despise confirmed dudes, tenderfeet, mollycoddles, and sloppy campers. There are no words for my feeling."

"I thought strange thoughts and looked forward to San Francisco. My longing for the desert has increased."

August 29
"My pocket knife has disappeared, and I looked high and low, tracing my paths... and racking my brain for a clue to the whereabouts. No luck.
I brought in the burros and packed Betsy. As I was putting the first kyak on Granny, I saw the knife, covered with dust, in front of the camp fire. I pretended not to see it, put on the other kyak, and rediscovered the knife."

August 30
"[M]y solitude was unbroken. Above, the white castellated cliffs glittered fairylike against the turquoise sky, The wild silences enfolded me unresisting.
It was all a gold dream to me, with the unreal rustling of the aspens lulling my senses, and pure and perfect colors flowing before my eyes. Everything was so beautiful that I felt a joy like rapture, then a cool, soothing, dreamlike calm that enveloped me completely. I was so filled with delight that my languorous calm gave way to the desire to tell someone, and I wrote a letter to Doris. Then I went down the trail and sketched the cliff and a writhen juniper...
Again I studied maps by firelight, lingering over the beautiful names of some of the places. I think I shall stop at the Lake of the Fallen Moon...
Finally I resigned myself unwillingly to sleep."

September 1
"It is always hard to decide what to cook for supper, because there are so few alternatives..."

September 6
"After a sunbath on the beach, I made some cornstarch pudding, which by no means rivaled Mrs. Reynolds."

September 8
"I disturbed a bee's nest and a dozen of them set upon me, the rest swarming out upon me. I struggled frenziedly down to the water, tearing my shirt. I had to leap down onto some wet rocks, then climbed up on some more, pulled out the stings and the bees in my hair, threw off my clothes, and plunged into the water. Then I seemed to burn all over, and looking down, I discovered that my body was a mass of poison oak blisters! The shock nearly broke me, and I felt sick all over. When I was trying to put on my shirt, I fell into the water, and could not find the strength to get out until I was half drowned. Then I lay on a drift log in midstream, on the edge of the fall. There were no stream banks. I threw up my breakfast, and had not an ounce of strength. Before long I began to burn in the hot sun. I tried to rise, but tho my eyes were wide open and I strained them, I could see nothing but blackness, and fell back, exhausted, dizzy and faint. An hour later, I managed to put on my clothes, and in the late afternoon, I forced myself to rise..."

September 20
"I had wild dreams about snakes carrying my packs, burros dying, etc."

September 28
"The deer hunters are discouraged or sated, the school boys have gone back to their studies, and vacation time is over for the populace. But this is not vacation time for me. This is my life."

"I watched the moon on the water. An owl circled above me on wings of velvet."

September 29
"For a week or more I have been carnivorous and that is long enough for me."

October 3
The mosquitoes were exasperating. My thoughts were bleak. At dark I made a fire to cheer myself. Soon the S.F. knot began to untangle, and I began to sing and whoop. I planned how I would rent a little garret on some city hilltop, and have a place all my own. From it I would sally forth to make color studies of tropical fish in the park, to concerts, to library expeditions, and devil may care wanderings in the city, and on the sea front. On what I have, I could do it for a month, at least if careful..."

October 7

"All night the sky kept changing. Clouds banked up and then blew on. Stars sparkled and were obscured."

October 8
"[T]urned in at dusk, feeling slightly blurred for my seventy hours without sleep."

From Everett Ruess's letters, age 16-20

"I was becoming extremely weary of being told by everyone..., 'Say, isn't that heavy' or 'What a load that boy has.,' etc. ad nauseum."
(August 22, 1930, age 16; backpacking in Yosemite)

"I have loved the red rocks.... I have seemed to be at one with the world."

"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."
(Spring 1931, age 17; Navajo country)

"It rained and I was wet; the sun shone and I was dry."
(June 30, 1931; Grand Canyon)

"The other day I had perhaps the best art lesson I ever had, a lesson in simplicity from Maynard Dixon.... The main thing Maynard did was to make me see what is meaningless in a picture, and have the strength to eliminate it; as see what was significant, and how to stress it. This he showed me with little scraps of black and white papers, placed over my drawings. You should try it..."
(Nov. 5, 1933, age 19; from San Francisco, to his mother in Los Angeles)

"...I am nineteen and sensitive, but it is a small consolation to be told that."
(Dec. 12, 1933, to his brother)

"I am not nonplussed in the presence of anybody."
(Jan. 2, 1934, to his father)

"Mother told me that you saved the eucalyptus tree growing on Lemon Grove Street. I am proud of you."
(Jan. 7, 1934, to his father)

"A few nights ago I went to a Young Communist League demonstration. There were posters with captions like 'We Can't Eat Battleships,' and sound talk about the stupidity of armament and the wretched condition of the lower classes. But in about five minutes, the Red Squad came with six men, who leapt out of a car, laid about with their clubs, snatched the posters from the boys and tore them up, seized all the papers, kicked the girls in the legs, and chased the boys and girls for several blocks, trying to separate the group. Such are Free Speech and Free Assemblage in America."
(March 1934, to his brother, from Los Angeles)

"The country here is all that I could wish it to be, and I am happy again."
(April 19, 1934, to his parents, from Dinnehotso, Arizona)

"I like to be able to be perfectly open and sincere, and yet it is impossible to be sincere to all of one's self at once, so for the deepest understanding one must seek those wit whom one can be most truly one's self. And never be blind to the ineffable drollery of it all."
(May 5, 1934; Chilchinbetoh, Arizona)

"Happiness lies in a large measure of self-forgetfulness, either in work... or in the love of others."
(May 1934)

"I have been in many beautiful places, and did not wish to taste, but to drink deep."
(June 17, Kayenta, Arizona)

"I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-spangled 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."

"When my Mormon friends [in the town of Escalante] asked me to what church I belonged, I told them that I was a pantheistic hedonist."
(Nov. 11, 1934; to his brother, from Escalante Rim, Utah)

Is it any wonder that Everett Ruess disappeared? One photo in the book shows him apparently stepping off into an abyss, while another depicts him high in the branches of a tree, balanced precariously between its trunk and the cliff from which he has evidently come. To say that he was a daredevil would not be going too far. Snippets attesting to this-- and to a certain fatalism-- can be found throughout his writings.

"I must pack my short life full of interesting events and creative activity."
(May 2, 1931, to his brother Waldo)

"I'll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is."
(July 12, 1933, to Waldo, from Chinle, Arizona)

"Many times in the search for water holes and cliff dwellings, I trusted my life to crumbling sandstone and angles little short of the perpendicular, startling myself when I came out whole and on top."
(May 2, 1934; Kayenta, Arizona)

"I do not know if I shall ever return to the cities again..."

"Many times my life and all my possessions have tottered on the far side of the balance, but, as yet, from each such encounter I have in the end come away, unharmed..."
(May 5, 1934; Chilchinbetoh, Arizona)

"Day before yesterday I narrowly escaped being gored to death by a wild bull, and there was a harrowing sequel..."
(May 1934; Arizona)

"[N]ight before last I nearly kicked the bucket from poisoned food."
(June 17, Kayenta, Arizona)

"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!"

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