The Mystery of Everett Ruess Read online

  From an abundance of letters written from other areas in previous months and years, however, we can learn much about Everett, as well as about the regions he visited. In many ways he was just an ordinary American youth with a yen for wandering about in remote parts of the West. He was clean-shaven, of medium height and build, open in countenance, ready to smile, and did not appear at all unusual. He was young, only twenty years old when he disappeared, and he was still suffering—or alternately enjoying—the slow onset of maturity. As a family friend once wrote, “He was an old friend one moment and a young friend the next.” He could be logical, then illogical. He could laugh and sing, could play-act, could assume roles, or could brood in sadness, silence, and isolation.

  But above all, Everett Ruess could see, in a way that far transcended the mere act of vision. His reactions to the wonders of Nature went beyond what we would assume to be normal experience, to the point where he could almost resonate to the light waves that struck him from all points in the landscape. His was a strange gift that set him apart from acquaintances, friends, and relatives. Many people can feel emotion as they gaze upon some of the more sublime vistas of canyon, desert, or mountains. But rare indeed is an Everett Ruess, who could sense beauty so acutely that it bordered on pain. And he could write exceptionally well as he described his own reactions to the panoramas seen along his way.

  It is lucky for us that Everett wrote so well. From his descriptions of what he saw and felt, a reader today can catch a glimpse of what it is like to be so passionately free. Like Everett, we all yearn to cut ourselves off from the comforts and securities of a drab existence at some point in our lives. We too feel a need to enter our own small wilderness in that difficult search for a unique destiny. Everett’s story is the universal story of discovery of self.

  Everett’s letters contain statements such as, “I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear,” or “. . . such utter and overpowering beauty as nearly kills a sensitive person by its piercing glory.” He continued his travels, drawn as by a magnet away from the cities of California, across mountain, desert, and canyon, to his ultimate destiny. Traveling virtually without money, he spent his days with little food, almost no comfort, and little encouragement from others, for almost no one he met could understand his motivations or appreciate his sensitivity.

  We now, living more than half a century after Everett’s disappearance, do not fully understand him either. There are only faint traces left behind, but what we have is intriguing. We have diaries of his 1932 and 1933 trips, as well as a few poems and essays, some snapshots, and some letters about him written by people he had known. Above all, and most important, we have letters he wrote to his parents, his brother, Waldo, and a few of his friends. These materials are valuable in that they tell much about Everett’s character and personality, but they don’t tell the whole story. No young man writes to his mother with a high degree of candor on all subjects. Even to his father, brother, and friends, a man will play roles calculated to conceal many of his innermost thoughts. Everett was probably better than most young people in expressing his true feelings, but no one can know how much of the essential Everett remains hidden in these writings. Thus to every statement about him by others must be attached an element of the unknown.

  We can’t even begin to understand Everett without becoming acquainted with his mother, Stella. A devotee of the arts and an artist herself, Stella Knight Ruess, daughter of noted California pioneer William Henry Knight, took courses in art at the University of Southern California and taught drawing in a school in Alhambra. She studied block printing at Columbia University. She was fond of composing poems, many of which were published. She was an active member of art and writing clubs, such as the National League of American Pen Women, the Ruskin Art Club, and the Poetry and Music Club in Los Angeles.

  Everett, born 28 March 1914, the younger of two boys, probably received the bulk of Stella’s attention, directed first toward motherly care, then later toward teaching him to write, to sketch, and to paint, eventually toward convincing him that he should make a career of art. It is hardly coincidental that the areas in which Everett was most proficient—lyric prose, poetry, block printing, and sketching—were identical to Stella’s. They even worked together on some art projects: he would provide sketches and she would transfer them into blocks for printing. Everett later displayed, at least in his writing, a high degree of intelligence and natural ability, but it was in his capacity to see and to appreciate that Stella’s training gave him such a solid foundation.

  Although we have none of Stella’s letters to Everett, it appears that her influence over him was profound. Like Everett, she was a true romantic who scarcely paused to count the cost. She was a follower of a philosophy typified by the great dancer Isadora Duncan, that women should freely express their idealistic and romantic inclinations and, above all, should determine their own destinies. As an art activist, she believed firmly in participation, if not creating art herself then working in study clubs where she could experience the art of others. To her, one must participate in art to be totally alive.

  Stella thought of her family as an artistic institution, and she had her stationery imprinted “The House of Ruess.” When she felt that the family needed an outlet for their creative writings, she printed the Ruess Quartette, a small-format booklet containing poetry and articles by herself, her husband, Christopher, and their sons Everett and Waldo. The family seal printed on the booklet showed a sundial with the words “Glorify The Hour.”

  Stella’s sense of urgency in matters of art must surely have been a fundamental factor in Everett’s impatience to escape from school and to fling himself into the wilderness while still in his teens.

  Everett’s father, Christopher, earned his way through Harvard, graduating summa cum laude in only three years. He served as the first chief probation officer of Alameda County, California, and later as director of education and research in the Los Angeles County Probation Department. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, he had worked as a Unitarian minister and in sales management. Active even after his retirement in 1949, he spent the last five years of his life with the American Institute of Family Relations helping older people find worthwhile and constructive objectives.

  Christopher also wrote limited amounts of poetry. He was deeply interested in the philosophical questions of life, existence, and morality, and he communicated with his son on these subjects during the last few years before Everett disappeared. (See Christopher’s letter to Everett of 10 December 1933.) Christopher also represented the practical side of the family and, to the extent that he was able, tried to guide his sons into good education and rewarding careers. The fact that Everett quit college after only one semester was a long-standing source of pain to Christopher.

  Everett’s brother, Waldo, was also one of the anchors in Everett’s life at home. Waldo, four and a half years older, was already active by the early 1930s in his chosen career as a government diplomatic aide and later as an international businessman. Altogether, Waldo worked and lived in ten foreign countries, including China, Japan, Algeria, U.S.S.R., Iceland, El Salvador, Mexico, and Spain, and traveled in one hundred others. Everett wrote frequently to Waldo, however, and his high regard for his older brother shows clearly in his letters.

  It should he noted that the whole Ruess family formed a cohesive unit that gave each individual member much strength. Everett was repeatedly able to step forth into the unforgiving wilderness with neither adequate funds nor modern equipment, partly because of the moral and financial support he received from his parents and brother. His family also gave him a receptive audience for his paintings, sketches, poetry, and letters. Everett’s letters, for example, for which he had assured readers, are much more interesting and beautifully crafted than his diary entries, which tend to be more documentary than lyrical.

  The Ruess family, left to right: Waldo, mother Stella, Everett, and father Christopher.

  Everett’s greatest tale
nt was his ability to see, and then articulate, the magnitude, color, and changing moods of nature. If he was good at describing the high Sierras (and he was), he was superlative in his descriptions of the red rock deserts of northern Arizona and southern Utah. His astonishing ability to awake in a reader those feelings one has when confronting the land, coupled with the mystery of his vanishing, have prompted the suggestion that he might have been a mystic. Of course, he was not a religious mystic, since he called himself an agnostic, but he certainly possessed unusual ability to see beyond the concrete world of his training and experience. Randolph “Pat” Jenks, who knew Everett in 1931, states that “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.”[1] Whether or not Everett was a mystic is apparently a matter of opinion, or perhaps of semantics. The fact that the subject arises so often testifies to the strength of his personality and the evocative character of his writing.

  It should be noted, however, that Everett’s writing had one important limitation: he was apparently unable to fully appreciate or describe the human events and interactions with the landscape he understood so well. His writings contain very little information about the people who shaped, and were shaped by, the land. He saw the Indians as a noble race that had learned to live off the land. He saw non-Indians simply as intruders. Although the same zeal and pioneering spirit that possessed him could have and probably did inspire the early settlers, he could sense that most nonIndian philosophies seemed to emphasize alienation rather than communion with the land. Therefore, nonIndian history was irrelevant to the important matter—his own reaction to natural beauty.

  Everett’s real search was for his own identity and fulfillment. Undoubtedly he had experienced his need for purpose and direction from the time he first set off on his wanderings in 1930. His many months in the mountains and desert during the next four years gave him many marvelous experiences but still left him with the ache of isolation, even occasionally on the edge between reality and fantasy, sanity and incoherence. His winter in San Francisco, though it gave him the friendship of other artists, sharpened his consciousness and made him more aware of his very special vision. Yet he remained insecure as a painter, and as a writer, trying desperately and passionately to find and establish his niche as an artist.

  As a visual artist, the young Ruess still needed considerable training. Everett’s existing paintings, sketches, and watercolors, now in the family collection, show a naive lack of understanding of color relationships and an unsure drawing hand. His blockprints, however, some of which are reproduced in this volume, show a good eye for balance and composition, as well as for dramatic impact.

  Probably the most intriguing paradox in Everett’s personality was the balance between the inwardly directed, intensely sensitive visionary and the outgoing, courageous adventurer.

  Everett’s nerve—his absolutely fearless, ingenuous, childlike ability to face any situation as if it were simply routine—made him unique. He hitchhiked to remote Monument Valley, where he was dropped off with almost no money. But he made his way and reported that he was happy. It has been said that he often, and without invitation, simply entered a Navajo’s hogan and made himself at home. His letters indicate an amazing lack of reticence around famous artists. If he wanted to meet someone, he just knocked on the door and introduced himself. 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.

  His selfconfidence was massive, at least until late 1933, when, under the influence of many intelligent and gifted friends, he began to question some of his personal precepts. Even then, he only asked questions until it became too uncomfortable. Then he headed back to the desert, where he could think and write about natural beauty, where he could dismiss his doubts about himself, and where he could resume his old, sure manner.

  His extreme selfassurance, implanted and solidly backed by his mother, was the underpinning for almost everything Everett did from his high school graduation until his disappearance. The only exceptions were his fivemonth enrollment at UCLA in 1932–33, done at his father’s insistence, and Everett’s voluntary interlude in San Francisco in 1933–34. He was uncomfortable at UCLA, and he tired of the frantic pace and congestion of San Francisco.

  If Stella communicated any of the harsh realities of the world to Everett before he left home, it was not reflected in his attitudes, as shown by his actions and by his writing. It appears that Stella not only did nothing to discourage Everett from leaving home as a teenager, but that she condoned—even encouraged—what she saw as his artistic independence.

  A few words should be said about Everett’s experiences in San Francisco during late 1933 and early 1934. After spending parts of three years journeying through mountains and deserts, he embarked upon a fastpaced, highintensity learning experience with painters, photographers, musicians, writers, and political agitators in a Bohemian atmosphere. Many of the artists he met were established, well known, and highly qualified in their media. But Everett’s selfconfidence, his ingenuous innocence, his eagerness to learn, and his apparent sensitivity opened many doors. From his surviving letters to parents, we know only of a few major contacts with San Francisco artists during this period. Without doubt there were more. Considering that Everett still had a long way to go on the road to becoming a mature visual artist, the results of these contacts with established artists can be guessed. Undoubtedly many of them were frank, perhaps even blunt, about Everett’s need for training and experience. He probably learned that he was not nearly as good as he thought, which could have been a severe blow to his selfesteem. Furthermore, he seems to have made the fateful decision at that point that no matter how much he needed further training and experience in the visual arts, he refused to remain any longer in large cities, cut off from his beloved wilderness. His letters from Arizona and Utah in 1934, while some of his most beautifully written, reflect an air of futility and a realization that he was now trapped by his love of the wilderness, his aversion to cities, and his need for further training. It was sobering as well as frustrating.

  It appears that Everett may have been able with time and training to develop into a capable visual artist and successfully interpret the country he loved, like his friend Maynard Dixon. We are fortunate that he was able to develop remarkable discipline and skills in descriptive writing; indeed, the focused energies make Everett’s letters unique in American literature. Author Wallace Stegner, in his book Mormon Country, pays this tribute to Everett:

  What Everett was after was beauty, and he conceived beauty in pretty romantic terms. We might be inclined to laugh at the extravagance of his beautyworship if there were not something almost magnificent in his singleminded dedication to it. Esthetics as a parlor affectation is ludicrous and sometimes a little obscene; as a way of life it sometimes attains dignity. If we laugh at Everett Ruess we shall have to laugh at John Muir, because there was little difference between them except age.

  In his last known letter, sent to his brother, he pointed out, “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.”

  It seems that Everett’s basic difficulty was that as his extreme sensitivity developed he felt pulled outward faster than he matured or could be educated. Like a fine, but uncontrolled, thoroughbred colt, he rushed pellmell into the race, without adequate pacing or training. His mother, so anxious to have Everett develop into a fine artist, failed to realize his need to be held back, and not only let him go, but apparently urged him on.

  We must conclude that Everett’s life was a partial tragedy because he hungered after the unatta
inable in visual art, while probably not realizing how unusually perceptive his writings had become. Nowhere else in the literature of the canyon country can one find the sensitive, thoughtful, sincere, emotional imagery found in Everett’s letters. We must also appreciate, even marvel at, his gift of vision, which enabled him to respond to natural beauty with such depth of feeling that it often exceeded the power of mere words to communicate and seemed to consume his very being.

  Sky Seekers. Blockprint by Everett Ruess.

  * * *

  [1] Interview with Randolph Jenks, Alamos, Sonora, Mexico, 1 December 1982.

  Chapter 2: The Letters 1930

  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 writing. His aptitude, however, proved to be stronger in writing, which he turned into his principal vehicle of expression. He could have written a book, or essays, or magazine articles, but he chose letters, probably because they kept him in touch with his family and because they offered an assured, sympathetic audience.

  Traveling slowly through the wilderness, Everett had leisure time in abundance, and he could compose dramatic word descriptions almost simultaneously as he received impressions from the scenery. On occasion he used the same phrases in letters written days apart to different people, as if he had either memorized the words or had used rough drafts. And the letters show careful and deliberate drafting and polishing.