The Mystery of Everett Ruess
Page 13
So now you know how I deport myself. Do you, in your turn, inform me of your various adventures. I hope you two also are on the crest of the wave, or at least not in its trough. Tell me anything.
Irrepressibly,
Everett
September 6
Lake of the Fallen Moon
Sierra National Forest
Dear Father and Mother,
I have been filled for three days with a dreamy intoxication from the serene beauty and perfect solitude.
The lake is almost invisible from above, and only a faint, very steep path leads down to it. Grey cliffs rise sheerly from the other side of the lake, which is deep green, mysterious, and unfathomable.
On a little promontory nearby, I watch the moving panoramas of clouds, the gray mountains dotted with trees, and the long, undulating cloud shadows moving over distant forests. A little waterfall rushes musically down from the cliff. The reassuring tinkle of burro bells sounds nearby.
I shall probably reach Yosemite by October.
Love to all,
Everett
Storm Clouds over the Sierras
I reached the windy cliff ledge just as the first red light gleamed in the east. A smoky-gray light spread along the cloud fringes, and a smoldering orange glowed at the tops of the distant peaks. Then black storm clouds swept down dramatically from the north, enveloping the valleys. One cloudbank detached itself and blew over Mount Hoffman and me with a flurry of snow. Soon it was gone and the westerly sky was clear. I looked down on the western brink, at lakes and snowbanks on the northern cliff, at peaks and stormclouds on the southern slope, to Yosemite Valley, and Tenaya Canyon, walled in by Clouds Rest and Half Dome, and on the eastern escarpment, upon May Lake, Tenaya Lake, like a bronze shield in a flash of sunlight, and the snowy peaks of Tioga.
—Diary entry, 8 October 1933
The Haunting Beauty of It
The morning sun peeped from behind a cloud to wake me, then hid again. The skies do not worry me now, for I’ll soon be below the snowline. I found two good ropes while donkey-wrangling. Soon we were down in the Glen, and how I gloried in it! The stream was wide and quiet, full of deep, green pools, and the banks were lined with aspens in October plumage. The wind, like a cry at my heart, plucked at the yellow leaves and flung them swirling across the path. How I felt the beauty and the transience of it! I remembered September in the Kaibab with sober old Pericles, and the tall aspens raining down gold upon us. Oh, the haunting beauty of it!
—Diary entry, 9 October 1933
October 4
Glacier Point
Dear Family,
The post office clerk discovered a batch of mail which he had been hiding from me, including many letters from you. I have enjoyed the short descriptions you clipped for me. I still have the poem on Solitude you sent, and like it well. I found the prints, and the second five-dollar order. No use to send more prints now, I fear. I tried to make a deal with the film people here, but though they were very enthused over the prints, they could not afford to trade for work.
That night I climbed out of the valley by moonlight and found my way through the dark forests to my meadow at Lost Lake.
Yesterday I was wakened by the lunatic howling of coyotes in broad daylight. I climbed up Half Dome and lunched on an overhanging rock, above the sheer drop fronting Tenaya Canyon. Mirror Lake was a disappointing reddishbrown mud puddle, and the valley was dry and yellow.
This morning I have circled the valley’s rim from Nevada Falls to Glacier Point. I had my first good view of Illillette {sic} Falls, a white filmy tracery on wet granite. Vernal Falls is a single narrow jet of spray.
Here at the hotel I met Mr. Cuesta, my old friend from Little Yosemite Valley in 1930.
Last night by the fire I was thinking again about San Francisco, and I thought how jolly it would be to rent a little garret on some hilltop, and spend a month or so in devil-may-care wanderings about the city and sea front. I’ll make color studies of the tropical fish in the aquarium and hear a few concerts. I have a friend there who is studying medicine at the Stanford U. hospital.
Both my trousers are quite worn out, so please mail the striped grey ones that fit me (not the baggy ones) to El Portal, with instructions to hold a week or two. I’d also like to have another 200-page diary book if you can find one reasonably. You might send five dollars of the October money to El Portal.
I’ll put in some aspen leaves when I reach camp at Lost Lake. My bed on the edge of the meadow is encircled by three tall aspens, some lodgepole pine, a white fir, and two or three junipers.
Love from Everett
With his arrival in San Francisco, Everett began what was to become his richest cultural experience, one that was to affect his emotions, his painting, and his writing. He was to be enthralled and enlightened, but also shaken and disturbed. He entered the city as a sensitive youth; he left it four months later as a more mature adult, hoping to make an artistic mark on the world. And if he did not find a clear identity, he at least began to see dim outlines of his rough road ahead.
What Everett was embarking on in San Francisco was a Bohemian life in association with many other artists, where ideas, original concepts, and creativity flowed as the heady wine of California.
He once stated that he was living “with an undercurrent of starvation and an overtone of magnificent music.” Into it, young Ruess was swept up and carried along, stimulated and renewed by contact with other sensitive and accomplished individuals. Everett, as a child, had undoubtedly met artists in company with his mother, but it is doubtful that he was sufficiently trained in art himself for these to have made much of an impression. His association with photographer Edward Weston in 1931 and again in 1932, however, made a lasting imprint on his awareness. By late 1933, when he arrived in San Francisco, he had three years of difficult artistic field work behind him, and he was certainly ready to absorb and evaluate comments and recommendations of painters, photographers, musicians, and art gallery administrators.
Typically, Everett showed no reluctance in introducing himself to those who he thought would be interesting. One cannot really accuse him of excessive ambition or even social climbing, since neither trait is apparent in his letters. More likely it was simply his old tradition that allowed little awe, and certainly no reticence, with strangers. His letters do not specify how he met these people, but he probably just knocked on their doors and introduced himself.
October 17
Berkeley
Dear Family,
I am sitting on the back porch of the Whitnah’s, looking out across the Bay. Mrs. Whitnah is in the city, attending a class in interior decorating, but she and Mr. Whitnah and I are going to hear Lincoln Steffens lecture at International House this afternoon.
In a day or so I am going over to locate in the city, and it may be that I’ll find a very nice place and new friends on Telegraph Hill.
In El Portal I received your letters, but I did not find time to reply. As I was climbing up from the post office Saturday morning, I went to look at the burros. They were standing in a shadow on the hillside, and two little girls were close by. They were afraid of the donkeys, but at the same time fascinated, and unable to go very far away. I persuaded them that Betsy and Grandma were harmless, and they began petting them, but could not get over the fact that Grandma had no tail.
So I brought down the saddle and they both sat in it, parading ecstatically up and down on the hillslope. Before long, ten more little girls arrived, bubbling over with excitement. They were all delightful children, and it was a pleasure to watch them enjoying the burros. Everyone had a ride on each burro, and wanted more. Toward noon, when it was hot, I let the burros rest, and made the children find something for them. They all went running off and came back with boxes of apples, bags of bread crusts, rabbit oats, and soda crackers.
Then at noon, three small boys came in from their hunting expedition, and had to have their rides. After that we took the burros down
to the road and tied them in plain sight in the shadow of an oak, to wait for the buyer. While we sat there on the river bank, one of the boys said he thought he knew where there was a water ouzel’s nest, and we went down to look.
We could not find it, but the water was so tempting that we all went in swimming. While I was splashing, I heard shouts from the roadway. The burro buyer had arrived.
He is a school teacher in Visalia whom I met in Sequoia Park. He told me then that he wanted the burros, and finally he decided he would come for them with a trailer, and meet me at El Portal. He gave me what I paid for them. All the children crowded around while we crammed the burros into the trailer.
We reached Merced in the evening, and I bid my friend goodbye. After freighting my kyaks to the city I went over to one of the cheap restaurants frequented by the cow men and the most picturesque characters of the town. I had a good meal for twenty cents, then sat back to watch the show. There were two or three drunks who were very amusing. One of them, a Filipino, kept posturing and wheeling around and around, waving his arms like a dancer. He insisted that he would go home if they’d give him one more drink. After obtaining fifteen or more drinks in this manner, he was still there.
I struck up an acquaintanceship with one of the panhandlers. We walked about the town and went out to the gambling hall together. In front of the pool halls, a big limousine drew up. The barker shouted, “Come and watch those galloping dominoes.” We climbed in and were swiftly carried out to the city limits where we entered the den. The men running the different games were all slick and well-dressed, with masque-like faces. One of them shouted all evening, “High, low, up they go, sometimes high and sometimes low.” One game interested me. You placed some sort of bet with the operator. He gave you a narrow metal strip, and you put dimes under and over it. Then a Chinaman poured out part of the contents of a bowl of beans on the table. With a curved bamboo stick, he grouped them in fours, and your luck was dependent on the number left over at the last.
At eleven o’clock I went out in the yards and caught the “hot shot” to Sacramento. I struck up with a young cowboy going back to the ranches. For several hours we rode on top, as there were no “empties” or “gondolas.” It was a thrilling ride, though cold. At Modesto, we had to do some fast work to keep from being left. At every stop the freight shunts cars back and forth on the sidings, taking on some cars, and leaving others. When we pulled out, one of the fellows found a reefer, and while the cars were gathering speed, we ran the length of the train on top, leaping from one car to another, till we reached it. A reefer is a cooler in a refrigerator car. There is one at each end. This car was full of cantaloupes, so there was no ice in the reefers and the hatches were open. Four of us climbed in and swapped yarns for awhile. At Stockton two of them left, my cowboy friend and an elderly wanderer. A Canadian boy stayed with me. He had been down to Mexico and lost his pal. Now he was homeward bound for Calgary. He is in the militia there. His company is the crack troop in all Canada. They could load a machine gun on a pack horse in two minutes.
We reached Roseville, the division line, at dawn. The crescent moon faded, and stars paled as we climbed down into the yards. I bought my companion a breakfast, and we waited for our freights while he remade my pack, hobo style. The northbound came first, and I watched my friend out of sight.
In due time, only two hours behind schedule, the Oakland freight was ready. I had watched them making it up in the yards, for some time. I climbed on a gondola with a New York bum. A gondola is a flat car, without a roof. This was empty. We rolled along at a smart rate when we approached the Bay in the afternoon. On the open stretches, we did better than forty miles per hour, and the wind from the salt marshes fanned our faces and blew back our hair. I dismounted in Oakland, and climbed up the hill to the Whitnah’s.
Love from Everett
October 24
San Francisco
Dear Family,
The last week has been rather trying, and I have but just succeeded in establishing myself. Now, however, all is optimism. I have a pleasant room at the Broadway Apartments on Polk Street at Broadway. I could not find any rooms near Telegraph Hill, where Mrs. Whitnah had directed me.
I enjoyed my walk in the morning sunlight, on my way here to the post office. Here I found an accumulation of letters. I’m glad that all is well at home. Glad you are sending the package, though perhaps I asked for more than I need. I forgot to request pajamas, however.
Two nights ago I watched the sunset from the tower at Telegraph Hill. It was certainly splendid, with the skyscrapers, which I missed in Los Angeles, and the islands in the sunset sea.
I met Maynard Dixon in his studio, and shall see him again. I have liked his work for a long time, and the man himself is interesting. He has been through much of the Arizona country that I covered, and knows some of the same old-timers.
To educate myself, I heard Mischa Elman at the Opera House and saw Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones, my first movie since May. Both were fine. There were some excellent shots of Robeson, though I felt the producers neglected many opportunities for artistic effects.
This morning I am securing a library card and getting one of my kyak boxes at the freight depot.
All’s well.
Love from Everett
Maynard Dixon in his art studio.
October 24
2048 Polk St.
Dear Father and Mother,
I was glad to find your letter and Mother’s package waiting for me this evening.
This has been an interesting day. This morning I went to a couple of galleries with my prints, which I had mounted, and Paul Elder took them all on consignment.[13] They seemed pleased to have them.
Then I went to Cornel Tengel’s place on Telegraph Hill. I met him at the library the other day and we had a jolly time together. He has been here since September. He has quite the fictive sort of residence, in a little shack on stilts above a chicken-littered courtyard, off an alley. An Italian murderer has the shack built onto his. If I can borrow a bicycle, we are going on a two or three-day trip into Marin County.
Then I met Mr. Schermerhorn and George Brammer, and we drove to Watsonville with a couple of boys. We went over the Skyline Boulevard, and I got some good snapshots of oak trees and horses. The three of us had great fun together.
On Tuesday, Mrs. Dixon [Dorothea Lange] and I went to Berkeley to hear Rockwell Kent. We enjoyed seeing the cuts and paintings shown very large on a screen. Much of my time has been occupied making mounts for my prints. The Eopa seemed to work.
On Sunday I plan to see Le Coq d’Or, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera.
I have one print design nearly ready to cut, and have been rehashing two others.
Love to all, Everett
Portrait of Everett by Dorothea Lange.
Without doubt the two people that most influenced Everett during his San Francisco visit were the painter Maynard Dixon and Dixon’s wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. During these Depression years American artists were struggling financially, but Dixon, age fifty-eight, was at his career peak, painting many murals and paintings using scenes from the desert Southwest for subjects.[14] Among all of the nation’s artists, Dixon was one of the better known, and Everett was acquainted with his work, Moreover, Dixon’s painting subjects were scenes similar, and often close in proximity, to those sketched by Everett in northern Arizona.
Dorothea Lange, then thirty-eight years old, was fairly well known regionally, but she had not yet established the reputation she made in the late 1930s as one of a team of Farm Security Administration photographers who recorded the human tragedy of the Depression in the Dust Bowl.[15] In Everett, Dorothea apparently recognized talent and ability worthy of her time and attention. She may also have felt that young Everett could use a little mothering.
October 28
San Francisco
Dear Family,
The packages reached me all right a few days ago. Some of the inclusions were very t
houghtful. I also discovered the cookies in the other package.
Write from now on to 2048 Polk St., Broadway Apartments.
The fog has closed in during the last few days. I did some work at the Aquarium, also at Telegraph Hill. There were some good exhibits of woodcuts and prints at the museum—Paul Landacre, Mason, and others. I’ve been reading with great enjoyment the Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens. Have you read it?
Love from Everett
Granite and Cypress. Blockprint by Everett Ruess.
October 29
2048 Polk Street
San Francisco
Dear Family,
All’s well, and I’m on the crest of the wave again as I hope you are, too. I have finally found myself, and have been busy painting all day.
Yesterday I heard four symphonies, and then spent the afternoon and evening with Maynard Dixon, his wife Dorothea, Ernst Bacon, a musician, and some other artists. I had a grand time, and it was certainly good to be among friends and artists again.
Last night, with the Dixons, I ate my first cooked meal in over a week. I have been living on raw carrots and banana sandwiches.
I’ve not heard from you since the day before receiving the packages. In regard to the remittance, I suggest that you put $10 of the October money (if you haven’t already sent it) in the bank for me against the desert trip, and send on the other $15 odd as soon as you can. I’ll pay my own rent (ten dollars) and I think I can make out on the rest.
It has been raining all day.
I’ve had great fun exploring the city and running up and down the hills. By now I know my geography fairly well. I enjoy the fog, too. I’m beginning to make friends now, and I think I shall enjoy the city more and more.