The Mystery of Everett Ruess

by W. L. Rusho

  The following, one of the most sensitive, image-filled letters that Everett ever wrote, was addressed to Frances, the girl he had loved in San Francisco, and for whom he still had deep feelings.

  May

  Near Lukachukai,

  Arizona

  Dear Frances,

  I was surprised and pleased to receive your letter a couple of days ago. Glad too that you are getting something out of life. It shocked me slightly when you spoke of my greed for life. That is a harsh word, but I guess it is true. I am not willing to take anything but the most from life. Then too,

  You know how little while we have to stay,

  And once departed may return no more.

  I certainly don’t like to let opportunities for living slip by ungrasped, and I never liked the game of sitting back in a corner and wishing. And when people interest me and I like them, I nearly always follow up until I know them well. There are too many uninteresting people—like the trader at Lukachukai. He certainly made me feel like hitting him. He is a typical moron, only interested in food, business, and home. I was telling him about Canyon de Chelly and del Muerto, and with no provocation he remarked that he had lived here a long time and had never been to them and never expected or intended to. Obviously his decision was right for a person like him, because wherever he might go, he would see nothing beautiful or interesting.

  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.

  Now I have accepted the hospitality of a Navajo head man, and paused at noon to rest and write to you. I enjoyed your letter, and I know I did not mistake myself when first I liked you. We did have some moments of beauty together, didn’t we?

  It is that feeling of comradeship and sharing that I miss most out here. True, I have had many experiences with people, and some very close ones, but there was too much that could not be spoken. I had a strange experience with a young fellow at an outpost, a boy I’d known before. It seems that only in moments of desperation is the soul most truly revealed. Perhaps that’s why I am so often so unrestrained, for always I sense the brink of things. And as you say, it is impossible to grasp enough of life. There is always something that eludes one.

  I’ve not heard the recording of the Emperor Concerto, but I heard it rendered a couple of times by the New York Philharmonic. Though there is a lot of superfluous stuff, the heart of it rings through magnificently. I have greatly enjoyed Beethoven’s Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies, also Brahms’ First and Third. I enjoy them here, too. The night before I left the city I went to hear the final rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth with full chorus. (A girl I knew was singing.) Then I realized the gap still remaining between any recording and the reality of a thing like that. Oh, it was utterly sublime, enough to make the hair stand on end and to lift the soul out of the body.

  Oh but the desert is glorious now, with marching clouds in the blue sky, and cool winds blowing. The smell of the sage is sweet in my nostrils, and the luring trail leads onward.

  Love from Everett

  May

  [Addressee unknown]

  I have been fighting my way up tall hills, between canyons of skyscrapers, hurling myself against the battling night winds, the raw, swooping gusts that are like cold steel on my cheeks. I am drunk with a searing intoxication that liquor could never bring—drunk with the fiery elixir of beauty, the destroying draught of power, and the soul-piercing inevitability of music. Often I am tortured to think that what I so deeply feel must always remain, for the most, unshared, uncommunicated. Yet, at least I have felt, have heard and seen and known, beauty that is inconceivable, that no words and no creative medium are able to convey. Knowing that the cards are stacked, and realized achievements are mere shadows of the dream, I still try to give some faint but tangible suggestion of what has burned without destroying me.

  But I realize that what I have felt must grow within one, and it is folly that will be scorned and misinterpreted to seek to tell of it.

  Such is my cry, such is my plaint, and I know there is no reply. Mine seems a task essentially futile. Try as I may, I have never yet, that I know of, succeeded in conveying more than a glimpse of my visions. 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. I cannot bear to contain these rending flames, and I am helpless to let them out. So I wonder how I can go on living and being casual as one must.

  Here Everett unleashes a skillfully written blast at white residents of the Indian country. Of all the people Everett disliked, he seemed to have special antipathy for Indian traders. Traveling as he did through the Navajo country, he encountered these white men fairly often, but he rarely liked them. Everett never complained specifically about John Wetherill, the trader at Kayenta, but he undoubtedly included Wetherill in his disapprobation. On the other hand, it has been reported that Wetherill had little respect for Everett, whom he considered a “pest” who would simply hang around for days seeking information and conversation, but who would buy nothing.[20] Obviously the old trader-explorer and the young artist were worlds apart in their thinking, their objectives, and their basic philosophies.

  Two Rules In Life

  I thought that there were two rules in lift—never count the cost, and never do anything unless you can do it wholeheartedly. Now is the time to live.

  —Diary entry for 11 June 1934

  June 17

  Kayenta, Arizona

  Dear Bill,

  Your letter reached me a couple of days ago and I enjoyed it. I did feel more than a twinge of conscience in writing that letter, but I couldn’t help it. It’s fun to imagine that one has an effect on others—the will
to power, I guess. Often, alone in an endless open desert, I find it hard to believe that the rest of the world exists, and yet, letters sometimes establish an intimate connection which actual contact could not.

  Do you know, it is in a way rather sad that you could not have had some of my wild experiences, for you have the desire to use such things, and I have not. Perhaps it is your craving for material security or perhaps for the world’s recognition. Maybe you hunger to project and perpetuate your personality, in fear of the awful finality of death.

  Personally I have no least desire for fame. I feel only a stir of distaste when I think of being called “the well known author” or “the great artist.” I fear, or rather, the rest of the world should fear, that I am becoming quite antisocial. I have no desire to bend my efforts toward entertaining the bored and blase world. And that’s what writing amounts to—or at least, your kind, I think. Your stories, if polished and published, would serve to divert various morons and business people. They would help them to occupy a few hours of their lives in reading about the imagined activities of fictitious characters. Then, more thoroughly satisfied with their own more peaceful or otherwise superior lives, they would use the magazine to start a fire or sell it to the junkman.

  I hope this gets you down, for I feel like puncturing the stupid satisfaction and silly aspirations of the world this morning. And not because I am wounded by it either, for I am myself in fine fettle. This despite the fact that night before last I nearly kicked the bucket from poisoned food.

  Beauty has always been my god; it has meant more than people to me. And how my god, or goddess, is flouted in this country, which to me is the most beautiful I’ve known in all my wanderings! It has come to the point where I no longer like to have anything to do with the white people here except to get supplies and go on, and I think I shall not say any more what I do here.

  Living in the midst of such utter and overpowering beauty as nearly kills a sensitive person by its piercing glory, they are deaf, dumb, and blind to it all. Behind bars in their dirty, dingy, illlighted trading posts, they think of nothing but money. When they question me, it is, how much do you make, where do you sell your stuff, what prices do you get? Not that they entertain any passing notion of acquiring a painting; it is only their singleminded interest in money. And when they have it, they seem to be comfortable enough in their stupid way, but they do not live.

  A while ago I spent all my money for a bracelet and was broke most of the while since. It is a beautiful thing; I had never thought of owning one, but it seemed to fit so well, and I liked the design and the three turquoises so well, that I have never regretted the purchase. By day it is like a bit of the sky on my wrist, when my hand is on the saddle horn, and by firelight, the stones have a rich greenish luster, as they reflect the leaping flames.

  But one of my trader friends asked as soon as he saw it, “How much did it cost?” He saw it only as merchandise.

  Three evenings ago, after a depressing experience at a post, I rode out into the open desert and the sage, with vast reaching vermilion mesas and distant blue mountains, glad to be alone and free.

  I painted at sunset—dark, towering buttes, with pure clean lines, and golden light on the western cliffs as the sun went down. Then I rode on while the new moon, a silver crescent, gleamed in the deepening blue of the night sky. A fire winked and blazed a mile or two away, at the foot of a lonely butte. As it was in my direction, I steered my course by it, thinking I might stop for a cup of coffee. The fire disappeared as we descended little dips, but always appeared again, burning steadily. At last we reached it and I dismounted and entered the circle, making a greeting. There was an old grandmother not thin, with straying locks of white hair, and the old man, her husband. Two younger women, their babies, and a young buck.

  When I asked Shimassohn, the grandmother, for some coffee, she beamed, asked me questions, gave me tea and coffee, pushed namskadi (bread) toward me, and urged me to eat.

  I can’t tell you how her kindness warmed my bruised heart. I felt an overflowing of tenderness for those people. They are so childlike and simple and friendly when left alone.

  I have often stayed with the Navajos; I’ve known the best of them, and they were fine people. I have ridden with them on their horses, eaten with them, and even taken part in their ceremonies. Many are the delightful encounters, and many the exchange of gifts I’ve had with them. They have many faults; most of them are not very clean, and they will steal anything from a stranger, but never if you approach them with trust as a friend. Their weird, wild chanting as they ride the desert is often magnificent, with a highpitched, penetrating quality.

  The people I stopped with were Utes, come down from the north. After breakfast of hot goat’s milk gravy, mutton, and Dutch oven bread, I brought in my burros as the two men and the grandmother were preparing to ride to the post fifteen miles off. Grandmother led her horse over the hill, as the Indian women will never mount in the presence of a white man.

  I rode all morning over sunny dunes of vermilion sand with broom and sunflower on the ridges, and nodding grass plumes. Finally I reached a little unnamed canyon where I had camped before, and rode to the very end of it, hoping against hope that the waterhole would not be dry.

  There was just enough for me and my burros. Some loose horses came in, and would have drunk it all if I had not been first. There were other holes farther off which they could find.

  So I unpacked under a tall, arched pinyon tree, unfastened the diamond hitch, took off the kyaks and saddles, gave the burros some oats, curried them, and turned them out to grass in a spacious bend of the canyon. There are two cliff dwellings there, one barely accessible.

  After a refreshing bath at the edge of the little dwindling pool at the foot of the cliff, I wandered in the canyon and watched the burros, then worked over my equipment. This trip has been longer than I expected, for I have been in many beautiful places, and did not wish to taste, but to drink deep. I have wandered over more than four hundred miles with the burros these last six weeks, paying no attention to trails, except as they happened to serve me, and finding my water as I went. I never went two days without discovering it.

  Tomorrow I shall start for Navajo Mountain and the wild country near it. At Oljato (Moonlight Water) an old timer will help me shoe my burros in preparation for the miles and miles of bare sandstone ridges that must be traversed.

  Here in Kayenta, I have been staying with Lee Bradley, my best friend here. He is a tall, commanding figure of a man, half white, and combining the best qualities of both races. He is influential in the tribe, and has the mail contract and several other government contracts. His wife is Indian.

  Lee’s house is a rambling adobe structure. There are several pets—a baby prairie dog, rabbits, a young goat, cats, and Kisge, who is undoubtedly the father or grandfather of Curly. He is an enormous shaggy dog, with the same brown eyes and wide face.

  Jose Garcia, my good friend at Chilichinbito, whose rare, old Spanish hospitality I enjoyed last month, was killed a few weeks ago, riding the load on a truck. A wheel came off, and the whole load fell on him.

  There is an archaeological expedition in town now. Some pretty likeable and intelligent young fellows are in it, and I expect to visit their camp when I come back from the mountains.

  Summer draws on, the shrill song of the cicadas is over, and the scarlet cactus blooms are gone. Columbine and Sego Lily have vanished from the canyons. Now only the sunflower, and in damp, shaded places, the Scarlet Bugler, are found.

  In the throbbing heat of desert noon, siestas are in order, and I have been traveling at dawn and sunset, and by moonlight.

  Did you get The Purple Land? I liked your line about “the kingly insolence of desert battlements.”

  I shall be returning to Kayenta in a month or so, before finally leaving for El Canon Grande, and you can reach me here. So, until then, live gaily, live deeply, and wrest from life some of its infinite possibilities.

 
; Love from Everett

  June 19

  Near Oljato

  (Moonlight Water)

  Dear Father and Mother,

  Your letters and packages reached me a few days ago. The bridle has been useful, and I enjoyed the dried plums. I had never tasted them before. I was glad to have the magazines. I was thinking of asking you for a resume of political and economic events and trends, but they serve the purpose. I gave one that I finished with to a trader.

  The other day I mailed you a few things I was through with. I think Mother would enjoy Death Comes For the Archbishop. It is a beautifully written hook about this country. I think the Shiprock papers would interest you, too.

  I met some of the young fellows from the Berkeley expedition. They are likeable fellows. When you heard they were calling for volunteers, what they really said was that they wanted volunteers who would pay three or four hundred dollars for expenses in addition to carrying on scientific work.

  I am on my way to Navajo Mountain now, and probably will not get back until July or August, so l will be pretty low in supplies when I do get back to Kayenta. There are a couple of things I wish you would send me; Don Quixote, a Modern Library book which you can get for ninety-five cents, and eight of those half-pound chocolate bars which you can get downtown for eight or nine cents each. Get half of them plain, and half with raisins and peanuts.

  I thought it would be a good time to read Don Quixote, and it is a long book that will last me a while. Some writers rate it as one of the greatest pieces of literature, along with the Odyssey. Have you ever read Cervantes unabridged?

  The Sense of Beauty was interesting, but in a way, rather painful. I am always interested in psychology and yet it disgusts me to think of people as puppets pulled this way and that by every force to which they are susceptible.