Everett Ruess
Encyclopedia
Everett Ruess was a young artist, poet and writer who explored nature including the High Sierra
, California Coast and the desert
s of the American southwest
, invariably alone. His fate while traveling though a remote area of Utah
has been a mystery for many years.
In 2009, DNA from remains found in Utah seemed to indicate they were from Ruess, but the initial findings were soon challenged and shown conclusively to actually be the remains of an American Indian
. The 2009 find did not provide a resolution to the Ruess mystery but did fuel a growing popular interest in Ruess.
minister, and his mother Stella. Waldo was his older brother.. The family moved often. As a child he turned to woodcarving, clay modeling and sketching in New York and near Chicago.
At 12 Ruess wrote essays, verse and began a literary diary that expanded into volumes with pages marked by weather and written in pencil to accommodate his travel adventures, thoughts and works. In 1929, at 15 he was involved in a creative writing
class at Los Angeles High School and later won a poetry award at Valparaiso High School
, Indiana.
in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado during 1931, 1932, and 1934. He rode broncos, branded calves, explored cliff dwellings, trading his prints and watercolors. In 1934 he worked with University of California
archaeologists excavating near Kayenta, took part in a Hopi
ceremony, and spoke Navajo
. Ruess trekked Sequoia
and Yosemite National Park
s and the High Sierra in the summers of 1930 and 1933.
desert with two burros and never returned. The horse corral he made at his camp (37°17′53.72"N 110°57′4.77"W) in Davis Gulch, a canyon of the Escalante
was the only trace he left. Some suspected he died accidentally by falling off a cliff or drowning; others thought he was murdered. Still others believed he crossed the Colorado River
to the Navajo Reservation
in Arizona and married a Navajo woman. In any case, his statements on life and adventure, combined with his unsolved disappearance, led to a kind of legendary status.
At the time that Ruess explored the remote canyons of the Southwestern United States
, aside from Native Americans
, Mormon
pioneers and local cowboy
s, he was likely among the first "outsiders" to venture so deeply and completely into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely an unknown wilderness
.
The discovery of a grave site on Comb Ridge
, near the town of Bluff, Utah
, complete with bones and a few artifacts, has added to the mystery. It is believed by some that Ruess was attacked and murdered by two Ute
Indians, possibly because they wanted his burros. The bones and teeth were said to match the race, age, size, and facial features of Everett. DNA testing used DNA from Everett's nieces and nephew for comparison. In April 2009, DNA testing and comparison of the skull to photographs seemed to confirm that the remains were of Ruess.
However, in June 2009, Utah's state archaeologist, Kevin Jones, raised concerns the remains may not belong to Ruess because dental records from the 1930s do not appear to match those of published photographs of the remains.
An AP article published October 21, 2009, reports that DNA tests done by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology shows the remains do not belong to Ruess, and the Ruess family accepted these new results. A later article in National Geographic Adventure Magazine
identified software problems in the DNA matching software as the source of the error. The 2009 find did not provide a resolution to the Ruess mystery but did fuel a growing popular interest in Ruess.
prints of landscapes and nature and associated with Ansel Adams
and Dorothea Lange
. His prints show scenes from the Monterey Bay
coast, the northern California coast near Tomales Bay
, the Sierra Nevada, Utah
, and Arizona
.
Everett wrote no books during his life, but was a lifelong diarist and sent home hundreds of letters. His journals, art, and poetry were later published in two books:
His books are illustrated by the woodcut
s for which Ruess is admired. His story, along with that of Christopher McCandless
, was retold more briefly in Jon Krakauer
's book Into the Wild.
Everett's last letter to his brother, Waldo, said
wrote and performed a song about Everett Ruess on the album Ashgrove and North Carolina roots musician Dana Robinson wrote and performed "Everett Ruess," on the 2008 album Round my Door.
A species
of dinosaur
, Seitaad ruessi, from the Lower Jurassic of Utah
has been named in honour of Everett Ruess by J.J.W. Sertich and M. Loewen in 2010.
High Sierra
High Sierra is an early heist film and film noir written by W.R. Burnett and John Huston from the novel by Burnett. The movie features Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart and was directed by Raoul Walsh on location at Whitney Portal, halfway up Mount Whitney.The screenplay was co-written by Bogart's...
, California Coast and the desert
Desert
A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...
s of the American southwest
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
, invariably alone. His fate while traveling though a remote area of Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
has been a mystery for many years.
In 2009, DNA from remains found in Utah seemed to indicate they were from Ruess, but the initial findings were soon challenged and shown conclusively to actually be the remains of an American Indian
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. The 2009 find did not provide a resolution to the Ruess mystery but did fuel a growing popular interest in Ruess.
Early life
Ruess was the younger son of his father Christopher, a UnitarianUnitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister, and his mother Stella. Waldo was his older brother.. The family moved often. As a child he turned to woodcarving, clay modeling and sketching in New York and near Chicago.
At 12 Ruess wrote essays, verse and began a literary diary that expanded into volumes with pages marked by weather and written in pencil to accommodate his travel adventures, thoughts and works. In 1929, at 15 he was involved in a creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
class at Los Angeles High School and later won a poetry award at Valparaiso High School
Valparaiso High School
Valparaiso High School is a public high school in Valparaiso, Indiana. This high school is currently a four star and accredited high school, cited by US News and World Report as a "Best High School 2008". The current principal is Mr...
, Indiana.
Travels
Ruess traveled by horse and burroBurro
The burro is a small donkey used primarily as a pack animal. In addition, significant numbers of feral burros live in the Southwestern United States, where they are protected by law, and in Mexico...
in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado during 1931, 1932, and 1934. He rode broncos, branded calves, explored cliff dwellings, trading his prints and watercolors. In 1934 he worked with University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
archaeologists excavating near Kayenta, took part in a Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
ceremony, and spoke Navajo
Navajo language
Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...
. Ruess trekked Sequoia
Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California, in the United States. It was established on September 25, 1890. The park spans . Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly , the park contains among its natural resources the highest point in the...
and Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
s and the High Sierra in the summers of 1930 and 1933.
Disappearance
At the age of 20, he went into the UtahUtah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
desert with two burros and never returned. The horse corral he made at his camp (37°17′53.72"N 110°57′4.77"W) in Davis Gulch, a canyon of the Escalante
Canyons of the Escalante
The Canyons of the Escalante is a collective name for the erosional landforms created by the Escalante River and its tributaries, the Escalante River Basin. Located in southern Utah in the western United States, these sandstone features include high vertical canyon walls, water pockets, narrow...
was the only trace he left. Some suspected he died accidentally by falling off a cliff or drowning; others thought he was murdered. Still others believed he crossed the Colorado River
Colorado River
The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...
to the Navajo Reservation
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation is a semi-autonomous Native American-governed territory covering , occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeastern portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico...
in Arizona and married a Navajo woman. In any case, his statements on life and adventure, combined with his unsolved disappearance, led to a kind of legendary status.
At the time that Ruess explored the remote canyons of the Southwestern United States
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
, aside from Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
pioneers and local cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
s, he was likely among the first "outsiders" to venture so deeply and completely into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely an unknown wilderness
Wilderness
Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
.
The discovery of a grave site on Comb Ridge
Comb Ridge
Comb Ridge is a linear north to south-trending monocline nearly 120 miles long in southeast Utah and Arizona. Composed of Jurassic-age Navajo Sandstone, it displays massive eolian cross-bedding....
, near the town of Bluff, Utah
Bluff, Utah
Bluff is a census-designated place in San Juan County, Utah, United States. The population was 320 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Bluff is located at , in the scenic and very sparsely populated southeastern Utah canyonlands of the Colorado Plateau.According to the United States Census Bureau, the...
, complete with bones and a few artifacts, has added to the mystery. It is believed by some that Ruess was attacked and murdered by two Ute
Ute Tribe
The Ute are an American Indian people now living primarily in Utah and Colorado. There are three Ute tribal reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah ; Southern Ute in Colorado ; and Ute Mountain which primarily lies in Colorado, but extends to Utah and New Mexico . The name of the state of...
Indians, possibly because they wanted his burros. The bones and teeth were said to match the race, age, size, and facial features of Everett. DNA testing used DNA from Everett's nieces and nephew for comparison. In April 2009, DNA testing and comparison of the skull to photographs seemed to confirm that the remains were of Ruess.
However, in June 2009, Utah's state archaeologist, Kevin Jones, raised concerns the remains may not belong to Ruess because dental records from the 1930s do not appear to match those of published photographs of the remains.
An AP article published October 21, 2009, reports that DNA tests done by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology shows the remains do not belong to Ruess, and the Ruess family accepted these new results. A later article in National Geographic Adventure Magazine
National Geographic Adventure Magazine
National Geographic Adventure was a magazine started in 1999 by the National Geographic Society in the United States. It focused on adventure travel and included "Next Weekend" where it featured good weekend trips from all across the U.S., "First In" where it wrote recent adventure travel news,...
identified software problems in the DNA matching software as the source of the error. The 2009 find did not provide a resolution to the Ruess mystery but did fuel a growing popular interest in Ruess.
Works
Ruess was known for cutting linoleumLinocut
Linocut is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for the relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife, V-shaped chisel or gouge, with the raised areas representing a reversal of the parts to show printed...
prints of landscapes and nature and associated with Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
and Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration...
. His prints show scenes from the Monterey Bay
Monterey Bay
Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean, along the central coast of California. The bay is south of San Francisco and San Jose, between the cities of Santa Cruz and Monterey....
coast, the northern California coast near Tomales Bay
Tomales Bay
Tomales Bay is a long narrow inlet of the Pacific Ocean in Marin County in northern California in the United States. It is approximately 15 miles long and averages nearly 1.0 miles wide, effectively separating the Point Reyes Peninsula from the mainland of Marin County. It is located...
, the Sierra Nevada, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, and Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
.
Everett wrote no books during his life, but was a lifelong diarist and sent home hundreds of letters. His journals, art, and poetry were later published in two books:
- On Desert Trails (1940) ed. Hugh Lacy; El Centro, California: Desert Magazine Press; 2nd ed. 1950; 3rd edition (2000) ed. Gary J. Bergera; pub. Gibbs Smith, ISBN 0879058250
- Everett Ruess:Vagabond for Beauty (1983), ed. W.L. Rusho, Peregrine Smith Books; 2nd ed. 1985, pub. Gibbs Smith, ISBN 0879052104
His books are illustrated by the woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s for which Ruess is admired. His story, along with that of Christopher McCandless
Christopher McCandless
Christopher Johnson McCandless was an American hitchhiker who adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and hiked into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with little food and equipment, hoping to live for a time in solitude...
, was retold more briefly in Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writing about the outdoors and mountain-climbing...
's book Into the Wild.
Everett's last letter to his brother, Waldo, said
... as to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon. I have not tired of the wilderness... It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty... This had been a full, rich year. I have left no strange or delightful thing undone I wanted to do.
Influences
California musician Dave AlvinDave Alvin
Dave Alvin , is a guitarist, singer and songwriter. He has been one of the leading proponents of 'roots' or 'American' music, bringing together elements of rock-and-roll, blues, rural and tejano music....
wrote and performed a song about Everett Ruess on the album Ashgrove and North Carolina roots musician Dana Robinson wrote and performed "Everett Ruess," on the 2008 album Round my Door.
A species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
, Seitaad ruessi, from the Lower Jurassic of Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
has been named in honour of Everett Ruess by J.J.W. Sertich and M. Loewen in 2010.
Quotations
- "When I go, I leave no trace."
- "I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"
- "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 streetcar and star-sprinkled 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." - from the last letter Ruess sent to his brother, dated November 11, 1934.
See also
- Christopher McCandlessChristopher McCandlessChristopher Johnson McCandless was an American hitchhiker who adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and hiked into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with little food and equipment, hoping to live for a time in solitude...
, subject of Into the Wild - Carl McCunnCarl McCunnCarl McCunn was an American wildlife photographer who became stranded in the Alaskan wilderness and eventually committed suicide when he ran out of supplies.-Early life:...
External links
- Everett Ruess, Works of Everett Ruess, official site.
- Everett Ruess: Western Wanderer, Journal excerpts and Letters.
- http://everettruess.blogspot.com, Everett Ruess Disciples blog.