NEWS FLASH: EVERETT REUSS STILL MISSING IN UTAH WILDLANDS
Everett Reuss Must Have Looked Like This When He Disappeared: Frozen In Time As A Handsome Boy
In the depths of the depression, here is a youth determined to find freedom (if not fame and fortune) by celebrating the natural world in word and picture. For a solitary fellow who eventually falls off the edge of the earth, Ruess’ adventures are very well documented. There are boxes of photographs, drawings, woodcuts, and poetry to supplement his detailed letters home. The only page missing is the last one. Royalty? In between stints in the desert, Everett sought out some of the foremost artists and photographers of his time, dropping in on them for extended stays as a house guest. Among others he counted the friendship and patronage of Maynard Dixon, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange—all of them lovers and explorers of the Southwest. The boy was anything but shy. There is also the contradictory matter of his family, who were very supportive of Everett. They were well-to-do in a very poor period for most Americans. His mother was an established artist in her own right. Reuss, who bummed around the west trading block prints and small watercolors for food, once noted in a letter home that he was aware of the freedom offered him by an inheritance of several million dollars. In other words, his possible death by starvation and his fascination with unencumbered hobo life were hardly harsh realities—more like flirtations. Like all serious risk takers, Everett was most alive when dancing on the edge of the cliff. Of course, the romantic element is all over this story, like the chocolate coating on a cherry cordial. For one, this precocious young man was athletic and handsome. Portraits of him show a smiling, clean-cut face, squinting into the merciless sun, trustworthy as any boy scout. Artist, poet, self-styled “vagabond for beauty”, Ruess epitomized the romance of the open road. Freedom was his catch phrase, natural beauty his holy grail, wilderness his playground. He left the single word NEMO wherever he rambled. Nemo is the name of the strange captain in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a popular book by Jules Vern. Nemo is something like the Flying Dutchman, cursed to never set foot on land. In Latin Nemo means No Man. And of course, mystery is what keeps this story alive and in the headlines. How could this boy disappear so completely? How is it possible that
UTAH BONES AREN’T THOSE OF WANDERING POET EVERETT REUSS AFTER ALL There is an old joke about the ingredients for a perfect story: religion, royalty, romance, and mystery — “Good God, the Queen’s pregnant, whodunit?” The joke isn’t so great, but the formula holds up pretty well. And no place in the world has been more fertile for romantic mysteries than the wilderness Southwest. The Lost Dutchman and dozens of other vanished fortunes in gold, Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall gang, mysterious murders, and vanished river runners, the Lukachukai Mountains harbor a “lost city”, described by a Spanish explorer, but never found in modern times. Less well known are native stories of hidden turquoise mines, huge serpents that eat livestock and caves full of sand paintings. New Mexico isn’t called “The Land of Enchantment” for nothing. But no mystery fits the formula better than the saga of Everett Ruess, who disappeared in the canyonlands south of Escalante, Utah, late in 1934. Ruess was not yet legally of age. While the religious element of his myth may be the most enigmatic, hardest to pin down, it is probably the most important as well, the key to his longevity in the public imagination. What religion? The boy was a nature lover, a dark pantheist, who sought the ultimate answers in the song of the wind, as he wrote. A young boy, with a handful of poems a few letters and a couple of diaries, managed to articulate a philosophy that puts him in the company of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. As someone once noted, however, Henry David, however much he loved nature, went home and slept in his own bed at night. Everett Ruess espoused a relationship with nature that was monastic in its simplicity, wholehearted in its embrace, but ultimately deadly in its execution. Like Ed Abbey, Ruess did not proselytize, did not seek converts. Neither of them believed that the wilderness was meant for everyone. And the dark side of Ruess’ poetry and other writing has always troubled me. There is a lot of sinister imagery, darkness, moonlight, whispering wind, and even hints of his mortality.
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in eighty years nobody has been able to turn up a clue? Of course, the last place Everett was seen alive is now at the bottom of Lake Powell. There have been plenty of theories but no real clues. A really good mystery shouldn’t have a solution, I suppose. When the public finally went looking for the boy, there was no trace at all. Though his two burros were eventually located, happily cropping grass and clueless as to the fate of their master, not another scrap was ever located. No trace of his gear. (Some believed the local Navajos took everything. They might have done him in as well.) Many months later a Navajo tracker claimed to find his boot prints in three
He Was Also Facinated By The Landscape Of Point Lobos And The Pacific Coast At Carmel
