Everett Ruess: Vagabond/JournalsGibbs Smith, 2009 - Nature Everett Ruess--a bold teenage adventurer, artist, and writer--tramped around the Sierra Nevada, the California coast, and the desert wilderness of the Southwest between 1930 and 1934. At the age of 20, he mysteriously vanished into the barren Utah desert. Ruess has become an icon for modern-day adventurers and seekers. His search for ultimate beauty and adventure is chronicled in two books that contain remarkable collections of his writings, extracted from his journals and from letters written to family and friends. Both books are reprinted here in their entirety. |
Contents
| 15 | |
| 23 | |
| 39 | |
| 83 | |
1933 | 107 |
1934 | 145 |
Everett Ruess Is Missing | 199 |
Speculations in Navajoland | 215 |
To the End of the Horizon | 231 |
Afterword | 235 |
Notes | 236 |
Foreword | 245 |
Introduction | 247 |
Arizona 1932 | 263 |
California 1933 | 331 |
Wherever He May Be | 225 |
Common terms and phrases
Arizona aspens awhile beautiful Betsy Bill Blockprint boys breakfast burros camp cliff dwellings climbed clouds Colorado Colorado River cottonwoods Creek crossed Davis Gulch Dear desert dollars Dorothea Lange drove edge Escalante Escalante River Everett Ruess fire fish forest friends gave Grand Canyon Grandma grass green hill hobbled hogan Hopi horses Indian July June Kayenta kyaks Lake letters looked Love from Everett Lukachukai lunch meadow Mesa miles Monument Valley morning Mother mule Navajo Mountain night Nuflo Pacer pack painting Park passed pine rain ranch ranger reached ride ridge River road rock rode rope saddle blankets San Francisco San Juan River Sherman Tree side Sierras snow soon steep Stella stopped stream sunset supper talked thru told took trading trail trees Utah Waldo watched Wetherill Willow Meadow wind wrote Yesterday Yosemite young
Popular passages
Page 411 - Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang, Ah whence and whither flown again, who knows!
Page 63 - Those were great days at your ranch—idyllic days. There I seemed to feel the true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, lying in the long, cool grass or on a flat-topped rock, looking up at
Page 411 - flies; One thing is certain and the rest is lies; The flower that once has blown, forever dies.
Page 156 - found themselves. This was not so much from indolence.. . as from an inherited caution and respect. It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as
Page 156 - Indians] seemed to have none of the European ‘s desire to “master” nature, to arrange and re—create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which
Page 411 - that no soul can see into another. He feels alone when he thinks, alone when he writes. Whatever one does, one is always alone in this world. That's what he means. He is right. One may be always explaining oneself¿ one is never understood.
Page 195 - are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty and carry it with me in things that are a constant delight, like my gorgeous Navajo saddle blankets, and the silver bracelet on my wrist, whose three
Page 156 - hunted, it was with the same discretion; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter. They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and
Page 156 - treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it. May 2 Kayenta, Arizona Dear Mrs. [Emily] Ormond,
Page 194 - have fallen in love with a Mormon girl, but I think it's a good thing I didn't. I've become a little too different from most of the rest of the world.” No doubt he was attractive to the many