A short story of a poet, writer and explorer.
What a handsome and prolific young man to have disappeared before his 21st birthday in 1935.
As I meditate on his affectionate smile, I am focused on finding out what made his life so special. His father, being a Unitarian minister, led him, his mother and younger brother to travel from the East to the West coasts settling in Los Angeles. Already in his formative years, Everett demonstrated a precocious talent for keeping a diary, writing and songs, and sketching on woodblocks. I wonder if at this point, he was developing a spiritual hunger for beauty when he said:
“Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness: Swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks; I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music; I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.”
Rather than exploring his artwork, I found his fascination for beauty and exploration within his 37 quotes. He called this his dream for distance. For example, he said:
“When I go, I leave no trace.” Indeed, he vanished into thin air, and this next quote:
“I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly.”
Everett started his travels in 1931 for the next 4 years. He traveled by horse and donkey through the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. He searched the cliff dwellings and mingled with the Native American tribes, even learning to speak Navajo. On November 20, 1934, Everett entered the Utah desert and was never seen again. Could it be that he had experienced a prior prophetic dream or vision when he spoke these words:
“I shall go on some last wilderness trip, to a place I have known and loved. I shall not return.”
Even his last letter to his brother Waldo infers a prophecy fulfilled saying:
“As to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon. I have not tired of the wilderness. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar, and the star-sprinkled sky to the roof, the obscure and difficult leading into the unknown…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.”
Many efforts were made to discover Everett’s remains; even DNA testing was not sufficient to attain any viable results. Or I could wildly propose that Everett might have been taken up into heaven like Prophet Elijah because of his relentless search for God and the beauty of the wilderness. Either way, I believe his disappearance will be vindicated in time especially when God has recently prophesied that all unsolved mysteries will be exposed and explained.
The secret to Everett’s mysterious and valuable life is contained in these 2 last quotes:
“I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a lone wanderer of the wilderness. God, how the trail lures me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me. After all, the lone trail is best, I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.”
So, it happened.
“Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary; that I was burned and blinded by the desert sun; footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases, lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!”
I will be so happy to meet Everett Ruess in heaven.
A Bing Image
scribeforlove.wordpress.com 