Everett Ruess (
1914-1934) was an artist and writer who explored the
deserts of the
southwest, invariably alone. He was known for cutting
linoleum prints of 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 Sierras,
Utah, and
Arizona. Ruess' father was a
Unitarian minister, and the family moved often.
At the age of 20, he went into the
Utah 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, and remains to this day. Some suspect he accidentally killed himself by falling off a cliff or drowning, whereas others think he was murdered. Still others believe he crossed the
Colorado River to the
Navajo Reservation in Arizona and married a Navajo woman, although this is highly unlikely. In any case, his statements on life and adventure, combined with his isolation and early death, have led to a kind of legendary status.
Ruess' story is best told in his own words, recently republished from the Gibbs Smith edition. His three books are illustrated by the
woodcuts 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. California musician
Dave Alvin wrote and performed a song about Everett Ruess on the album Ashgrove
http://www.davealvin.com/dave/dashgrove/index.html.
At the time that Ruess explored the remote canyons of the
Southwestern United States, aside from
Native Americans, Mormon pioneers and local
cowboys, 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.
One of many possibilities to explain Ruess' disappearance is drowning. Although the region is susceptible to
flash floods as a result of summer thunderstorms, Ruess disappeared sometime during the winter of 1933-34. During the winter season in southern Utah, the intense localized thunderstorms that cause flash flooding are far less likely than in summer, and precipitation that does fall in winter tends to be in the form of snow, especially at the higher elevations of 50-Mile Mountain, near the headwaters of the drainage that feeds into Davis Gulch, where Ruess was last known to be alive. While the possibility of a flash flood can't be completely discounted, drowning is only one of many plausible explanations for his disappearance.
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