Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

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Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

by David Roberts, Jon Krakauer (Foreword)

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 506 ratings · 122 reviews

Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, with a foreword by Jon Krakauer, is the definitive biography of the artist, writer, and eloquent celebrator of the wilderness whose bold solo explorations of the American West and mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert at age 20 have earned him a large and devoted cult following. More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess st...more Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, with a foreword by Jon Krakauer, is the definitive biography of the artist, writer, and eloquent celebrator of the wilderness whose bold solo explorations of the American West and mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert at age 20 have earned him a large and devoted cult following. More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess stirs the kinds of passion and speculation accorded such legendary doomed American adventurers as Into the Wild’s Chris McCandless and Amelia Earhart.

“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 street car and the 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.” So Everett Ruess wrote in his last letter to his brother. And earlier, in a valedictory poem, ”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!"

Wandering alone with burros and pack horses through California and the Southwest for five years in the early 1930s, on voyages lasting as long as ten months, Ruess also became friends with photographers Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange, swapped prints with Ansel Adams, took part in a Hopi ceremony, learned to speak Navajo, and was among the first "outsiders" to venture deeply into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely a little-known wilderness.

When he vanished without a trace in November 1934, Ruess left behind thousands of pages of journals, letters, and poems, as well as more than a hundred watercolor paintings and blockprint engravings. A Ruess mystique, initiated by his parents but soon enlarged by readers and critics who, struck by his remarkable connection to the wild, likened him to a fledgling John Muir. Today, the Ruess cult has more adherents—and more passionate ones—than at any time in the seven-plus decades since his disappearance. By now, Everett Ruess is hailed as a paragon of solo exploration, while the mystery of his death remains one of the greatest riddles in the annals of American adventure. David Roberts began probing the life and death of Everett Ruess for National Geographic Adventure magazine in 1998. Finding Everett Ruess is the result of his personal journeys into the remote areas explored by Ruess, his interviews with oldtimers who encountered the young vagabond and with Ruess’s closest living relatives, and his deep immersion in Ruess’s writings and artwork. It is an epic narrative of a driven and acutely perceptive young adventurer’s expeditions into the wildernesses of landscape and self-discovery, as well as an absorbing investigation of the continuing mystery of his disappearance.

In this definitive account of Ruess's extraordinary life and the enigma of his vanishing, David Roberts eloquently captures Ruess's tragic genius and ongoing fascination.

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Paperback, 416 pages

Published June 26th 2012 by Broadway (first published July 19th 2011)

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Aug 10, 2011 Melissa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: didnt-finish, mountain-woe

I think I just find David Roberts to be a boring writer. I couldn't get into this. With all the speculation about whether or not Ruess was bipolar, does no one think that maybe he was just nineteen? Any of my writing from the time I was nineteen was probably pretty manic depressive, and I think swinging from one extreme to the next emotionally is pretty much a definition of "life from 13-20 years of age." At least.

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Sep 26, 2011 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-mt-bookpile

If, like me, you know nothing about Everett Ruess, here's a quick intro: Everett was 17 in 1931 when he decided to travel throughout the Southwest, he made three trips and disappeared in 1934, leaving behind several diaries, paintings, woodcuts, poems and a mystery that's lasted over 70 years.

The majority of his childhood was conventional, the exception being his family's keeping of, and reading to each other, personal diaries. Given that this was the early 1910s and 20s, the family moved as Ru...more

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May 07, 2013 Jeremy Goldsmith rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have been interested in the mystery of ER since I first read Into The Wild, when I was fifteen. I found this book online and was really looking forward to reading it. It did not disappoint. I enjoyed the way Roberts told the story of Ruess through the surviving journals and letters to family and friends. I remember reading to the point of ER's disappearance and noticed that I was only half through the book. I wasn't sure what else could be said after the disappearance that could fill 200 pages...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Jessi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, appealing-characteristic-character, nonfiction, audiobook

I read this book based on the recommendation of a friend who spoke highly of Everett Ruess as a person similar to John Muir. I interpreted this as him being a naturalist and protector of nature, however it was more that Ruess was a traveler and, from the title of another book about the subject, a vagabond.
I didn't know much about this book other than it was on a topic that I wanted to learn more about. I wondered how the author managed to write such a long book about a fella who had such a short...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Aliza rated it 2 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this as I was reading it (at least the first half) but the more I think about it, the more problematic I find it. Roberts did a nice job writing about Everett's wanderings, character and disappearance, but the second half is basically a waste, with Roberts detailing his efforts to find Everett, apparently succeeding but then having things not turn out as they seemed. It seemed like a colossal waste of time given that it amounted to nothing in the end. Another problem: Roberts makes hug...more

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Jun 27, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the strangest true story of one of the few but persistent men, who in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; found a solace with nature in some of the most inhospitable places on earth. The Sonora Desert has been a proving ground for some individuals with incurable lung and very disturbed mental states. The great American naturalist, John Muir, came to the Sonoran due to a very bad bout of TB and lived a long life simply searching for waterholes and taking notes on hs daily searches. Ru...more

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May 12, 2012 Natalie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Everett Ruess was the first Chris McCandless, artist, aesthetic-naturalist explorer and vagabond young man of the century. Like Chris, he rejected the status quo for a non-materialistic life on the edge, living in the wilderness of the southwest in Arizona and Utah, traveling around with his burros and painting.

In fact, Jon Krakhauer, who wrote about Chris McCandless' short life and death in the wilderness of Alaska, pens the introduction to this book. And if you liked that book, you'll love thi...more Everett Ruess was the first Chris McCandless, artist, aesthetic-naturalist explorer and vagabond young man of the century. Like Chris, he rejected the status quo for a non-materialistic life on the edge, living in the wilderness of the southwest in Arizona and Utah, traveling around with his burros and painting.

In fact, Jon Krakhauer, who wrote about Chris McCandless' short life and death in the wilderness of Alaska, pens the introduction to this book. And if you liked that book, you'll love this.

You find out that Everett's had a following of people wondering just who was this young man, and what ever happened to him? Why haven't they been able to find his remains? Why is it so shrouded in mystery?

When I bought this, I was a little hesitant because there's more than one book written about him, and I wondered whose account would be the best. Russo allegedly wrote the first, but then there's this one by David Roberts and another one just as new by another author.

Roberts breaks this book down into a few sections. The first section discusses Ruess' family life, how he came to be an artist/writer/naturalist, and then it moves through his three big journeys based on 1. his letters to his parents and his 2. journal. Towards the end of part one, my only complaint is that it begins to drag the last 40 or so pages.

But Roberts reels you in with the ending of part one, where all of a sudden, you want to know not only the conspiracy theories about what happened to Ruess, but what archeologists and forensic investigators have found.

These last two sections examining gossip/conspiracy/locals/and Russo's speculations left me sitting on the edge of my chair.

Did Ruess fall off a cliff, his body hidden for over seven decades? Did rustlers get him? Did he drown in the Colorado River?

And finally, the last section left me glued to the book as Roberts investigates the last, and one of the most important discoveries on the Navajo reservation.

The only think I would have liked to have seen was more maps, maps of the general area, of the gulches and routes Everett took. Glancing at a map, "Escalante" just doesn't give the reader much to go on.

It's official. Now, I'm in on the Everett Cult. I'm even planning my next vacation close to Davis Canyon.
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Nov 10, 2011 Jenny Brown rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Painfully poorly written and filled with cliches, this is a strong candidate for worst book of the year published by a major press.

The author never once presents a single fact to back up his oft repeated claims that Everett Reuss was an important writer and a lover of the wilderness who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Thoreau. That claim, repeated more than once, makes me wonder if Roberts has ever read Thoreau. Poor, lost Ruess stands in the same relationship to Thoreau as Justi...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Steve Howes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is such an incredible story. I'm not sure where to begin. Everett Ruess was a young artist/writer/explorer who disappeared in 1934 at the age of 20 while exploring along the Utah/Arizona border. His remains have never been found and speculation continues regarding the circumstances of his disappearance and death. Many have tried and failed to solve the mystery. The first part of the book is dedicated to finding Everett Ruess as a person through his writing, art, and personal letters to fami...more

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Oct 02, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011-nonfiction

Although he doesn't actually come out and say so, David Roberts is probably the single most important writer who has brought Everett Ruess to the attention of the general public. He did so first by bringing Everett to the attention of his friend Jon Krakauer who included a chapter on Everett in 'Into the Wild'. Then, Roberts wrote two articles a decade a part for National Geographic Adventure magazine on Everett.

Finding Everett Ruess is really well done. The first part is a dispassionate biogra...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-that-reads-like-fiction

A fascinating account of the life and wonderings of Everett Ruess, a young man who led a vagabond life, roaming about the western U.S. in the early 1930s, mostly in the canyons and deserts of the southwest. I had heard of Ruess from Krakauer's "Into the Wild," but really knew very little about him, but like Chris McCandless, Ruess wanted to live a solitary, simple life, constantly exploring and reveling in the natural world. In the early 1930s, the southwest was very remote, populated mostly by...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Kerry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adventure, nonfiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I first heard about Everett Ruess on NPR, where the author David Roberts was interviewed about his book, Finding Everett Ruess. I thought, “Hey, that sounds fascinating!” but since I was driving I didn’t remember the details and upon getting home, didn’t look it up. However, the name stuck with me, and so did the story of the 20-year-old that went missing in the desert Southwest wilderness in 1934.

The first half of the book is a reconstruction of Ruess’ life based on his letters, diaries, and ot...more I first heard about Everett Ruess on NPR, where the author David Roberts was interviewed about his book, Finding Everett Ruess. I thought, “Hey, that sounds fascinating!” but since I was driving I didn’t remember the details and upon getting home, didn’t look it up. However, the name stuck with me, and so did the story of the 20-year-old that went missing in the desert Southwest wilderness in 1934.

The first half of the book is a reconstruction of Ruess’ life based on his letters, diaries, and other primary materials, while the 2nd half covers all the search efforts and speculations about his fate.

This is a well researched, and dare I say, “balanced” book, where the author acknowledged Everett’s legacy without shying away from his “faults and foibles.” However, the title is contradictory, since after many theories, false leads, and even a sensational “discovery”, Ruess (or what happened to him) was never “found.” His missing remains an "unresolved" mystery till this day.

Since I took a road trip to the desert Southwest in 2010 and loved every minute of it, I was particularly interested in this book. I have been to, driven through, or at least remembered many of the locations, such as Monument Valley, Tuba City, Keyenta, etc. I felt as if Everett were a kindred spirit due to our mutual admiration for the striking landscape, the vermillion sandstone buttes and spires, and the open desert horizon. Of course, he took that spirit to a whole new level, while I was just some tourist.

Roberts aptly called Ruess “a precocious artist, a writer of promise, a romantic visionary verging on the mystical, a bold and resourceful solo explorer of the wilderness, and in some sense the first true celebrator of the beauty of the Southwest for its own sake.” Ruess’ blockprints are indeed excellent (esp. given that they were made when he was between 16 and 20). I personally find his writing, while lyrical, at times pompous, grandiose, and melodramatic, but again, amazing for a teenager (I have seen worse writing from college seniors). Some of his most memorable euphoric lines include “Once more I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty” and “I am overwhelmed by the appalling strangeness and intricacy of the curiously tangled knot of life.”

Despite the accolades, Roberts didn’t pull any punches when it comes to Everett’s flaws. He described how Everett’s parents unfailingly financially sponsored his vagabondage during the Great Depression when they were struggling to make ends meet, how Everett took their generosity for granted due to his “streak of self-indulgence fueled by a sense of entitlement.”

Like most of the “wilderness explorers” we have read about, Ruess was a loner that craved companionship and “true deep friendship.” He once wrote “I don’t have much trouble getting along with people, but I have the greatest difficulty in finding the sort of companionship I want.” Hmmm… I wonder why. Maybe he was too willful and selfish, and true companionship is not all about you, but about what you can bring to the relationship? In his correspondence with family and his practically only friend, Bill Jacobs, he often assumed the moral high ground, with full on distain for their lives, openly “contemptuous of his unambitious pals”. No wonder Bill turned him down or let him down over and over again, because people don’t want to travel or be with someone who doesn’t respect them.

In fact, this is the problem with all the “wilderness explorers” I’ve read about so far, whether it’s McCandless (Into the Wild), Morgensten (The Last Season), or Ruess. They all regarded their lifestyle as superior to that of the common masses. They all wanted their partner to be just like them and to adopt their lifestyle. Did they want to contribute something to the relationship that was outside their comfort zone? Were they willing to make sacrifices, compromises, or accommodation for the other person? NO. They were all selfish human beings with a God complex that made poor partners.

Roberts made a fair assessment of his character, “One of the least attractive aspects of Everett’s five-year swagger across California and the Southwest is the way that, surrounded by the detritus of the Depression, he managed for the most part to ignore the hopelessness and poverty he saw at every hand. And when he did not ignore it, he sometimes railed against the stricken men and women whose paths he crossed as if their blighted dreams and everyday misery were their own fault, the natural outcome of failed imagination and sedentary torpor. All this, while Christopher and Stella [his parents] were subsidizing his endless ramble.” Touche! I must say I found his arrogance downright repelling.

In the book he was compared to John Muir. I think this is an overstatement. Maybe Ruess peaked too early; if he had started the journey when he was a bit more mature, he might have reached the height of Muir. However, the whole time I was reading this book, my only impression is that 1) Ruess worshipped beauty for beauty’s sake with a blind idealistic fervor, and 2) he is a taker not a giver. Ruess took everything in sight: he took the lives of rattlesnakes, he robbed the Native American sites, he ignored the sacredness of the Navajo hogans… He took the beauty of the Southwest and turned it into art for his own gain (selling his art), but he never bothered to give back to the land. Had it ever occurred to him that there was more to just appreciating the beauty? Did he put in any preservation effort like Muir did? No. He loved to wander, pure and simple. I don’t fault him for that, since he was so young; I just think that comparing him to Muir is an insult to the latter.

To conclude: recommended for people that love the “wilderness adventure” genre.(less)

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Sep 15, 2011 Gretchen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

This book is about the real life story of Everett Ruess, an young wanderer, who in the 1930s went out on his own, and explored the Southwestern desert area for months and months at a time on his own. He did this from the age of 16 to the age of 20 when he disappeared in the Southwest and was never seen again. This book tells the story of this life and of those voyages up to when he disappeared. During his travels, he wrote, painted, etc and these writings have inspired people ever since. He was...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Christiane rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, non-fiction

I had never heard of Everett Ruess until reading this book. He was an artist, adventurer, and vagabond who travelled around the American Southwest in the 1930’s and disappeared mysteriously in 1934 at only 20 years old. Not all teens may be willing or interested enough to wade through all 394 pages of this book, but Everett seems just the exact sort of character that would be appealing to teens. He left home at 16 and spent months at a time wandering the wilderness along with just a burro or two...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Andromeda M31 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Americans love to deify the lost, young wanderer. There is terrible envy in the Dave Alvin lyrics on Everett Ruess: "You give your dreams away as you get older / Oh, but I never gave up mine / And they’ll never find my body, boys / Or understand my mind."

In Finding Everett Ruess, Roberts chronicles the life of the youthful Everett Ruess, a young poet artist wanna-be, who, mooching off his parents during the Great Depression, would buy himself two burros and camping supplies and wander off into...more Americans love to deify the lost, young wanderer. There is terrible envy in the Dave Alvin lyrics on Everett Ruess: "You give your dreams away as you get older / Oh, but I never gave up mine / And they’ll never find my body, boys / Or understand my mind."

In Finding Everett Ruess, Roberts chronicles the life of the youthful Everett Ruess, a young poet artist wanna-be, who, mooching off his parents during the Great Depression, would buy himself two burros and camping supplies and wander off into the desert and mountains for weeks at a time in search of beauty, inspiration, and himself. Everett climbs mountains, befriends fellow travelers, Mormons, and Indians, and traverses the few spots of wilderness left in the world with sketchpad and diary in hand. Manic-depressive, bipolar, suicidal, misanthropic, homosexual, or perhaps simply a teenager struck with wanderlust, Everett's soul is bared in his letters home and his diaries, which, like his artwork, have become famous long after his body has been swallowed by the Utah Desert. In death, Everett becomes the stuff of legend, and devotees devour what pieces of his work exist while traipsing off into Escalante canyons, hoping to find an answer to his disappearance.

Roberts writes a portrait of Everett, detailing his life before his legendary wilderness excursions, and analyzing and presenting extracts from Everett's writing during his wandering years, and carefully follows his physical location throughout his journey. Or, Roberts discusses what writings he can find. It's evident throughout the story that lost diaries and forgotten letters would have allowed a hopefully clearer picture of Everett, but alas these scriptures are lost to time and hoarders and thieves come and gone.

The first half the book is the story of Everett's life. Roberts presents a fervently chronological story, explaining exact locations of Everett's wanderings and his relationship to his family. Roberts stops short of over analysis, he presents what he finds, but never over stretches his imagination. And his lamentations for the lost works are tangible, and a third of the way through, the reader understands his frustration at the missing documents. Everett becomes ever more available to the reader as the years pass by. Initially, I could not decide if Everette was competent. He was clearly a city boy in love with the beauty of the outdoors, but he never lets his inexperience, lack of funds, and several dangerous close calls, stop him for forging ever onward. As the years pass, his writing matures, and in his final foray into the wilds, I felt I had finally gotten to know Everett from his letters, when suddenly the man begins to appear within the boy. The reader is brought into Everett's nature worship in his detailed descriptions of sunsets and desert flowers.

And with that feeling of intimacy, of understanding, developing within the reader, half way through the book Everett is lost to the desert. It is abrupt, startling, and brilliantly placed. The last communication with Everett is the mysterious "NEMO 1934" scrawled onto walls and crevices in the wilderness.

The third fourth of the book is painful saga of a family's search for their lost son. The ghost of Everett haunts his parents. Strange charlatans creep out from the mid-west to tempt money and Everett's valuable writings from his family, leaving Everett's parents tantalizing lies of possible Everett sitings. Rumors have him living with Navajo, or running to Mexico. As Roberts systematically goes through the correspondence of each of these con men who weasel money out of Everett's parents and his brother, the heartache and loss the family feels is palpable. The book becomes almost too grossly intimate, and I'm not sure I was prepared to feel so close to a family's very personal agony.

The last fourth of the book describes the modern search for Everett, lead by the author and other outdoorsmen. It is a strange mystery, involving xenophobic Mormons, superstitious and noble Navajo, and old family stories, which results in a grave, but not an answer. If anything, the last part of the book allows the reader to glimpse the forgotten corners of the US. There is a different world, out in those hills, and it has little to do with ours.

I was surprised how I quickly I sped through the book. However, in certain wanderings, where Everett's descriptions are lacking or lost, Roberts provides only names of the places traveled. As someone who has backpacked through the Sierra and around Utah, I believe the reader deserved further visuals of the landscapes Everett moved through, or at least basic geologic characterization. Roberts wisely leaves the prose descriptions to Everett, but the setting that so inspired Everett is important to his story, and I would be afraid the average reader would miss something vital. The black and white photos of Davis Gulch are not enough. Images of Everett's wood cuts are also important, but are not within the book.

Everett is easy to empathize with, even with his strange penchant for killing rattlesnakes, his morbid thoughts, and lonely nature. All of us want to identify with the man who gives up everything to follow his dream.

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Oct 20, 2012 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you love the outdoors, you must find Everett Ruess.

He is an inspirational figure cloaked in a mysterious story. He brooked no rationalizing away of his dream. Of course, he wasn't always at peace. But he left a record with his words, his art and his life that continues to inspire today. All lovers of wilderness have a little of Everett in them, that spark that pushes you away from cities to reacquaint yourself with another type of order.

David Roberts tells the story well. His style is clear...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Fox rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, 2012, biography, non-fiction, own, mystery

This is another book I feel quite lucky to have won through the first-reads program. I can honestly say (though I am loath to admit it) that I had no idea who exactly Everett Ruess was when I began to read this book. Worse, I hadn't read Into Thin Air yet either, though it has been on my to-read shelf for ages. I went into this book with no expectations, and came out of it a bit bewildered.

Having been to some of the places Ruess explored in his lifetime, and having shared in some of his fascinat...more

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Jul 05, 2011 J.R. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-autobiography

Worldwide, thousands of people go missing everyday. Some are victims of crime or mishap. Others might be suicides. Some are simply gone for reasons that defy explanation.

Many families have examples. One in my own family boarded a train in 1882 to join her husband in another part of the state. That was the last anyone ever heard of her. She disappeared without a trace.

Many of these examples fade into oblivion. Some few—such as Everett Ruess—become legend.

David Roberts has done a mostly good job o...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In 1934 a 20 yr old young man, Everett Ruess disappeared into the desert of Utah without a trace. Everett was an artist and a writer who had roamed the beautiful and dangerous southwestern canyons and desert for five years. He was a loaner who had only sporadic contact with people, but he was faithful to write his parents and always update them on his whereabouts, his plans and his adventures. Everett's disappearance sparked a national interest in this odd young man, but with no clues, the inter...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Debra Lowman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have to admit, outside of Into the Wild I had never heard of Everett Ruess. Evidently, Everett was 17 in 1931 when he left home to travel throughout the Southwest. He disappeared in Utah in 1934 but there is a fairly good account of his last few days, although he was never heard from again nor was his body ever discovered.

Ruess was the son of fairly hippie parents who encouraged him in writing and art and he left behind several diaries and pieces of art which have surrounded and fueled the my...more

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Sep 23, 2011 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have only recently become aware of the mystery of Everett Ruess's disappearance in southeastern Utah and, being of a somewhat obsessive personality, I've been working my way through every book I can get my hands on. I really enjoyed this book for a fresher perspective on the mystery, especially considering the discovery made in the course of Mr. Roberts' research into this decades old mystery. At first it seems Everett is finally found, but complications ensue and the end turns out to be not e...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Mark Stevens rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It’s hard to warm up to the self-indulgent Everett Ruess, but there’s no denying he was an individual who followed his heart. It’s hard to watch him take advantage of his parents to pursue his wanderlust (even that term seems to mild) but he’s a unique spirit and reading about his treks—and thinking about how he put his wanderings together—is compelling. If you know the country in the Four Corners area, Ruess’s hikes and months-long travels around the inhospitable landscape are even more incredi...more It’s hard to warm up to the self-indulgent Everett Ruess, but there’s no denying he was an individual who followed his heart. It’s hard to watch him take advantage of his parents to pursue his wanderlust (even that term seems to mild) but he’s a unique spirit and reading about his treks—and thinking about how he put his wanderings together—is compelling. If you know the country in the Four Corners area, Ruess’s hikes and months-long travels around the inhospitable landscape are even more incredible. The conditions must have been brutal.

Roberts’ portrait is neutral, clear-eyed. He works to separate myth from reality. Ruess is a warts-and-all character, “almost arrogant.” His letters requesting items from his parents “smacks of entitlement.” He is vagabond but if he’s a paragon of solo adventuring, one hopes he is not a role model for how to treat friends or casual acquaintances or family, for that matter. As Roberts acknowledges, he is a “complicated and articulate young adventurer” and it’s easy to see why Ruess’s life developed a cult following. Of course, a mysterious death always helps and it’s the last sections of this book, as Roberts becomes directly involved in the search of Ruess’s remains, that the mystery elements of this account really take off. Roberts is equally upfront about his role in the zealous drive to find the spot where Ruess perished and help tell the story about how he died. Hats off to Roberts for looking hard in the mirror on this one.

If you enjoyed “Into the Wild,” you will likely enjoy this, too. Christopher McCandless and Everett Ruess were joined at the spiritual hip, as Jon Krakauer points out in “Into the Wild” and as he recaps in the forward here. There are certain people who are just born to live outdoors and who are completely fearless in the effort to place themselves, completely alone, in nature. For me, that was the real pleasure of reading “Finding Everett Ruess,” to think about what propels explorers of any age to venture off on their own and try to capture the experience in words or art.
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May 19, 2013 Shellie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Everett raveled by food and burro 1930- 45 in the wilderness of southern Utah, New Mexico, Arizona his body has not been found. He was 20 when he dies.
The middle part of the book really dragged on but the beginning and end were much quicker to read.
The Utah connection makes him an icon in some parts, a lot of his history is kept in the Marriot Library at the U of U. There is much controversy over his death. There is a large cult following.
He was a want-to-be writer and artist, his untimely deat...more

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Nov 27, 2011 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love this book. The reviews here are very mixed because it seems like you are either inspired by young wilderness romantics like Everett Ruess (or Into the Wild's Chris McCandless), or you find them annoying, naive, and a waste of attention. I'm solidly in the first camp. Ruess's solo treks through the Southwest were amazing. In the early 1930s, when Ruess was 17-20, he wandered hundreds of miles through lonely canyons for months at a time, accompanied only by burros. That's awesome. As a subu...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

Like many people, I first learned about Everett Ruess from a chapter in Jon Kraukauer's book, Into the Wild. He drew many comparisons between Chris McCandless and Everett Ruess, a young man of 21 who disappeared in the canyons of the Southwest in 1934. His body was never found, despite his family's work in organizing searches and tracking down supposed "sightings" for the rest of their lives. Using journals and letters Everett wrote to friends and family, David Roberts tells the story of Everett...more

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Sep 14, 2011 Kristi rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I could not get into this book. I gave it 3 chapters (roughly 1/3 of the book) and I kept getting frustrated. I feel bad for his family not getting closure, but I feel that he acted like a spoiled child. Writing letters home while wandering through the Southwest asking for food & money & getting upset that they wanted him to come home. I didn't enjoy reading his letters where he kept speaking bad about the Native Americans. He was going through old burial grounds & looting items (eve...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Tina Hamilton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you liked Jon Krauker's "Into the Wild" this book might appeal to you. Another young man (in the 1930s) also had a desire to live in the wilderness. This book is interesting because many of Ruess's letters, artwork, journals, and so on exist are are often quoted from. Off and on over the years, there has been interest and even cult followings about Ruess. Would he have matured into a great writer or naturalist? Did he achieve what we all often dream about: explore, write, draw, and live witho...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Marguerite rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had never heard of Everett Ruess and actually bought this book by accident. I did enjoy learning about this overindulged young man. However, I can't believe that this book really had an editor, and I can't understand how any publisher could accept the manuscript. This book was everywhere - jumping from year to year with no rhyme or reason, and repeating entire ideas multiple times throughout the book.

It's just unbelievable that this poorly written book could make it to print. It looked more li...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Leslie Klingensmith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just could NOT get into this. Normally I love books about extreme adventurers, such as Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild". Krakauer wrote the forward to this, and he and Roberts are backpacking and exploring partners. It theoretically had all the elements that SHOULD have made it compelling - descriptions of breathtaking beauty in remote pockets of the earth that few people see, eccentric people, and a mystery seven plus decades old. But go figure, it just did not grab me. Kind of a snoozer, real...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Kim rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

I was so excited when I found out I had won a copy of this book through first-reads. This is the first book I have won through the program. When I received the book, I knew I had made a mistake in entering for this particular book... From the very beginning it was boring. I felt as if I was in history class watching one of those documentaries that makes you fall asleep. I knew nothing about Ruess before reading this book, and while he presented an interesting mystery I don't feel the rest of his...more

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About David Roberts

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.

David Roberts is the author of seventeen books on mountaineering, adventure, and the history of the American Southwest. His essays and articles have appeared in National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure, and The Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. He lives i...more

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Once They Moved Like The Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, And The Apache Wars

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title link	preview: Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer
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Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer

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