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Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer
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 old-timers 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.
"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 old-timers 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.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
286 people are currently reading
3253 people want to read
About the author
David Roberts
61 books222 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.
David Roberts is the award-winning author of twenty-nine books about mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His most recent publication, Alone on the Wall, was written with world-class rock climber Alex Honnold, whose historic feats were featured in the film Free Solo.
See this thread for more information.
David Roberts is the award-winning author of twenty-nine books about mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His most recent publication, Alone on the Wall, was written with world-class rock climber Alex Honnold, whose historic feats were featured in the film Free Solo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 325 reviews
January 23, 2012
I'm not sure what to make of this book. The story of Everett Ruess might be interesting; maybe the author's way of telling it was just boring. Or maybe my irritation was with Ruess himself: his selfish entitlement in demanding his parent's financial support of his wanderings for four years, his pedantic descriptions of the wonders he encountered in his travels, his racist attitude toward the Navaho people, his cavalier destruction of ancient artifacts and wildlife sacred to the Native People. And who cares whether he was hetero-, bi-, or homo-sexual. He did come in contact with celebrities of the Great Depression Era, like Edward Weston, Muir and Dorothea Lange. Maybe that's why he has his own web-page, even though he's been dead for 75 years where you can buy a coffee cup with his photo. And why did I find this young man's tragic story so annoying? Everett Ruess reminded me of so-called friends/leeches in my youth in the late 60's/early 70's who professed to be too artistic to work a "straight" job and felt entitled to ask their financially-struggling friends to support their lifestyle until they "made it". You read it and decide.
April 9, 2020
4 Stars for Finding Everett Ruess (audiobook) read by Arthur Morey. A really interesting story. If you liked Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer I would recommend this. Krakauer wrote the introduction to this story too...4
August 10, 2011
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.
November 11, 2011
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 Justin Bieber does to Bob Dylan. Mind you, both Dylan and Thoreau were writting dynamite stuff at age 20. Reuss's stuff reads like what you'd read in any high school literary magazine.
As presented here, Ruess's journeys through the wilderness seem to have involved a lot of traveling around tourist spots driving elderly burros to their death interlaced with periods of hanging around the American outback sponging off anyone he could batten down on. He defaces ruins, robs graves, insults Native Americans, and does stupid things on the edges of steep cliffs of the sort that appear to thrill "adventure" lovers whose favorite reads always conclude with the hero dying a vainglorious death as he pursues some meaningless ego-trophy. To top it off, Ruess, who we are supposed to see as an iconic nature lover, is cruel to his dog, who he abandons.
Ruess's parents, god bless them, seem to have been born with "Exploit ME!" tatooed on their foreheads. The story of people "finding him" is mostly the story of how one shyster after the other rips off the vanished boy's long-suffering but always credulous parents.
If there really is a "cult" around Everett Reuss, as the author assures us there is at least 27 times either a) Ruess really is another Justin Bieber or b) Roberts did not do him justice. That said, usually whenever I hate a biography this much it gets nominated for a National Book Award.
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 Justin Bieber does to Bob Dylan. Mind you, both Dylan and Thoreau were writting dynamite stuff at age 20. Reuss's stuff reads like what you'd read in any high school literary magazine.
As presented here, Ruess's journeys through the wilderness seem to have involved a lot of traveling around tourist spots driving elderly burros to their death interlaced with periods of hanging around the American outback sponging off anyone he could batten down on. He defaces ruins, robs graves, insults Native Americans, and does stupid things on the edges of steep cliffs of the sort that appear to thrill "adventure" lovers whose favorite reads always conclude with the hero dying a vainglorious death as he pursues some meaningless ego-trophy. To top it off, Ruess, who we are supposed to see as an iconic nature lover, is cruel to his dog, who he abandons.
Ruess's parents, god bless them, seem to have been born with "Exploit ME!" tatooed on their foreheads. The story of people "finding him" is mostly the story of how one shyster after the other rips off the vanished boy's long-suffering but always credulous parents.
If there really is a "cult" around Everett Reuss, as the author assures us there is at least 27 times either a) Ruess really is another Justin Bieber or b) Roberts did not do him justice. That said, usually whenever I hate a biography this much it gets nominated for a National Book Award.
September 15, 2011
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 (even thought it was not illegal in the 30's) there is a moral judgement that I just don't think he grasped. I could see in the research that there were signs that he could have ended his own life, but again, I sympathize with this family because they are left with no closure.
September 1, 2017
I'm not quite sure why there is a cult of idol worship for selfish young men who tramp off into the wilderness on their own. Everett Ruess disappeared in the 1930's in the red rock country of Southern Utah after spending several years popping around the West, completely financially supported by his parents (in the midst of the Great Depression, mind you), and considering himself an artist. He *regularly* destroys Native artifacts and sites, breaking into ancient hogans, carving his name on artifacts and walls, and all the while applauding himself for "discovering" them when, in actuality, he most likely did no such thing. Of course, he wasn't intent on mapping the places he visited, but wanted to claim them all the same. As a well-off white boy in the 1930's he may not be expected to understand the Navajo and other tribal way of life, but he certainly makes very little attempt to learn, despite a few forays into "becoming friends" he still can't fathom Native life prior to the white invasion of their territory, and can't understand how said invasion might have altered their customs, culture, and very existence.
Honestly, Ruess just isn't that interesting. (And, frankly, neither is Chris McCandless of "Into the Wild" fame.) He's another entitled white teenager who got lost on purpose and thinks he's a wilderness king, despite being unable to survive without support from his parents (who regularly send money and supplies, and who he regularly lashes out at for not sending enough money) and the ranchers of the Southwest who take him in more than once. I'm so done with this genre, I'm done with turning these self-centered wannabe explorers into some kind of legend or larger-than-life personality.
Honestly, Ruess just isn't that interesting. (And, frankly, neither is Chris McCandless of "Into the Wild" fame.) He's another entitled white teenager who got lost on purpose and thinks he's a wilderness king, despite being unable to survive without support from his parents (who regularly send money and supplies, and who he regularly lashes out at for not sending enough money) and the ranchers of the Southwest who take him in more than once. I'm so done with this genre, I'm done with turning these self-centered wannabe explorers into some kind of legend or larger-than-life personality.
October 3, 2011
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 biography of Ruess. Roberts strengths as a mountaineer who has himself extensively explored the same ground as Everett allows him to put into context Everett's achievements; especially Everett's extended solo travels at a very young age into more-or-less unknown land. Roberts also brings out Everett's talents as a young writer and artist.
The next section of the book explores the mysterious disappearance of Everett in the back country at the age of 20. Everett has never been seen since Nov of 1934. Roberts explores all that is known of the searches, clues and theories of the next 50 to 60 years.
The last sections read like a fast paced detective novel as Roberts talks about the latest discoveries and clues. Everett seems to be almost on the edge of discovery. Everett Ruess remains the mysterious missing young artist, adventurer and writer.
Finding Everett Ruess is really well done. The first part is a dispassionate biography of Ruess. Roberts strengths as a mountaineer who has himself extensively explored the same ground as Everett allows him to put into context Everett's achievements; especially Everett's extended solo travels at a very young age into more-or-less unknown land. Roberts also brings out Everett's talents as a young writer and artist.
The next section of the book explores the mysterious disappearance of Everett in the back country at the age of 20. Everett has never been seen since Nov of 1934. Roberts explores all that is known of the searches, clues and theories of the next 50 to 60 years.
The last sections read like a fast paced detective novel as Roberts talks about the latest discoveries and clues. Everett seems to be almost on the edge of discovery. Everett Ruess remains the mysterious missing young artist, adventurer and writer.
October 3, 2011
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 family and friends. The remainder of the book attempts to describe efforts to find the remains of the physical Everett Ruess since his disappearance. Everett Ruess has been compared to Chris McCandless of "Into the Wild" written by Jon Krakauer. Both were driven to be alone in the wilderness. However, to me Everett is different in that he left a body of work (poems, block prints, and writings) that describe the beauty he saw in the Southwest at a time when it was still relatively unexplored and unappreciated. We also know what happened to Chris McCandless. This book combines elements of psychology, history, archeology, art, and CSI. The thing that really impressed me was the fact that Everett could produce such wonderful works while living in primitive conditions and maintain relatively frequent correspondence with family and friends when post offices were few and far beween and he was constantly on the move. I guess the US postal service was more efficient back then.
August 28, 2021
Wanderlust. It's one of my favorite terms and Everett Ruess was the definition of the word. Ruess is the kind of person that typically just gets lost to history, but instead he's become a lasting icon for those who want to be immersed in nature, to see what many will never see, and who are most happy alone in the wild. I was first introduced to him via a magazine article years ago when it was thought somebody finally solved the cold case of his disappearance, but alas, it's still a mystery. So who was he and why is he so captivating to so many? Ruess was an aspiring artist and wanderer in the early 1930s in the southwestern US. At 16 he left his home and family to explore, typically with a few pack animals. He would go into the wild for months at a time, only occasionally spending a few days in a small, nothing town to resupply or find work for a day or two, before returning to nature. He did this each year through age 20 in 1934 for months at time, sometimes for upwards of 10 months. On his last trek, he disappeared and the mystery of his disappearance is unsolved today. Normally this alone wouldn't be enough to keep public interest, but what makes a lasting impression of Ruess are his art, diary's, and letters. He wrote religiously to friends, his brother, his parents, and other acquaintances, much of which still survive today 90 years later and which includes deep thoughts, poetry, and beautiful descriptions. Many compare Ruess to John Muir, which is flattering, and makes one wonder what he'd have become had he not disappeared at such an young age. Roberts put together a great history and profile in his book through all the written materials he could gather and probes the disappearance into a page turner.
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. - Everett Ruess
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. - Everett Ruess
September 11, 2025
'Finding Everett Ruess', or not as the case may be. Like many others, I too was a bit vexed by the story which deals with the disappearance of the 20-year old back in 1934, somewhere in southeast Utah in or near the boundary of the Navajo Indian Reservation. Vexed mainly because Ruess was not a particularly admirable or even very interesting young man. The word 'entitled' has become a bit worn in recent years as a segment of people use the term as a slur often against people they happen to disagree with. But 'if the shoe fits', and the young Ruess was certainly something close to that, 'spoiled' used to be the term. Either way, I too found both him and his travels sightly boring and made me wonder why Roberts even bothered, other than the Ruess story is something of a legend in the Southwest. Roberts has has written numerous books on mountain climbing, his own and others. I read his autobiography 'On the Ridge Between Life and Death: A Climbing Life Reexamined' several years ago and found it compelling, so I stuck with this one.
Even if you didn't care much for young Ruess through most of the book, the mystery of his disappearance becomes a bit of a page turner. If nothing else I became more familiar with that desert Southwest region over which young Ruess traveled and I may never get to. Well, I did see the Grand Canyon once. Anyway, might say 2.5 stars but rounded up for the perseverance of the author, guess you'd expect that from a lifelong climber.
Even if you didn't care much for young Ruess through most of the book, the mystery of his disappearance becomes a bit of a page turner. If nothing else I became more familiar with that desert Southwest region over which young Ruess traveled and I may never get to. Well, I did see the Grand Canyon once. Anyway, might say 2.5 stars but rounded up for the perseverance of the author, guess you'd expect that from a lifelong climber.
June 16, 2025
Yet another excellent book by David Roberts. I'm not sure why the overall average rating is only just about 3.5.
For readers who know zero about Ruess, you'll learnall many of the basics here. You won't learn all, because Roberts turd-polishes Ruess a fair degree. If you want to hit his Wikipedia page or whatever for background, that's fine, too.
Now to the chase, and spoiler alerts, as I'm going to focus on his death and its possible "why."
Don't read further if you don't want that spoiler.
Here's my take, in order of likelihood, on why Ruess died.
Now, back to the book, which I have downrated a star.
Roberts “ admits” he got Everett Ruess’ death wrong, but only in saying “I got a lot of shit from the bloggers.” That IS arrogance, in that people were cautioning him even before his National Geographic Adventure story came out to exercise more caution.
It WAS bad science as to how the burial site was handled and how the tested bones were handled at the first site, which had DNA contamination and which Roberts doesn’t mention. That’s a 2011 interview, which meant Scott Thybony’s book, seeming to confirm Ruess died from a fall, wasn’t out yet. BUT, Philip Fradkin’s book WAS out, which notes that Ruess was a pothunter, among other things. Stuff that Roberts doesn’t cover. Yes, the pub date was after Roberts’ interview, but if Fradkin, who while a great natural history writer has never struck me as an outdoorsman, could include info that Roberts didn’t, it seems like Roberts, curmudgeon and all, wanted to promote a romantic image of Ruess. And, the pub date of Fradkin’s book in 2011 was less than 2 months after Roberts’ interview. Surely he would have heard some prepress about it.
Roberts may not have been a professional historian, but he was trying to play one, and doing OK until his … romanticism?? Got the better of him. And, AFAIK, he’s never apologized for the rush to press. Nor anything else associated with professional authors who knew better, not just bloggers, giving him deserved shit. (Also, in the last chapter of the book, before he gets to acknowledging “It ain’t Ruess after all,” he was all too ready to soak up the praise of “the bloggers.”)
I am not moving it to two starts, though. I think the book is good for showing Roberts' mindset. That certainly includes a degree of romanticism. And of hypocrisy; Ruess defaced Anasazi sites and hunted their pots, the same Anasazi to whom Roberts focused two books. I think the romanticism, in general, only increased as he got older.
For readers who know zero about Ruess, you'll learn
Now to the chase, and spoiler alerts, as I'm going to focus on his death and its possible "why."
Don't read further if you don't want that spoiler.
Here's my take, in order of likelihood, on why Ruess died.
Now, back to the book, which I have downrated a star.
Roberts “ admits” he got Everett Ruess’ death wrong, but only in saying “I got a lot of shit from the bloggers.” That IS arrogance, in that people were cautioning him even before his National Geographic Adventure story came out to exercise more caution.
It WAS bad science as to how the burial site was handled and how the tested bones were handled at the first site, which had DNA contamination and which Roberts doesn’t mention. That’s a 2011 interview, which meant Scott Thybony’s book, seeming to confirm Ruess died from a fall, wasn’t out yet. BUT, Philip Fradkin’s book WAS out, which notes that Ruess was a pothunter, among other things. Stuff that Roberts doesn’t cover. Yes, the pub date was after Roberts’ interview, but if Fradkin, who while a great natural history writer has never struck me as an outdoorsman, could include info that Roberts didn’t, it seems like Roberts, curmudgeon and all, wanted to promote a romantic image of Ruess. And, the pub date of Fradkin’s book in 2011 was less than 2 months after Roberts’ interview. Surely he would have heard some prepress about it.
Roberts may not have been a professional historian, but he was trying to play one, and doing OK until his … romanticism?? Got the better of him. And, AFAIK, he’s never apologized for the rush to press. Nor anything else associated with professional authors who knew better, not just bloggers, giving him deserved shit. (Also, in the last chapter of the book, before he gets to acknowledging “It ain’t Ruess after all,” he was all too ready to soak up the praise of “the bloggers.”)
I am not moving it to two starts, though. I think the book is good for showing Roberts' mindset. That certainly includes a degree of romanticism. And of hypocrisy; Ruess defaced Anasazi sites and hunted their pots, the same Anasazi to whom Roberts focused two books. I think the romanticism, in general, only increased as he got older.
August 6, 2011
I won this book through Firstreads. Thanks!
This story was well researched, well documented and well written. I just never did feel particularly interested in or connected to this lone teen who took off traveling in the American West in the 30s. I feel sorry for his family to never know what happened to him, but I just didn't think his life or any of the many detailed letters he wrote were very profound or intriguing. I think he may have had some emotional or mental problems, some exacerbated by being alone too much, maybe. Maybe he was a sociophobe. He seemed to take himself too seriously above and beyond everyone else, and changing his name all the time was a little weird. At any rate, there was way too much detail, too many letters that didn't really say much, and the story wasn't emotionally gripping enough to keep me reading straight through to find out what happened to him. I skipped around toward the end and it didn't seem to change much. Sorry, it just didn't hold my attention.
This story was well researched, well documented and well written. I just never did feel particularly interested in or connected to this lone teen who took off traveling in the American West in the 30s. I feel sorry for his family to never know what happened to him, but I just didn't think his life or any of the many detailed letters he wrote were very profound or intriguing. I think he may have had some emotional or mental problems, some exacerbated by being alone too much, maybe. Maybe he was a sociophobe. He seemed to take himself too seriously above and beyond everyone else, and changing his name all the time was a little weird. At any rate, there was way too much detail, too many letters that didn't really say much, and the story wasn't emotionally gripping enough to keep me reading straight through to find out what happened to him. I skipped around toward the end and it didn't seem to change much. Sorry, it just didn't hold my attention.
February 2, 2021
The story of a young man who disappears in the 1930's and the search to discover what happened to him is given an added bit of interest by the fact that the young man was a budding artist and nature lover. I knew nothing of Everett Ruess before starting this book and I think that is the best way to enter it. If you already know a lot about him or the search for him I don't know how much new information this will provide. But for me it was all new, though not always interesting.
I found the actual biography of Everett to be the hardest to get thru. Not because the author made it uninteresting but because I found I disliked Everett himself. Perhaps that is because he was presented warts and all or perhaps that is my own bias peeking thru. I have no patience for those wilderness lovers or unconventional adventurers who look down on "normies" while simultaneously using them to finance their lifestyle. I know Everett was pretty young and no doubt he would have aged out of some of these more annoying views but he was entitled and xenophobic not to mention pompous and narcissistic.
Personally, I found Everett Ruess to be less interesting than the mystery of what happened to him. This means that I enjoyed the back half of the story much more than the first half. I also think the author's narrative powers were on full display there as he described his journeys into the desert and talking with locals in Escalante. Since I knew nothing I was continually surprised as the search twisted and turned.
The writing is excellent and the audiobook well read. I listened to most of it while working on house projects and it made the time go fast.
I found the actual biography of Everett to be the hardest to get thru. Not because the author made it uninteresting but because I found I disliked Everett himself. Perhaps that is because he was presented warts and all or perhaps that is my own bias peeking thru. I have no patience for those wilderness lovers or unconventional adventurers who look down on "normies" while simultaneously using them to finance their lifestyle. I know Everett was pretty young and no doubt he would have aged out of some of these more annoying views but he was entitled and xenophobic not to mention pompous and narcissistic.
Personally, I found Everett Ruess to be less interesting than the mystery of what happened to him. This means that I enjoyed the back half of the story much more than the first half. I also think the author's narrative powers were on full display there as he described his journeys into the desert and talking with locals in Escalante. Since I knew nothing I was continually surprised as the search twisted and turned.
The writing is excellent and the audiobook well read. I listened to most of it while working on house projects and it made the time go fast.
August 21, 2021
If possible, I'd give this book 3.5 stars. I've been wanting to read it for quite a while, since learning of Everett during a stint at the Nevada State Museum's research library. How romantic - a young vagabond in search of beauty. Well, if only Everett weren't so entitled and if Roberts' writing wasn't so fraught with conjecture.
Based on Roberts' description, and Everett's own words, I didn't care for Everett - though I did appreciate his zest for introspection and the creativity of his blockprints. I also didn't care for Roberts' writing style which relied on so much rumor and speculation. Part 2 was very difficult to get through - so redundant! And while I felt terrible for Everett's family (especially his parents - it's amazing the lengths people went to in order to dupe them), at some point I wondered how they could be so naive and trusting.
Overall, I appreciate the mystery of Everett's disappearance and understand why his story has a cult following (even if he was quite unlikable - but let's be real, we were all creeps at that age). However, meandering writing and unverifiable information made this a frusrating read. I found myself skimming from the halfway point to the end.
If anything, this book made me appreciate more the beauty of my desert southwest and continue with my own (safe and respectful) explorations. I'm content to live with the works Everett left the world and to know that his mystery will likely never be solved.
Based on Roberts' description, and Everett's own words, I didn't care for Everett - though I did appreciate his zest for introspection and the creativity of his blockprints. I also didn't care for Roberts' writing style which relied on so much rumor and speculation. Part 2 was very difficult to get through - so redundant! And while I felt terrible for Everett's family (especially his parents - it's amazing the lengths people went to in order to dupe them), at some point I wondered how they could be so naive and trusting.
Overall, I appreciate the mystery of Everett's disappearance and understand why his story has a cult following (even if he was quite unlikable - but let's be real, we were all creeps at that age). However, meandering writing and unverifiable information made this a frusrating read. I found myself skimming from the halfway point to the end.
If anything, this book made me appreciate more the beauty of my desert southwest and continue with my own (safe and respectful) explorations. I'm content to live with the works Everett left the world and to know that his mystery will likely never be solved.
October 31, 2023
2.5 stars rounded up only because the last third of the book was somewhat interesting. The first 200 pages are excruciatingly detailed recountings of every move Everett Ruess made between 1930-1934, with mostly extraneous information that we didn't need. The author has a lot of source material with no skill in lifting the relevant parts and leaving the rest out of the book. It was hard to focus or keep up because I was trying to remember every detail due to it being impossible to tell what actually mattered. Based on the summary I should have devoured this book, it is right up my alley in theory, but gosh I was bored out of my skull.
July 14, 2017
Until I picked up this book, I had never heard of Everett Ruess. Like Wallace Stegner, I am not blown away by the excerpts of this would be young poet's writing included in his book. I am impressed by Ruess's love of nature and scenery and his courage in exploring on his own.
I was very surprised that his parents would allow a 16 year old to venture out into the wilderness alone. However, the 1930's were very different times. Naturally, the tale of his disappearance and the efforts to find him are fascinating reading.
I was very surprised that his parents would allow a 16 year old to venture out into the wilderness alone. However, the 1930's were very different times. Naturally, the tale of his disappearance and the efforts to find him are fascinating reading.
June 11, 2012
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.
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.
June 2, 2016
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!
-- Everett Ruess, "Wilderness Song"
I first heard of Everett Ruess a few years ago when I read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. His "true adventure" story about the 1992 disappearance of Christopher McCandless into the Alaska wilderness almost seemed an echo of Everett's story, separated by sixty years and thousands of miles. Krakauer devoted a chunk of his book to Ruess' story, and it made me want to know more. I read a handful of articles and books about him, but none of them have been as good, and as insightful, as David Roberts' Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer.
Everett Ruess was a teenager living in California in the 1930s, but possessed a wandering spirit that seemed to propel him out of Southern California and into the wilderness of the Southwest. Without GPS, frequently even without roads, Everett walked with burros and sometimes a dog throughout California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. He spent most of his time in the Navajo country bordered by Flagstaff, Mesa Verde, and St George and Escalante Utah. He was fascinated by Anasazi (now called "Ancestral Puebloans" by the politically correct) and curious but disdainful of the Navajo; what he was really craving was some kind of communion with nature.
David Roberts' book is split into three parts: the first five chapters are a biography of Everett Ruess' life, reconstructed through his diaries and letters. Even as he craved isolation, he wasn't a true recluse, and maintained meticulous diaries and wrote frequent letters home to his parents, brother, and friends. He was also a budding artist, and made sketches and woodblock prints of the landscape he loved so much. These writings and artwork have formed the backbone of the legacy of Everett Ruess, and have become holy relics for environmental crusaders for decades now.
The second part of Finding Everett Ruess is about the search for the young man after he disappeared. He was only twenty when he went missing in the Utah desert, and even 75 years later, the debate rages: did he commit suicide, as some of his letters indicate? Did he go out into the desert unprepared for the conditions he was about to face? Did he decide to abandon American society and become a white Native American or Mexican? Roberts explores all of these theories and more, and finds new evidence to support or refute most of them. Still, questions remain. The third part of the book relates the most recent findings and research on the Everett Ruess case, including some recent finds that made international headlines in 2008. These findings moved the story from archaeology to a C.S.I.-like crime scene, back to archaeology again, and even brought in Native American beliefs and heirs to the Ruess legacy.
Roberts cites the letters and diaries of Everett Ruess as the definitive works on the boy, and points out places that other biographers have excised uncomfortable passages in attempts to protect the feelings of Everett's family. He also criticizes some members of the "Everett Ruess Cult" for celebrating parts of Everett's life and forgetting others, or for trying to cover up those uncomfortable parts. Everett's own words are beautiful, and even though some have called him an amateur, to have the maturity he shows as a teenager is remarkable. There are also pages of photographs and artwork that show us more of the man Everett was becoming, and they're as poignant as any of the prose passages are.
I found this book fascinating partially because of my own experiences in the outdoors in Utah--I've lived here most of my life, and love camping and hiking and finding some of that isolation that Everett Ruess craved. Beyond that, Roberts' own investigative journalism, his analysis of Everett's writings, and his desire to bring some kind of closure to the story hooked me. The story is intriguing in all of the best ways, and his writing is so good that it was able to fan my spark of interest into a flame. He's able to switch back and forth between the sadness of a young man with a great potential whose life had been cut short and the hard facts of a possible criminal case without losing his stride, and all three parts of the book coalesce into one good book. If you're interested in the Southwest, in the history of the environmental movement, or just like a good real life mystery, you'll enjoy Finding Everett Ruess.
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!
-- Everett Ruess, "Wilderness Song"
I first heard of Everett Ruess a few years ago when I read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. His "true adventure" story about the 1992 disappearance of Christopher McCandless into the Alaska wilderness almost seemed an echo of Everett's story, separated by sixty years and thousands of miles. Krakauer devoted a chunk of his book to Ruess' story, and it made me want to know more. I read a handful of articles and books about him, but none of them have been as good, and as insightful, as David Roberts' Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer.
Everett Ruess was a teenager living in California in the 1930s, but possessed a wandering spirit that seemed to propel him out of Southern California and into the wilderness of the Southwest. Without GPS, frequently even without roads, Everett walked with burros and sometimes a dog throughout California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. He spent most of his time in the Navajo country bordered by Flagstaff, Mesa Verde, and St George and Escalante Utah. He was fascinated by Anasazi (now called "Ancestral Puebloans" by the politically correct) and curious but disdainful of the Navajo; what he was really craving was some kind of communion with nature.
David Roberts' book is split into three parts: the first five chapters are a biography of Everett Ruess' life, reconstructed through his diaries and letters. Even as he craved isolation, he wasn't a true recluse, and maintained meticulous diaries and wrote frequent letters home to his parents, brother, and friends. He was also a budding artist, and made sketches and woodblock prints of the landscape he loved so much. These writings and artwork have formed the backbone of the legacy of Everett Ruess, and have become holy relics for environmental crusaders for decades now.
The second part of Finding Everett Ruess is about the search for the young man after he disappeared. He was only twenty when he went missing in the Utah desert, and even 75 years later, the debate rages: did he commit suicide, as some of his letters indicate? Did he go out into the desert unprepared for the conditions he was about to face? Did he decide to abandon American society and become a white Native American or Mexican? Roberts explores all of these theories and more, and finds new evidence to support or refute most of them. Still, questions remain. The third part of the book relates the most recent findings and research on the Everett Ruess case, including some recent finds that made international headlines in 2008. These findings moved the story from archaeology to a C.S.I.-like crime scene, back to archaeology again, and even brought in Native American beliefs and heirs to the Ruess legacy.
Roberts cites the letters and diaries of Everett Ruess as the definitive works on the boy, and points out places that other biographers have excised uncomfortable passages in attempts to protect the feelings of Everett's family. He also criticizes some members of the "Everett Ruess Cult" for celebrating parts of Everett's life and forgetting others, or for trying to cover up those uncomfortable parts. Everett's own words are beautiful, and even though some have called him an amateur, to have the maturity he shows as a teenager is remarkable. There are also pages of photographs and artwork that show us more of the man Everett was becoming, and they're as poignant as any of the prose passages are.
I found this book fascinating partially because of my own experiences in the outdoors in Utah--I've lived here most of my life, and love camping and hiking and finding some of that isolation that Everett Ruess craved. Beyond that, Roberts' own investigative journalism, his analysis of Everett's writings, and his desire to bring some kind of closure to the story hooked me. The story is intriguing in all of the best ways, and his writing is so good that it was able to fan my spark of interest into a flame. He's able to switch back and forth between the sadness of a young man with a great potential whose life had been cut short and the hard facts of a possible criminal case without losing his stride, and all three parts of the book coalesce into one good book. If you're interested in the Southwest, in the history of the environmental movement, or just like a good real life mystery, you'll enjoy Finding Everett Ruess.
May 14, 2022
I really enjoyed this book and often could not set it aside. I had never heard of Everett Ruess, and find his story fascinating.
I agree with other readers that Everett himself was incredibly spoiled and entitled, and often comes across as rather insufferable. I can’t decide if his writing is flowery in an artistic sense, or just plain pompous. I certainly don’t think he deserves icon status for his ramblings or disregard for others.
But I enjoyed the author’s overview of E’s life, and the nuanced way he approaches attempts to solve the mystery of E’s disappearance. I would recommend this book to others who have an affinity for the Southwest and are looking for a bit of mystery and intrigue.
I agree with other readers that Everett himself was incredibly spoiled and entitled, and often comes across as rather insufferable. I can’t decide if his writing is flowery in an artistic sense, or just plain pompous. I certainly don’t think he deserves icon status for his ramblings or disregard for others.
But I enjoyed the author’s overview of E’s life, and the nuanced way he approaches attempts to solve the mystery of E’s disappearance. I would recommend this book to others who have an affinity for the Southwest and are looking for a bit of mystery and intrigue.
October 6, 2012
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 huge suppositions on what might have happened to Everett and yet there is virtually no evidence to support anything he says, just a lot of wishful thinking by someone who clearly wants to solve the mystery, who connects with other people with similarly small evidence who also want to be the ones to solve the mystery, with the result that they all indulge each other in their fancies.
The other problem is that I'm not getting a sense that Everett was in any way as important a figure as Roberts makes him out to be. He wrote some nice poetry and was a gifted artist, but there was nothing landmark about him. Even his travels don't strike me as particularly impressive; it wasn't like he created maps or trails; he just wandered for the sake of it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make one a genius or visionary. And he wasn't independent at all; rather, he frequently begged his parents for cash and seemed incapable of supporting himself. He also comes off as a colossal jerk, often disparaging of the Native Americans he encountered, and pretty much abusing the animals that accompanied him. I can't imagine this kid was going to be the next John Muir (as Roberts argues) and the fact that at one point he is compared to Amelia Earhart is laughable.
On the other hand, it did make me homesick for the Southwest, so I guess that's something.
The other problem is that I'm not getting a sense that Everett was in any way as important a figure as Roberts makes him out to be. He wrote some nice poetry and was a gifted artist, but there was nothing landmark about him. Even his travels don't strike me as particularly impressive; it wasn't like he created maps or trails; he just wandered for the sake of it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't make one a genius or visionary. And he wasn't independent at all; rather, he frequently begged his parents for cash and seemed incapable of supporting himself. He also comes off as a colossal jerk, often disparaging of the Native Americans he encountered, and pretty much abusing the animals that accompanied him. I can't imagine this kid was going to be the next John Muir (as Roberts argues) and the fact that at one point he is compared to Amelia Earhart is laughable.
On the other hand, it did make me homesick for the Southwest, so I guess that's something.
March 14, 2018
Well, this book was not what I had hoped it to be, mostly because the 11 pages that Krakouer wrote in Into The Wild was so compelling, I have wanted to read it since!.
First of all, my idea of a Wilderness guy, or someone who appreciated Mother Earth, would not treat animals so poorly. It made me crazy when I read how he treated (mis-treated) his Burros, Horses and Dog (and even Rattlesnakes!) Maybe a different era? Also he was somewhat of a spoiled brat, manipulating his family to support his travels and expecting them to foot the bill and not earn his way. But then I forgot his age. I was kind of an ass in my teens as well.
So then the author explored his moods, bipolar, depressed, etc., during his explorations from 1931-1934, and I just got lost. There wasn't the chronological 1931, to 1932, but we bounced back and forth and I would have to read and re-read to find out why in the middle of his 1933 trip we were talking about some fickle relationship in 1931. Or his confusion about his sexuality ???
So maybe it was the author's style I couldn't follow.
Then towards the end, and following his family's frantic search for their son opened up more interesting aspects of his life.
Overall, I am glad I read it because I have wanted to for a long time. The 11 page Krakour version was super. And honestly he was so young when all of his journeys took place that so much of the book could have just skipped all the drama. If I read my 16 year old journals, I was pretty wacko myself.
I did like when he finally got his act together and was making his own money (goodbye crazy teenage years!), and he made a point of not wanting or needing financial help from his family anymore.
First of all, my idea of a Wilderness guy, or someone who appreciated Mother Earth, would not treat animals so poorly. It made me crazy when I read how he treated (mis-treated) his Burros, Horses and Dog (and even Rattlesnakes!) Maybe a different era? Also he was somewhat of a spoiled brat, manipulating his family to support his travels and expecting them to foot the bill and not earn his way. But then I forgot his age. I was kind of an ass in my teens as well.
So then the author explored his moods, bipolar, depressed, etc., during his explorations from 1931-1934, and I just got lost. There wasn't the chronological 1931, to 1932, but we bounced back and forth and I would have to read and re-read to find out why in the middle of his 1933 trip we were talking about some fickle relationship in 1931. Or his confusion about his sexuality ???
So maybe it was the author's style I couldn't follow.
Then towards the end, and following his family's frantic search for their son opened up more interesting aspects of his life.
Overall, I am glad I read it because I have wanted to for a long time. The 11 page Krakour version was super. And honestly he was so young when all of his journeys took place that so much of the book could have just skipped all the drama. If I read my 16 year old journals, I was pretty wacko myself.
I did like when he finally got his act together and was making his own money (goodbye crazy teenage years!), and he made a point of not wanting or needing financial help from his family anymore.
September 26, 2011
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 Ruess' father's job required. By the late 20s, Everett had decided that he was not cut out for college and was more interested in traveling alone. His trips to the Southwest were conducted on a shoestring budget, sometimes trading woodcuts or paintings for food. He relied on burros and the kindness of the Dine and Mormon farmers, and his parents ability to send money.
In many of the letter and diary fragments he comes across as a self-absorbed brat, not caring about his effect on the land (burning wood from hogans or taking Anasazi relics) or his parents' finances. The vision he had of the Southwest may have been unique and he may have been a budding artistic talent, but the overly portentous writing bored me. It was also difficult to continually read phrases that pre-shadowed his disappearance and the search.
Still, this is perfect for naturalists or adventure readers looking for a follow up to Jon Krakauer's works.
ARC provided by publisher.
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 Ruess' father's job required. By the late 20s, Everett had decided that he was not cut out for college and was more interested in traveling alone. His trips to the Southwest were conducted on a shoestring budget, sometimes trading woodcuts or paintings for food. He relied on burros and the kindness of the Dine and Mormon farmers, and his parents ability to send money.
In many of the letter and diary fragments he comes across as a self-absorbed brat, not caring about his effect on the land (burning wood from hogans or taking Anasazi relics) or his parents' finances. The vision he had of the Southwest may have been unique and he may have been a budding artistic talent, but the overly portentous writing bored me. It was also difficult to continually read phrases that pre-shadowed his disappearance and the search.
Still, this is perfect for naturalists or adventure readers looking for a follow up to Jon Krakauer's works.
ARC provided by publisher.
August 13, 2011
I really liked this book a lot. I am huge fan of Jon Krakauer so this book was written just for me. I had only heard of Everett Ruess from the book Into the Wild and admittedly I went back and reread that section of the book. There were defintely simularities between "NEMO" and "Alexander Supertramp". There has obviously been a lot of research on the subject of ER and all the theories about his disappearance. I liked hearing all the theories and I especially liked the last one. I thought the book was going to end with actually finding ER. He refuses to be found and I guess for that I am kind of glad. This was no ordinary young man. He followed his dream and his dream remains alive.
I have been one who loved the wilderness--
Swaggered and softly crept between the mountain peaks
I listened long to the sea's brave music;
I sang my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
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!
NEMO LIVES!
I have been one who loved the wilderness--
Swaggered and softly crept between the mountain peaks
I listened long to the sea's brave music;
I sang my songs above the shriek of desert winds.
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!
NEMO LIVES!
January 10, 2014
I love playing detective. That's why I got sent to Fiji in 2003 to look for the bones of Amelia Earhart.
The disappearance of Everett Ruess in 1934 is one of the great "cold cases" in American literature. This is an excellent account of Ruess' four years of solitary wanderings in the American southwest as well as a summary of how his fan base has grown in the last 80 years.
The finding of a body in a crevice raised hopes that Ruess had been found. DNA and forensic reconstruction seemed to support that theory at first, but better DNA tests caused the skeleton to be eliminated from consideration, so the quest continues for the artist's remains.
Ruess despised people who stayed at home and worked a regular schedule, even though it was such people--his parents and brother--who funded his whole way of life in the desert. If he had lived long enough, his painting, poetry, and writing might have enabled him to earn a living, but the money would still come from folks who worked as wage slaves to acquire it. Our kind makes his kind possible; his kind opens our eyes to the beauty of the world around us.
The disappearance of Everett Ruess in 1934 is one of the great "cold cases" in American literature. This is an excellent account of Ruess' four years of solitary wanderings in the American southwest as well as a summary of how his fan base has grown in the last 80 years.
The finding of a body in a crevice raised hopes that Ruess had been found. DNA and forensic reconstruction seemed to support that theory at first, but better DNA tests caused the skeleton to be eliminated from consideration, so the quest continues for the artist's remains.
Ruess despised people who stayed at home and worked a regular schedule, even though it was such people--his parents and brother--who funded his whole way of life in the desert. If he had lived long enough, his painting, poetry, and writing might have enabled him to earn a living, but the money would still come from folks who worked as wage slaves to acquire it. Our kind makes his kind possible; his kind opens our eyes to the beauty of the world around us.
Read
June 3, 2016Everett Ruess was a 20 year old man who had fallen in love with the rugged terrain of the American southwest. As avid hiker, explorer and artist he had tramped through much of the Grand Canyon and surrounding area in the early 1930s. In late 1934 he left on another such trip and was never seen again. Roberts covers Reuss' early life by paying due attention to his diaries and letters and we learn of a talented but troubled guy. But half the book is devoted to the post-disappearance era. The Ruess family searched for years - and were put upon by more than one charlatan who took advantage of their generosity- and Everett gained a following among dreamers and would-be detectives. Roberts parses all the theories of what might have happened to ER with equanimity. That is, until he joins the hunt himself. He hears talk of a crevice grave in remote Utah and this leads to palaeontologists, DNA labs and press conferences. You'll have to read the book to find out if it's ER's bones they found. Rattling good read.
December 30, 2012
This non-fiction novel about the disappearance of Everett Ruess in the mid 1930s will intrigue and enthrall those familiar with his story and even for those who are not. I had never heard of Everett Ruess, but it was a very interesting story about his fascination with nature, his abandoning society to roam in the desert wilderness and his subsequent disappearance.
The author, David Roberts’ review of the young man’s biography, his artistic achievements and unrealized potential, and efforts to find and eventually memorialize him will appeal to fans of wilderness wanderers.
I thought the book was pretty good, but found the last half, in which the author spends quite a bit of time in discovering Ruess's fate to go on a bit too much. There are 4 major theories to Ruess's fate and I think that this is the main fascination behind Ruess's cult following.
I received this book as part of the Goodread's giveaway program.
The author, David Roberts’ review of the young man’s biography, his artistic achievements and unrealized potential, and efforts to find and eventually memorialize him will appeal to fans of wilderness wanderers.
I thought the book was pretty good, but found the last half, in which the author spends quite a bit of time in discovering Ruess's fate to go on a bit too much. There are 4 major theories to Ruess's fate and I think that this is the main fascination behind Ruess's cult following.
I received this book as part of the Goodread's giveaway program.
November 28, 2011
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 suburban desk worker, I long for a day or two of the Navajo country's blazing sun and red rocks. Ruess so burned with that longing that he ran off with it.
Ruess disappeared out there, which completes the story with tragedy and glory, and turns the last part of this book into an interesting mystery. But I think Ruess would have been a fascinating character even if he had lived.
Ruess disappeared out there, which completes the story with tragedy and glory, and turns the last part of this book into an interesting mystery. But I think Ruess would have been a fascinating character even if he had lived.
August 23, 2011
Prior to plucking this book off the library shelf I’d never heard of Everett Ruess. Being thus unaware of this “legendary wilderness explorer” I was able to enjoy the roller coaster ride narrated by David Roberts. The ending would have been ruined had I known any of the story before reading this book
One of the interesting aspects of this tale is the process by which a 20 year old vagabond with average artistic talent becomes an icon of the southwest. It says as much about the public’s fascination with mystery and martyrdom as it does about our romanticizing of the archetypal suffering artist.
One of the interesting aspects of this tale is the process by which a 20 year old vagabond with average artistic talent becomes an icon of the southwest. It says as much about the public’s fascination with mystery and martyrdom as it does about our romanticizing of the archetypal suffering artist.
July 8, 2013
When Everett Ruess was still in his teens in the early 1930s, he began taking long solo journeys across California and the desert Southwest. Drawn by a love of nature and an obsession with beauty, the young poet and painter led his burros up rocky mountain trails and across scorching deserts. But on one such journey that had taken him into southern Utah, Ruess disappeared forever, leaving only cryptic clues as to his fate. Author David Roberts takes us along Ruess' journeys, eventually becoming part of the continuing search for what happened to the young explorer. Recommended if you enjoyed Krakauer's Into the Wild.
May 16, 2017
*** I left a long review for this book in 2012, and I had no idea that my review had since been removed or when. By the way, I loved the book, thus my review was very complimentary and I can not understand why staff would have decided to delete it. I am looking to see if I still have a copy of it somewhere in my backlogs/notes, but in the meantime let me just say that I really liked it and I thought David Roberts drew a very compelling psychological portrait of the young man Everett Ruess. This is one of my favorite outdoors books. ***
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