What do you think?
Rate this book
On Desert Trails With Everett Ruess
9X12 In, 96 Pp, 45 Black & White Illustrations We Are Proud To Introduce This Handsome Commemorative Edition of On Desert Trails With Everett Ruess (First Introduced In Our 60, 000 Copy A Vagabond For Beauty), Which Was Originally Published In 1940 and Has Since Become A Collector's Item. The Poetry, Letters, and Artwork Contained In This Book Reveal The Adventurous Young Artist Who Loved The Arid Wilderness and Disappeared Into The Desert of Southern Utah. To The Original Book We Have Added Many Photographs of Ruess On The Trail, Along With Others Taken By Ruess of The Land That So Inspired Him. A Special Appenidx Tells The Salt Lake Tribune's Account of Its 1935 Expedition To Southern Utah In Search of Everett Ruess.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 30, 1949
9 people are currently reading
248 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 27, 2015
Haunting. Inspiring. "Nemo 1934" scrawled on a rock. Two starving burros discovered and no trace of Everett Ruess. This slim volume includes a series of thoughtful letters to Everett's friends and family as he explored the canyons and rugged beauty of the American Southwest before his disappearance. The letters are remarkable for their sheer passion and distilled wonder at life on this planet. While Ruess's poetry is not exactly earth shattering, it has a kind of honest and unpretentious charm. And in one passage, a chilling premonition of his (probable) death:
Say that I was 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!
Say that I was 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!
October 26, 2024
21 year old artist, writer, wanderer, dreamer Everett Ruess regularly left his Los Angeles home and his family to wander the wilderness of the four corners region for months at a time, covering hundreds of miles alone with only burros and a stray dog for company, meeting and befriending traders, ranchers, native Americans as he wandered in awe of a desert beauty he attempted to capture in his letters, poems, block-prints, and paintings.
Everett disappeared on his final journey, and although his burros were found pastured in Davis Canyon near Escalante, no trace has ever been found of Ruess, leading to over 80 years of searches, speculations, investigations and writings.
Everett left behind a powerful and inspiring legacy, a young reckless vagrant unable to follow any conventional path laid down by the bustling city civilization he fled from again and again, deep into the unpeopled wilderness.
“I have not tired of the wilderness,” he wrote to his brother, “Rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time …. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?”
Much of his writing is a vivid evocation of that mysteriously epic quality of the desert landscapes, unforgettable to anyone who has spent any time in that country. Other letters focus on his inability to co-exist with those who, machinelike, blindly march day by day into the tired oblivion of their own diminishing sovereignty, constrained by the pragmatic realities of bills, rent, food, duties, responsibilities.
“I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it,” writes Everett, “Always I want to live more intensely and richly.” He contrasts this with the lives of friends who “have been wallowing in the shallows of life this past year – not growing nor having new and enlarging experiences, driven partly or wholly by circumstances into lives that they themselves consider ignoble, stale, and depressing.” Everett contemplates those pragmatic realities that limit the attainment of aspirations, that gradually calcify and rust the dreamy goals of youth. “With plenty of money,” he concludes, “the way is smoothed, and it is fun to create a place to match your personality.” The place that matches his personality is the wilderness, where he is at peace with his surroundings and free of the judgment of those who cannot understand him:
“Why muck and conceal one’s true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself? It is true that in the world such lack of reserve usually meets with hostility, misunderstanding, and scorn. Here in isolation I need not fear on that score, although the strangers I do encounter usually judge me wrongly.”
In one letter to his father, Everett lays out a curious “Quiz from the Desert” which poses some arresting questions while illuminating the mental and spiritual territory into which Everett was trekking. These are questions that we wrestle with throughout our lives, sometimes gaining a measure of peace with our position on them, even if we never find definite answers. Perhaps there are no definite answers to be found in the mortal mind to some of these. This list shows Everett seeking to know himself, to understand his purpose in life and the purpose of life itself, struggling with confusion and uncertainty, proceeding without a path:
Is life only a sensation?
Is service the true end of life?
Can a strong mind maintain independence and strength if it is not rooted in material independence?
Are not all people dependent upon one another?
Do all things follow the attainment of Truth?
Is bodily love empty or to be forgotten?
Can one ask too much of life?
Does life have infinite potentialities?
Must pain spring from pleasure?
Are pain and pleasure equally desirable and necessary?
Is the goal of life thought and love, untouched by the material?
Is pleasure right for all, but selfish for one?
Can one be happy while others are miserable?
Can one be fine without great sacrifice?
Can one make great sacrifices without submerging oneself?
Should one submerge oneself in sacrifice?
Does not one serve most by doing what one does best?
Is it possible to be truly unselfish?
How is it possible for everyone to give more than he is given?
Can one give by receiving?
Is there any fulfillment that endures as such, besides death?
Is there anything perpetual besides change?
Is passage from the sensual to the intellectual to the spiritual a correct progression of growth, and if so should the growth be hastened?”
“On Desert Trails” is a collection of Ruess’ letters, poems and block prints, plus various contemporary and more recent essays and correspondence concerning the fruitless searches for his whereabouts and the speculations about his final fate – did he fall to his death during one of his reckless cliff-ascents in search of hidden water holes or impossibly high ancient Anasazi or Puebla houses? Was he murdered by renegades from one of the local tribes, or by cattle rustlers? Did he drown trying to cross the Colorado or San Juan? Did he take his own life, wrestling as he appears to have been with a cyclical pendulum of moods from ecstatic enthrallment with the beauty of life to deep melancholy at the great faceless disinterest that ancient timeless nature ultimately takes in the fleeting passage of mankind?
Speculation will continue, and his bones may never be found. All we really have left are his prints, paintings, and his words.
“Wilderness Song, Everett Ruess
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.
On canyon trails when warm night winds were blowing,
Blowing, and sighing gently through the star-tipped pines,
Musing, I walked behind my placid burro
While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.
I have known a green sea’s heaving; I have loved
Red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,
Slow sunny clouds, and red sand blowing;
I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall.
In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard
The ghostly murmur of regretful winds
In aspen glades, where rustling silver leaves
Whisper wild sorrows to the green-gold solitudes.
I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high;
Singing I rode to meet the splendid, shouting storm
And fought its fury till the hidden sun
Foundered in darkness, and the lightning heard my song.
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!
Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness;
Staggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;
I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music;
I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.”
Everett disappeared on his final journey, and although his burros were found pastured in Davis Canyon near Escalante, no trace has ever been found of Ruess, leading to over 80 years of searches, speculations, investigations and writings.
Everett left behind a powerful and inspiring legacy, a young reckless vagrant unable to follow any conventional path laid down by the bustling city civilization he fled from again and again, deep into the unpeopled wilderness.
“I have not tired of the wilderness,” he wrote to his brother, “Rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time …. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?”
Much of his writing is a vivid evocation of that mysteriously epic quality of the desert landscapes, unforgettable to anyone who has spent any time in that country. Other letters focus on his inability to co-exist with those who, machinelike, blindly march day by day into the tired oblivion of their own diminishing sovereignty, constrained by the pragmatic realities of bills, rent, food, duties, responsibilities.
“I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it,” writes Everett, “Always I want to live more intensely and richly.” He contrasts this with the lives of friends who “have been wallowing in the shallows of life this past year – not growing nor having new and enlarging experiences, driven partly or wholly by circumstances into lives that they themselves consider ignoble, stale, and depressing.” Everett contemplates those pragmatic realities that limit the attainment of aspirations, that gradually calcify and rust the dreamy goals of youth. “With plenty of money,” he concludes, “the way is smoothed, and it is fun to create a place to match your personality.” The place that matches his personality is the wilderness, where he is at peace with his surroundings and free of the judgment of those who cannot understand him:
“Why muck and conceal one’s true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself? It is true that in the world such lack of reserve usually meets with hostility, misunderstanding, and scorn. Here in isolation I need not fear on that score, although the strangers I do encounter usually judge me wrongly.”
In one letter to his father, Everett lays out a curious “Quiz from the Desert” which poses some arresting questions while illuminating the mental and spiritual territory into which Everett was trekking. These are questions that we wrestle with throughout our lives, sometimes gaining a measure of peace with our position on them, even if we never find definite answers. Perhaps there are no definite answers to be found in the mortal mind to some of these. This list shows Everett seeking to know himself, to understand his purpose in life and the purpose of life itself, struggling with confusion and uncertainty, proceeding without a path:
Is life only a sensation?
Is service the true end of life?
Can a strong mind maintain independence and strength if it is not rooted in material independence?
Are not all people dependent upon one another?
Do all things follow the attainment of Truth?
Is bodily love empty or to be forgotten?
Can one ask too much of life?
Does life have infinite potentialities?
Must pain spring from pleasure?
Are pain and pleasure equally desirable and necessary?
Is the goal of life thought and love, untouched by the material?
Is pleasure right for all, but selfish for one?
Can one be happy while others are miserable?
Can one be fine without great sacrifice?
Can one make great sacrifices without submerging oneself?
Should one submerge oneself in sacrifice?
Does not one serve most by doing what one does best?
Is it possible to be truly unselfish?
How is it possible for everyone to give more than he is given?
Can one give by receiving?
Is there any fulfillment that endures as such, besides death?
Is there anything perpetual besides change?
Is passage from the sensual to the intellectual to the spiritual a correct progression of growth, and if so should the growth be hastened?”
“On Desert Trails” is a collection of Ruess’ letters, poems and block prints, plus various contemporary and more recent essays and correspondence concerning the fruitless searches for his whereabouts and the speculations about his final fate – did he fall to his death during one of his reckless cliff-ascents in search of hidden water holes or impossibly high ancient Anasazi or Puebla houses? Was he murdered by renegades from one of the local tribes, or by cattle rustlers? Did he drown trying to cross the Colorado or San Juan? Did he take his own life, wrestling as he appears to have been with a cyclical pendulum of moods from ecstatic enthrallment with the beauty of life to deep melancholy at the great faceless disinterest that ancient timeless nature ultimately takes in the fleeting passage of mankind?
Speculation will continue, and his bones may never be found. All we really have left are his prints, paintings, and his words.
“Wilderness Song, Everett Ruess
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.
On canyon trails when warm night winds were blowing,
Blowing, and sighing gently through the star-tipped pines,
Musing, I walked behind my placid burro
While water rushed and broke on pointed rocks below.
I have known a green sea’s heaving; I have loved
Red rocks and twisted trees and cloudless turquoise skies,
Slow sunny clouds, and red sand blowing;
I have felt the rain and slept behind the waterfall.
In cool sweet grasses I have lain and heard
The ghostly murmur of regretful winds
In aspen glades, where rustling silver leaves
Whisper wild sorrows to the green-gold solitudes.
I have watched the shadowed clouds pile high;
Singing I rode to meet the splendid, shouting storm
And fought its fury till the hidden sun
Foundered in darkness, and the lightning heard my song.
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!
Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness;
Staggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;
I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music;
I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.”
July 7, 2014
Incredible true story of an adventurer who left a privileged life to pursue his own idea of beauty, contemplate life, and seek solitude. This compilation is a great insight into Everett though I imagine there is still much we don't know about him. His poetry and block prints are inspiring and hint at some inner tumult of genius and contradiction. His fate is a mystery that I hope will someday be solved. I can't help but imagine there's a thrift store or grandpa's attic in Escalante that may hold the answers.
January 23, 2023
Fascinating look into a young man of privilege in the early 1930's, and his desire for adventure and his love of the American desert wilderness.
May 13, 2016
This is an outstanding book. It is many stories rolled into one and is basically the story of a very young man who back in the 1930's that was prone to wandering the wilderness areas of Southern California, Northern Arizona and particularly Southern Utah. The first captivating fact is that at the age of 22 he disappeared. His mules were found, much of his gear was found and for the past 80 years many have sought to determine his fate and there are as many theories as there are towns in Southern Utah. The reason for this long lasting epic is that Everett Reuss had significant skills in writing about his adventures in addition to his artwork, photography, poetry and a great skill in describing his feelings and surroundings.
Without going into greater detail my interest was due to the fact that I have been fortunate enough to travel the world and the United States extensively and have found that my favorite places are not Times Square or Las Vegas. They are the desolate places of the world; the Pawnee Grasslands, the Amazon, Antarctica, the Himalayas, the tundra, Bering Sea islands, the Serengeti and so on. If you need to be entertained this book may not be for you, but if you have an interest in very unique people and places and the mysterious disappearance of this young man, I would highly recommend this book.
Without going into greater detail my interest was due to the fact that I have been fortunate enough to travel the world and the United States extensively and have found that my favorite places are not Times Square or Las Vegas. They are the desolate places of the world; the Pawnee Grasslands, the Amazon, Antarctica, the Himalayas, the tundra, Bering Sea islands, the Serengeti and so on. If you need to be entertained this book may not be for you, but if you have an interest in very unique people and places and the mysterious disappearance of this young man, I would highly recommend this book.
April 29, 2009
We now know what happened to him. See NG Adventure (NGA) April/May 2009. The article in NGA led me to this book which is a synthesis of his letters, poems, some pictures, and history of the many searches for him. His poems and letters are vivid and soulful expressions of a life deeply lived. Living an ascete-like life with a passion for adventure, one can only wonder what masterpieces he would have produced had he not been murdered-perhaps a poet laureate or another John Muir-he was only 20.
Read
January 6, 2009Everett Ruess has become part of the Grand Canyon mythology. An artist, a dreamer, a mystery. What happened to Everett and his mule, will we ever know? Over the years, two copies of this book have been stolen from me. That, I suppose, is an indicator of how good it is to read and how hard it is to find.
March 19, 2012
I've read about Everett Ruess and his mysterious disappearance so it seemed only appropriate to read his own writings. In some places you are really reminded how young he was (imagine the rather overwrought writings of a sensitive, creative teenager) and then in other places he seems wise well beyond his years. Definitely interesting to read, even if I did have to go to KCLS to get it!
April 24, 2009
I love this book and any other book that tells the story of Everett Ruess who went hiking into Escalante Ut and was never seen again. This is a true story and took place in the 1930s and it is still a mystery today of what happened to him.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews