Information AboutEverett Ruess |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT EVERETT RUESS | |
| 1914 births | |
| 1934 deaths | |
| american artists | |
| disappeared people | |
Everett Ruess ( 1914 - 1934 ) was an artist and writer who explored the Desert s of the Southwest , invariably alone. He was known for cutting linoleum prints of nature and associated with Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange . His prints show scenes from the Monterey Bay coast, the northern California coast near Tomales Bay , the Sierras, Utah , and Arizona . Ruess' father was a Unitarian minister, and the family moved often. At the age of 20, he went into the Utah desert with two Burro s and never returned. Some suspect he accidentally killed himself by falling off a cliff or drowning, whereas others think he was murdered. Still others believe he crossed the Colorado River to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and married a Navajo woman, although this is highly unlikely. In any case, his statements on life and adventure, combined with his isolation and early death, have led to a kind of legendary status. Ruess' story is best told in his own words, recently republished from the Gibbs Smith edition. His three books are illustrated by the woodcuts for which Ruess is admired. His story, along with that of Christopher McCandless , was retold more briefly in Jon Krakauer 's book '' Into The Wild ''. California musician Dave Alvin wrote and performed a song about Everett Ruess on the album Ashgrove {Link without Title} . At the time that Ruess explored the remote canyons of the Southwestern United States, aside from Native Americans, Mormon pioneers and local cowboys, Ruess was likely among the first "outsiders" to venture so deeply and completely into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely an unknown wilderness. The above-referenced theory that Ruess might have drowned (in the desert) requires explanation. One often travels within this red-rock geography at the bottom of often dry, deep-cut rock canyons (think Grand Canyon only smaller in scale). The region is susceptible to surprise flash floods, the result of summer thunderstorms that might occur as distant as 50 miles away. Within the bottom of these canyons, one would be pacified by clear skies overhead while far away, one arroyo fills with rain water and empties into another arroyo and another and another. With so much rock and so little soil or vegetation to absorb the torrent, one is suddenly found at the bottom of a canyon faced with a looming wall of runoff water mixed with mud, rock and debris approaching from one direction, and insurmountable vertical walls of rock to be scaled toward (wishful) escape. People occasionally perish within these floods and a corpse is often never recovered. It is within this flash-flood scenario that drowning is a likely explanation for the disappearance and demise of Everett Ruess. QUOTES
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