I went into David Roberts’ non-fiction study Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer with high expectations. I’m not even sure I can say why. Up to this point I’ve read two other Roberts books: A Newer World, the history of Kit Carson and John Charles Fremont’s explorations of the Sierra Nevada, and In Search of the Old Ones , his account of his personal journeys in the southwest among ancient pueblo sites. Neither impressed me much -- A Newer World is surpassed in scope by Tom Dunlay’s encyclopedic study of the wilderness scout, Kit Carson and the Indians, and in narrative and journalistic ability by Hampton Sides’ excellent and much recommended Blood and Thunder. In Search of the Old Ones has nothing on Craig Child’s compelling personal odyssey, House of Rain. So why did I start this book with such eagerness? Was it Outside magazine’s rave up of it? Or the endorsement by Into the Wild author Jon Krakauer that got me going? I suppose, really, it was the notion of Everett Ruess himself: a young wilderness aesthete who, in the early 1930’s at the age of sixteen, set off on a series of journeys into the great southwest, his only companions a burro or two and a stray dog. By the age of 20, he had disappeared into the canyon country, never to be heard from again, his remains lost to time. He left behind a legacy of words in his personal journals and correspondence that has garnered him a cult following around the globe. A poet, a painter, a woodcut maker, an ancient pueblo enthusiast, Ruess is a fascinating study. His legend obviously resonated with Krakauer who found him to be a prototype for his cockeyed protagonist and tragic self-knowledge-seeker Christopher McCandless (from Into the Wild -- Ruess merited a few pages in that bestseller). That, I believe, is it: the stories of a people committed to exploring the self in nature’s hardest climes has always intrigued me. That willingness and ability to just walk away from everything. Add in the mystery of the disappearance and, well, you have the makings of a great true story. Finding Everett Ruess is more than just a biography, though. It is also a narrative of Roberts’ personal quest to find out what ultimately happened to Ruess and the mistakes that he – Roberts – made along the way.
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| Everett Ruess |
The first part is a well-balanced look at Ruess’ life, overall. Roberts devotes essentially equal time to Ruess’ formative years. Of particular interest is Ruess’ relationship with his parents, who essentially encouraged and cultivated his aesthetic sense and wonder in art and nature. A small wonder, then, when the sixteen year old Ruess departs on the first of his travels – a nine month journey in Yosemite. Ruess’ relationship with his parents will be a recurring juxtaposition point for Roberts. It is interesting to watch Ruess as while contemplating how much financial support he enjoyed from his parents. From here, Roberts chronicles Ruess’ various journeys in and around the southwest while peppering his narrative with quotes from Ruess’ own journals and correspondence. The recursive nature of this trips, the repetitive methods with which Roberts describes it, are draining and I found myself eager to move on to the next section, the next chapter.
Some exploits are truly entertaining, memorable, and easily pictured. Ruess’ misadventures during the Sierra trip, for example, his disenchantment with the seeming monotony of this exploit, come through in the letters and journal entries Roberts provides. In many ways, this trip, while dissatisfying for Ruess, is more entertaining. Roberts spends a bit of time relating Ruess’ ongoing problems with his burros and his horses – nearly drowning them in one instance. Ruess’ short stay in San Francisco also provides certain illumination on his character. And I did find myself turning the pages more rapidly and with more commitment to the story the closer Roberts got to Ruess’ ultimate demise at age 20 in Davis Gulch (no secret given the cover and bookflap).
Seemingly the end? Of Everett Ruess, yes. Of Roberts’ narrative, no.
Over the last nearly two hundred pages, Roberts devotes his time to describing both contemporary efforts to find Ruess as well as his own attempts to find him well into this century. There are legends. Stories. Myths and markings. Many deadends and blind alleys. The most heartbreaking passages relate Christopher and Stella Ruess’ indefatigable efforts to find their son. They fall prey to con-men and amateur historians and, in the process, lose their son’s irreplaceable artifacts. There is admittedly a little empathy for Roberts and his CSI-esque quest to discern whether remains found in Chinle Wash on the Navajo reservation are those of Everett Ruess. The science behind this study, the engagement of scientists from the University of Utah and the University of Colorado (and, as implied, the tacit prodding of the National Geographic Society) is truly fascinating. In fact, I found myself enjoying the last two hundred pages more than the first. The hunt for the man was, to my mind, more fascinating than the man himself. At the last, in closing, Roberts is less than contrite, maybe even defensive, perhaps deliberately refracting his involvement in the identification process.
Is Ruess a person the reader sympathizes with by the end of his tale? Is Roberts? Should they be?
Ruess lacks something of the self-sufficiency to be really lionized. Perhaps in time he would have gained the proper insight and wisdom, but alas, a mere twenty years does not a guru make. And Ruess’ latent racism and his periodic lapses into melodrama (forgivable, naturally, in a teen) make him less sympathetic. Don’t get me started on how he treats the dog. It is a difficult comparison to hold Ruess up against other travelers of note. John Muir, the two Jacks (London and Kerouac), and the aforementioned Christopher McCandless. For me, the obvious parallel is with the mysterious disappearance of Ambrose Bierce, but oddly Roberts never mentions Bierce.
Krakauer observes in his forward that Finding Everett Ruess is Roberts’ best book. It probably is—half of it anyway. I’m still waiting for a better book out of Roberts.
