by W. L. Rusho
As to the rides I accept, I am now an independent man (though not financially) and I have two legs of my own and four on my mildly recalcitrant burro. The burro is quite a joke, with a black coat, white nose and eyebrows, and the ear tips missing. The Indian began at $12 but I purchased it for $6.
As to when I start painting, I have already made half a dozen attempts, but I anticipate better work in the future. It would be great if you sold the painting, but don’t let such a masterpiece (?) go for a song.
I didn’t make a moneybelt, and when the printing started to wear off (in my shoes) I put the money in my pocket, but day by day the questionable virtue of poverty has approached me. However, I have enough grub for a month and enough equipment to last indefinitely, so while I am alive, I intend to live. I hope you are doing the same thing, as nearly as possible.
You misunderstood about the hat. It blew away, but was recovered. I have since worn the wool cap which you considered unmanly because it kept my eats warm. Question: “Has my equipment proven inadequate?” Answer: “Yes.” That’s where all my money went.
Believe it or not, I have learned how to cook. I have produced biscuits in which no flour could be found, and my other dishes, though less complicated, are satisfactory. My little oven and I are prepared to cook anything.
In the way of game, I have only seen jackrabbits, cottontails, and prairie dogs, but I intend to sample them all. As yet, I haven’t fired a shot. From all I can gather, hunting is a passe sport which it is impossible to revive. A long time ago the white men started trading guns to the Indians for pelts, and now there are no deer, antelope, or buffalo, and the sheep eat all the grass, so there are few jackrabbits. Crows and desert sparrows are the only birds.
I have exciting times tracking my burro. Once the hobbles got unfastened, and I had to pay an Indian on horse four bits to bring it back. The burro was going back to Kayenta and home. At present I am in Utah, at Say-kiz-y Pass near Monument Valley.
The traders around here deride the “Indian-lovers” who drive through in cars and write articles about their picturesqueness and their wrongs. These Indians are not mistreated, but they are scrupulously dishonest, and they live in filth. The tuberculosis sanatorium is always full. It is 100 miles in either direction to a school, so the Indians in the vicinity do not speak English.
It is too bad that you sleep under a roof where you cannot see the falling stars at night. In a couple of days the moon will be full, too. I slept very coolly until I got the tarpaulin. Ice forms almost every night. In one camp next to a cliff, you could hear the echo of a bean dropped four inches above a plate. It sounded like a firecracker. (No hyperbole.)
Atmospheric effects are magnificent here. Among other storms, I saw a dust storm, which obscured everything beyond a quarter mile.
Enclosed are a few pottery chips.
You may think I’ve said a lot, but I haven’t told you half of it. This country suits me nearly to perfection. The only things I miss are a loyal friend to share my delights and miseries, and good music, of which I would not hear much in the city, anyway.
Write lengthily, and criticize my name to your heart’s content.
Your comrade,
Lan
March 21
San Juan River, Utah
Dear Family,
It is now the twenty-first, but I have just received your letters of the ninth and tenth, which you evidently wrote before receiving my third. You are right that mailboxes are distant. I am in practically the most remote place in America. The nearest mailbox is forty-five miles away at Kayenta. This is about 250 miles from Flagstaff, the nearest city. There are only trading posts in between. There is a town in Utah, about 100 miles distant. Mail only leaves Kayenta once a week.
As for hunting for me with Dorinda [the family automobile], I don’t believe you could get the car here. It would sink in the sand, rattle to pieces on the rocks, get stuck in a river bottom, slide off a cliff, or run out of gas miles from a service station. There is, however, a road to the camp where I am staying now. I have helped to put it through, but personally I prefer a burro and a trail.
Everett, the burro, has been fattening out and becoming more lively and tractable. The first time I put a real pack on him, he ambled along for a mile and then lay down in the center of the path, but I think he is over that habit. When well treated he is a very droll creature, with his white nose and stubby ears. Every once in a while he snorts and shakes his head from side to side, ears flapping. He keeps turning his ears, individually too. At first I didn’t know how to get the most out of him, but now I think he will do twenty miles a day.
Waldo is not the only one who went swimming Sunday afternoon. I had a great frolic splashing about in the San Juan with some of the younger people at camp.
Now I think I shall lead you up to where I am, and have been for a week. The day after I wrote the last letter, I left for Monument Valley, where I spent two days, sketching, reading, cooking, and camping. The coyotes howled close by at night, and the burro wandered far.
The next day, I started for some box canyons where there were cliff dwellings, but I did not go far before the pack began to shift. After lashing it on more securely, I plodded on until late afternoon, when I reached the mouth of a large canyon. A windstorm sprang up, and the burro sat down. A waterhole which I had expected to be full was completely empty. I kept going back and back into the canyon until I was nearly to the end, in a gloomy, sunless place. Unwilling to go any farther, I unloaded the burro and went on over some small hills to the end of the narrow cleft, with a high rock wall on each side. At the very end was a V-shaped pool of muddy water with a green scum on it. That night, four inches of snow fell. Two mornings later, I hit the trail once more, very glad to get out of Gloom Canyon. I had not gone many miles before I came to some very neatly constructed cliff dwellings, near which I made camp. I found many interesting pottery chips with various designs. A new difficulty in painting presented itself when the watercolor turned to thin ice while I painted. The next day, after viewing a few more ruins, I left the vicinity of Monument Valley and headed for the trading post of Oljeto, which means “moonlight on water.” All of the ruins I saw had been investigated before.
After sunset I kept going, trying to reach an old Navajo hogan of which I knew. Finally I tied the burro to a tree and floundered around in the darkness and sandhills until I found the hogan. Then I couldn’t find the burro. Then I couldn’t find the hogan, after locating Everett. After two more searches for each, I made camp with the burro. A flying spark burnt a hole in my packsack. My knife got lost, somehow.
Next day I reached Oljato and went on for two days till I found the camp at the San Juan, where I hoped to get a temporary job. There were five white men and a couple of Navajos working on a road. Some mining men are trying to get things ready for production, but the whole proposition is being kept quiet. I doubt if I shall get a job, but meanwhile I have been earning my board and learning to cook, as well as having much valuable experience. I have been building stone walls, sawing and chopping wood, shoveling on the road, carrying pipes across the river, washing and wiping dishes, carrying water, riding mules, sketching, hiking, and taking advice from the old-timers. [John] Wetherill is a famous camper, and discovered Rainbow Bridge and Mesa Verde. There are two fat men, recently from Hollywood, who are getting toughened up. There is another young fellow named Shelby MacKauley but we call him Mack. The fat ones are Johnny and Austin. Altogether, they are a very likeable and interesting bunch. Three of them are not so much older than I.
I have to hurry and try to get this letter to a car before it leaves, unless it is already gone.
The candle burning is a beautiful thought.
More later,
Love from Lan
April 2
Kayenta, Arizona
Dear Family,
[My] hogan is made of logs piled to make a beehive-shaped structure, and then covered with red clay. The wind is blowing so hard now th
at it blows in dirt and sand at the corners and crevices. At the top there is a square hole to let the smoke out. My bed is at the end opposite the door, and on one side is the firewood, while on the other are my food and equipment. In the center is the fire, with a pot of beans cooking. The hogan is on a sort of rim, above the town of Kayenta. I have been staying in it for three days now.
I will begin my narrative back at the San Juan River, on Sunday, March the twenty-second, the day after I wrote the last letter. Early that morning, after washing clothes, I took an exhilarating swim in the river, which was cold and muddy. Read “The Art of Morals” in The Dance of Life. Two of the boys tried the old trick of taking me snipe hunting that evening, but I fooled them properly.
On Monday, I forded the river and followed up a beautiful clear stream on the other bank. Had lunch under a cottonwood tree which was covered with young green leaves, just unfolding. Watched little stars of light on the bottom of the stream, made by the sunlight passing through bubbles. Observed a water beetle catching minnows.
Mr. [John] Wetherill made me a map of some cliff dwellings I shall visit.
There seemed to be no prospect of a job, so I got ready to leave. On Wednesday it rained all night and most of the day. We all helped to build a chimney in the house, and mudded up the walls. I smashed my finger when carrying a big slab of rock. Had a jolly time around the fireside that night.
Thursday morning, I had flapjacks cooked on a flat rock, then packed my burro and started out. In order to save a few miles, I decided to take a steep trail across the canyon. You would not think that anything but a goat could use it, but other pack animals had, and I essayed it with mine. The pack came off twice and the burro leaped over huge boulders and skidded down to the canyon floor. Halfway up the other side, he came to a shelf three feet high, and I couldn’t persuade him to step up it, no matter how hard I tried. So I unloaded him, carried the pack to the top, and repacked him.
There were wonderful colors on all sides, but the clouds gathered and a raw blast blew, with a few flurries of snow. I made an early camp in Copper Creek, and cooked spotted dog (rice and raisins) for supper.
The next morning, in packing, I found that two tubes of black and one of vermilion watercolors had been crushed, and had oozed all over the others. Three Navajos on horseback stopped by my fire and watched me pack.
Soon I came to a bend in the canyon, where I could see the open desert, with Organ Rock close by. I tried to find a trail which saved a few miles, but it was obscured. One can’t go straight toward his objective because there are so many gullies to cross.
In the afternoon, I had a view of the snow-covered mountains up north, and later I could see El Capitan [Agathla], the impressive, twisted rock which is near Kayenta.
By evening I was in the shadow of a mountain, and I couldn’t get out of it before sunset. I traveled in the afterglow for half an hour, then made camp while the coyotes howled. Soon an Indian sheepherder came along, chanting and singing weirdly. In the canyon next to that in which I camped was an Indian hogan, and its occupants were celebrating the fact that they had plenty to eat and were generally well off. One Indian shouted at the top of his voice in a half bark and half song. He sang first to one side and then to the other, ’till you would expect his voice to break.
Next morning an educated Indian dropped in by my campfire, and gossiped for a while. This was March 28, my seventeenth birthday. I reached Oljato, and found that all my mail had just been sent to the San Juan, except a package. This I opened at lunch, and what a birthday feast I had!
After lunch I plodded happily along, coming in and out of the shadows with my faithful burro. I found a broken arrowhead along the trail. As I walked along, I made up a song about the brink and another about philosophy.
Next morning, there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground, and it kept coming. By the middle of the morning I came to El Capitan, the splendid rock. It has [served as] a landmark for one on many occasions. The longer I know it, the more I like it. If I were wealthy, I’d build a castle like it.
I made early camp in a big empty hogan. Cooked biscuits and gravy, then climbed a hill to watch the sunset,
On Monday, March 30, I came into Kayenta after crossing the creek. My burro does not like water, and was very skittish about putting his feet in the creek. At Kayenta I received your birthday letters and the money. I spent Mother’s dollar for a lustrous green silk neckerchief, and with the rest I bought food and equipment. Everything here costs double the city price and sometimes triple.
As to the burro, I call him Everett, to remind me of the kind of person I used to be. I am careful not to contradict him, since he is my elder, being eighteen years old. He is still alive though, and can kick hard when he wants to. He looks like a Puritan with his solemn black coat, and his white nose, and white eyebrows. I’ve sketched him a couple of times. When the evening sun falls in just the right way, he turns a rich chocolate brown, but most of the time he is black.
I haven’t painted anything which could profitably be made into blockprint, but I am keeping the idea in mind. Some time when I have the opportunity, I want to try a few ideas in oils.
I haven’t been able to leave the hogan to go off on any sketching trips, because the Navajos would steal my things. They think it is clever to steal, and only laugh when found out. I had my smashed finger fixed up, and in a few weeks it will be just as good as ever, but right now it is a handicap in writing almost anything.
I am finishing this Friday morning, in time to catch the mail. Ice formed in the puddles last night.
Haven’t received your letters answering mine of March 1, as yet. Will write more letters, but by the next mail. I shall be exploring some interesting canyons near Betatakin and Keet Seel. From Mr. Nurimberger’s accounts, it is an unusually picturesque district, with springs of clear water, trees, meadows, and canyons. Very isolated, and hardly an Indian goes there. I may be alone a month.
Love to Everyone,
Lan
Agathla. Blockprint by Everett Ruess.
April 16
Kayenta, Arizona
Dear Bill,
I never received the reply to my last letter, but I presume it is with some other mail delayed in southern Utah. Yesterday I emerged from the Tsegi country, where I visited the famous old ruins, Betatakin and Keet Seel. No one was in the valley there, not even an Indian, though there was some Navajo stock. One day, however, three college boys came down from the rim to visit Betatakin, the more accessible ruin.
Everett and I have been over some rather bad trails, here and there. Once we both bogged down in the quicksand and it was all I could do to get him out. I left my shoes in the mire. Another time, following a trail on a knife-edge ridge, Everett plunged down a twenty-five-foot bank when the earth crumbled. He didn’t even ship the pack. He ate my handkerchief and since I have been unable to find my towel anywhere, I think it must have gone the same way. This morning he brayed for the first time since I’ve had him. A dog kept nipping at his heels, and after Everett misplaced a kick, he turned his head from side to side in bewilderment, looked at me with a woebegone expression, and gave a prolonged bray that seemed to go back to primal, elemental things in its essence. He is a venerable old donkey, being a year older than I (who have just passed my seventeenth anniversary).
I haven’t seen much wildlife yet. The list is: crows, ravens, buzzards, owls, bluejays, bluebirds, yellow-headed blackbirds, flickers, robins, hummingbirds, kingbirds; jackrabbits, cottontails, prairie dogs, chipmunks, and a big porcupine; lizards, centipedes, a five-inch scorpion, a milk snake; tumblebugs, spiders, ants, pollywogs, frogs, etc.
I have not been at all prolific in Art, having produced only a dozen paintings worth keeping. However, I consider them my best work, and the color is much clearer.
Somehow I don’t feel like writing now, or even talking. Both actions seem superfluous. If you were here, you might understand, but too much is incommunicable. If I were there—but th
at is unthinkable. You cannot understand what aeons and spaces are between us. I feel very different from the boy who left Hollywood two months ago. I have changed as well as matured.
This letter you may find very incoherent and inconsistent. Ponder on the proverb, “Never less alone than when alone.” Thoughts are jangling within me. In a few hours, I expect to be in a very different mood, and in the next mail, shall send another type of letter. If you write soon, I may be able to answer before I leave this vicinity. I am undecided about where to go next, but there won’t be any stops for a while.
Hope your next letter doesn’t say that you’re leading the same, humdrum existence.
Cheerily, Lan
April 18
Dear Bill,
As for my own life, it is working out rather fortunately. These days away from the city have been the happiest of my life, I believe. It has all been a beautiful dream, sometimes tranquil, sometimes fantastic, and with enough pain and tragedy to make the delights possible by contrast. But the pain too has been unreal. The whole dream has been filled with warm and cool but perfect colors, and with aesthetic contemplation as I jogged behind my little burro. A love for everyone and everything has welled up, finding no outlet except in my art.
Music has been in my heart all the time, and poetry in my thoughts. Alone on the open desert, I have made up songs of wild, poignant rejoicing and transcendent melancholy. The world has seemed more beautiful to me than ever before. I have loved the red rocks, the twisted trees, the red sand blowing in the wind, the slow, sunny clouds crossing the sky, the shafts of moonlight on my bed at night. I have seemed to be at one with the world. I have rejoiced to set out, to be going somewhere, and I have felt a still sublimity, looking deep into the coals of my campfires, and seeing far beyond them. I have been happy in my work, and I have exulted in my play. I have really lived.
