by W. L. Rusho
Nuflo had skinned his legs a little, but already he was unconcernedly munching grass. I hobbled him and took stock of the catastrophe. The camera was soused. The film was wet. I unrolled a little and found that some was dry, so tied it up and put it away. The Pictures of Jonathan were on it.
I hung the saddleblankets and sleepingbag on a fence, and wrung them out as best I could, but the alkali hurt my hands. Then I spread out all my spare clothes on the ground, opened my sketch-case (sorry sight!), and spread some of the papers to dry. Most of them are spoiled. The oatmeal was quite ruined. The flashlight batteries were mushy. I tied my lash rope to the lead ropes and strung a line. There was only one tree to tie the end to. The fence runs east and west, did not get the sun. The wreckage was strewn all over the field, drying, but clouds came up and it began to rain. Hastily I piled everything in a heap and threw the tarp over.
I put on my poncho, and chewing wet candy, walked in the rain to the post. There is a footbridge that sways alarmingly and has no side rails. I told my story to the trader. He is a native of North Carolina but has worked in Zuni and Phoenix. A supply truck came and I helped unload watermelons.
I borrowed a pair of socks, a rug, and canvas to sleep in, and returned to camp. I ate watermelon and peanut butter sandwiches, then turned in. Though I had not let it show, I really felt overwhelmed by what had happened.
—Diary entry, July 1932
August 18
Mesa Verde
Dear Father,
I have been staying in the ranger quarters while in the park—there are a dozen rangers, likeable young men. One of them [Fritz Loeffler] went with me over to Wetherill Mesa, where we explored several cliff dwellings. In Long House, I caught a buzzard, and we took his picture. Your letters, packages, and all reached me. You say nothing about the films. Tell me, don’t you think some of them were really very good? I think those in Canyon de Chelly and del Muerto were very successful.
That is unfortunate that your salary was cut again. I cashed the Shiprock money order here without trouble. I have not really been suffering. Here in the park I have been eating at the government mess hall frequently. The meals are very good—thirty-seven cents each. I came down Ute Canyon to the Mancos River yesterday and up Navajo Canyon into the park again. Then Jim English, the horse wrangler here, helped me take off Nuflo’s shoes, and I turned him loose. He is too old—his teeth are worn down so that he can hardly eat. His back was getting sore too.
If there is clear weather, I intend to hike over to Wild Horse Mesa tomorrow and spend a few days there. It has rained, the last few days. While I was in the Canyon a cloudburst came down, the first I have seen. I heard a rumbling and roaring, and ran to the edge of the stream bed. Below was the dry canyon floor, above was a foaming, boiling, brown torrent, rolling sticks and trash ahead of it, coming down like lava from a volcano. Soon it rushed past, and for several hours there was a torrent. By morning the stream was dry again. I found a pretty little arrow point of obsidian in a Pueblo ruin on the mesa.
I don’t know how much longer I shall be here, but when I leave, I’ll be starting home, I expect. I am just getting to know the people here—some of them are very likeable. I don’t feel in the mood for a big change now, but it is bound to come. I guess I do not feel as oppressed by poverty here as I would in the city—there, lack of money seems to paralyze one; it closes all roads. I shall look forward to concerts and symphonies, and use the library extensively. I’ll want to paint, but before I could do that, I’d like to purchase a complete set of oils and camera again—that would run into money. I’d like to play tennis too, but I’d have to buy a racket. It might, as you suggest, be profitable to spend a week in Red Rock Canyon.
I don’t feel that I have the right spirit for junior college, at all. You spoke of my aloofness before. That is enforced—I want friends as much as anyone, but my ideals of friendship make it very difficult to find true friends. Four of my best friends have gone to New York, and Bill, Clark, and Cornel have become estranged, while I rather outgrew Dee. That leaves me completely friendless, and it is hard to start from the bottom again.
As to careers, they are vaguer than ever before. I am not as sure that I am an artist. I might try writing my adventures, but the personal element makes that very difficult. I could never endure any position with routine, regular hours, and monotonous work. Unless I am having new experiences, broadening horizons, some sort of change, I cannot feel that life is worth living. I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone whom I could really envy, unless it was Edward Weston. Most people’s lives do not appeal to me. I’d not be willing to change places with them, great as are the shortcomings of my own position.
I’ve been having plenty of contrast misery that highlighted the ecstasies that would follow. For the moment, I’m feeling blithe.
Love from Everett
August 25
Mesa Verde
Dear Family,
This afternoon I returned from a four-day trip to Wild Horse Mesa and the North Escarpment. I visited several small cliff dwellings, some of them so situated as to be nearly inaccessible. However I had no accidents. There was one small dwelling which could only be reached by a ledge, from six inches to a foot and a half wide. Below was a sheer drop of fifty feet or so. I had little trouble entering it, being right-handed, but when it came to returning, matters were more complicated. I could not get by the narrow part with my back to the cliff, and if I faced the cliff, I had to go backwards and could not see where to set my foot. After three false starts, I finally reached level sandstone, by crawling on my knees. There was another dwelling near Horse Springs, which could only be reached by worming up a nearly vertical crevice, part of the way hanging by my hands. Even after that, I had to cross a wide creek and crawl under a boulder on the brink. There was a little storehouse right on the face of the cliff, which I did not enter. I found a bone awl in one house.
Usually the Mesa Verde canyons are bone dry, but it had rained heavily for several days, and there was running water in places, and plenty of pot holes on the flat rocks. There was a waterhole with cattails growing in it above one ruin.
I picked my way up to the mesa top, and followed a grassy way to the north brink of Mesa Verde—8,300 feet high. The sun was just setting behind a smokey cloud, casting a lurid glow over the olive drab terrain. Small lakes and canals gleamed up at the cloudless sky overhead. The lights of Cortez flickered in the distance. Soon a west wind sprang up, blowing a veil of fleecy clouds across the stars.
This morning I headed around several canyons and followed a trail southward on Wetherill Mesa till I reached Rock Springs. After a good rest I crossed Tony Canyon to Long Mesa, followed the narrow ridge peering down on some ruined towers, then into Wickiup Canyon, with Buzzard’s Roost, a picturesque dwelling, in a cave on the opposite side. Wickiup led into Navajo Canyon, then I turned north, up Spruce Canyon, up a steep trail past Spruce Tree Dwelling, to park headquarters, just before the post office closed. There was no mail however. It seems to take four or five days for mail to reach the park from California.
I had a good shower in the ranger quarters, and a good meal in the government messhall. It seems that there are no California tourists here now, but I am watching the traffic. I have been wondering what I will do in Hollywood, and while there is no great range of possible activities, I expect to do many things I’ve never done before.
Tomorrow I’m going to take the trips to Square Tower House, Balcony House, and Cliff Palace again, scanning the horizon for California-bound motorists. Balcony House is an extremely interesting cliff dwelling, splendidly situated.
Love from Everett
Square House Tower, Mesa Verde. Blockprint by Everett Ruess.
Everett hitched rides from Mesa Verde to Gallup, then Williams and on to Grand Canyon. He worked his way to Kingman and had his belongings shipped home to Los Angeles. After being stranded in the middle of the desert and for a time in Needles, he finally got a ride into Los Angeles. Back i
n Los Angeles in September 1932, Everett enrolled in college, probably at the urging of his father. Although some of his high school grades were low, he was admitted to UCLA through what he called a “fluke.” Whatever optimism he may have had, however, was soon dispelled as social and academic pressures closed in. In December he confided that he had not been successful in college and did not belong. His grades were good in English and geology, which was not surprising, considering his experiences, but he did poorly at history, philosophy, and military drill.
After completing one semester, he declined to re-register at UCLA in February, but waited instead for the warm weather of 1933, in which he planned long visits to the high Sierras and, later, to San Francisco.
September 29
Hollywood
Dear Cornel [Tengel),
I have just been listening to Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. I turned out all the lights and danced to it—then to Saint-Saens’ bacchanal in Samson and Delilah, until everything whirred.
I had some terrific experiences in the wilderness since I wrote you last—overpowering, overwhelming. But then I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life.
I turned homeward from Colorado early in September, but I stopped for several days at the Grand Canyon, descending alone to the depths, to submerge myself in the steep silence, to be overcome by the fearful immensity, and to drown everything in the deafening roar of the Colorado, watching its snakey writhings and fire-tongued leapings until I was entranced as with the vermilion waste of the Navajo desert and many other places. I feel I must return sometime to Grand Canyon.
But I turned my back to the solitudes and one chill, foggy dawn, I arrived in Los Angeles, where I discarded my sombrero and boots for city garb. For a week I worked intensively in black and white. Also I’ve been reading, and now, of course, I’m attending UCLA. I got in by rather a fluke. My chemistry grades were low, as you remember, but, in transferring credits from Indiana a D in advanced algebra was magically changed to an A, which balanced the chemistry deficit.
I am taking philosophy, geology, English history and composition—also R.O.T.C. and gym. I went swimming in the pool today. I’ve arranged so that I have no classes on Tuesday or Thursday—just three days a week.
Haven’t you met Mr. Weston? If not, do it by all means or you are making a mistake. I think he is by far the most interesting and genuine person in Carmel. Tell him that you are a friend of mine.
If you plan to come back, I think you are foolish to pay bus fare. Send your bulky belongings by freight or parcel post, forget your timidity, and rely on the public. There are always exceptions to the general inhospitable type, if you have the fortitude to wait for them.
I expect to return to Carmel some time—mine was a rich experience there. After months in the desert, I long for the seacaves, the crashing breakers in the tunnels, the still, multi-colored lagoons, the jagged cliffs and ancient warrior cypresses. I think I will choose a fine steed and ride on the velvet beach with the waves lapping and drops splashing in the fresh ribbony edge of the surf. I may go up there during the three weeks Christmas vacation. I went up to Red Rock Canyon to paint for a couple of days. Have you been there? Why don’t you call on Harry Leon Wilson, Jr.? I think he’d be interested in your stuff and he’s an odd chap—own psychology and standpoint.
I’m enthusiastic about a great many things now, a natural reaction to a period not long ago when I was fearfully low, I suppose. I’d like to see you again—I’ll plan to visit you if you’re staying there.
Why don’t you send me the best of what you’ve written, and I’ll send you some prints.
Sweepingly, Everett
I hope it rains. I will sit on a granite rock with my back to a twisted cypress, and stare endlessly at the fighting grey water.
Just to think of the broad expanse of the lake, mysteriously vast at twilight, soothes me.
When the Christmas vacations arrived, Everett took off for Carmel, apparently glad to leave his studies behind and become reacquainted with the beauties of the land and sea he had learned to love on his previous trip.
December
Carmel
Dear Family,
After an adventurous trip I arrived here Sunday morning, and I’m staying at the Greene’s house. Theirs is a fine family—Anne and Betty are splendid girls. Mr. Weston is busy doing Christmas orders. I sold five Christmas cards—sea horses—for ninety cents. Now it is raining so I had to stop going the rounds. I’m just as enthusiastic as ever over Carmel.
Love Everett
December 26
Carmel
Dear Bill,
On my way up here I saw a coyote on the Malibu estate, a group of beautiful egrets at Point Mugu, and an owl of some kind. I was just waking from a pleasant sleep in a haystack near Salinas when I saw the owl, perched like a carved block of wood, atop a derrick. The morning sun poked through a cloud and a level beam shone in the old bird’s eyes. He turned his head around and about, then flew soundlessly off. The next moment, when I was contemplating the Pacific, the farmer drove up in a truck, to pitch away my haystack. He was quite good natured about finding me.
Today I went over to Monterey. I watched the young men of war striding jauntily down the street, and riding their spirited horses. I made sketches of some groups of hobos encamped by the railroad.
It is very interesting the way the sandpipers skitter along, always half an inch ahead of the waves. Also the quail, pelicans, cormorants, woodpeckers, squirrels, and deer are engaging. I saw a doe this morning that switched her tail like an angry cat. It looked wrong, somehow.
I’ve not accomplished much. It is always too cold to sketch carefully—my fingers shiver and I have paper after paper covered with wavy, erratic lines which are hard to decipher. I’ve been constantly occupied however, if only in absorbing my surroundings. Yesterday I was at Point Lobos.
I tried out a new dish a few nights ago—squid. After you remove the head, the ink, the white mucous substance, and the cellophane wrapper, you have what looks like a piece of flat rubber coated with white enamel. It tastes as it looks, I think. A few days ago I pruned a very tall pine tree. I sold some Christmas cards.
Everett
Lone Juniper. Blockprint by Everett Ruess.
* * *
[11] Louisa Wade Wetherill, wife of John, and resident of Kayenta, coauthored, with Frances Gilmore, the book Trader to the Navajos, which, though copyrighted in 1934, was not published until 1953, nine years after Louisa’s death.
Chapter 5: The Letters 1933
March 23
Hollywood
Dear Fritz [Loeffler],
I was quite delighted to find your letter last week. I was probably just as surprised as you were to receive my print. You don’t know how good it makes me feel to know that someone is truly enjoying something I have made. I appreciate the picture you sent me very much too. I have made about a dozen prints this year, all of them very different and appealing to different people for different reasons, but after looking them over I have selected one of a cypress grove at Carmel, which I’m sending you in the same mail. I hope you like it.
Jim English sent me a card at Christmas, and said that old Nuflo was getting fat and coming down to water every day with the other horses. I have visited Doc Rice a few times at the hospital downtown, and watched him assist in an appendectomy case once. He plans to loiter through Colorado this fall before taking an internship in the Bellevue (I think) Hospital in New York.
When I left Mesa Verde, as you probably know, I got a ride to Gallup with a tourist going to Grand Canyon. I had only two or three dollars then. You may remember that certain of the rangers were amused at my idea of getting a ride with all my dunnage, but I persuaded an unwilling chauffeur to take me on as far as Williams. Then he wanted to drop me again, but helped by my magnetic personality I persuaded him that he was foolish not to take me to the Canyon, which he finally did. There I had him deposit me late at night, and I was ver
y glad to be on my own again. I always enjoy the Grand Canyon, and I couldn’t resist going down again, so I swung my pack over my shoulder and went down into the depths of the glowing furnace. I killed a Grand Canyon rattler, and camped in a wonderful little side canyon with a stream. I went along the Tonto trail and down to the writhing Colorado, then did some hiking, climbing out between mid-afternoon and dusk. I had hardly recovered on the following day, when, failing to find a single California-bound tourist who was not overcrowded or inhospitable, I accepted the invitation of an old war veteran to guide him down the abandoned Hermit Trail, for the fun of it. It turned out that he couldn’t make the grade, so he stopped halfway down and I ran on down in the dark, rejoining him the next evening. He and his friends, who were prospecting, took me to Kingman, where I shipped my pack boxes and took to the road again. After enduring the inferno of the empty desert for a whole day, I got a ride the last few remaining miles of the distance to Oatman. Later I was fairly stranded in Needles, and was reduced to wiring for help, but the wire was never received and I got a ride straight through, arriving in a dense fog in a strange part of the city.
I hadn’t been home a week before I heard the call again, and went inland to Red Rock Canyon for a few days. Then I followed your suggestion and enrolled at U.C.L.A., taking geology, philosophy, English history, English, gym, and military drill. I’m glad I went, but I’m glad it’s over. College was a valuable episode, but I didn’t let it get a strangle hold on me.
During the three weeks’ vacation at Christmas, I went up to Carmel by the Sea, did some good work, and had some splendid experiences among others. I rode a black horse on the cool velvet beach at the edge of the surf, splashing through the salt water at times, and galloping beside the waves.
