Finding Everett Ruess

by David Roberts

  The breakthrough came in May 1982, after Waldo had enlisted a friend named Tom Wright, who lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, to aid in the search. Wright managed to get a phone number in Globe, Arizona, and left a message asking Kellner to call him back. As Wright wrote to Waldo,

  Fortunately, when he called me back … he called collect, so the number he called from was listed on my phone bill. I called that number back today—I was afraid it might be a pay phone in a drugstore or a gas station, but it turned out to be his mother’s home. She told me that Larry has been out of town for several weeks, trying to find a job.… She says he writes or calls at least once a week with a temporary address as he goes from town to town, and she promised to give him the message to contact me just as soon as possible.

  By now, in his desperation, Waldo was prepared to try to buy back Everett’s original work from Kellner. Wright was sanguine about the propect of this coming to pass: “It shouldn’t be too hard to talk a man who is unemployed and prone to bad luck into accepting $200 for a bundle of old papers.” The publisher Gibbs Smith had recently commissioned the book that would become Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty, and Waldo was anxious to make all of his brother’s letters and diaries available to the author, Bud Rusho.

  In May, Waldo finally received his first letter from Kellner in almost eighteen years. Hand-written all in capitals, it listed general delivery in Globe as a return address. The short note is a masterpiece of feigned innocence.

  Dear Waldo:

  A friend of yours, Tom Wright of Phoenix, made contact with me last week and asked me to get in touch with you. He briefed me on the upcoming expanded book on Everett.

  My father passed away in December after a long illness and my mother was hospitalized in March. If I do not reply to your letter immediately, please understand.

  I am interested in your endeavor and will be awaiting your letter.

  Hope this finds you all well.

  Sincerely,

  Larry.

  On May 21, Kellner sent Waldo a longer, typed letter in response to one from Waldo that he finally acknowledged he had received. But the claims in this new letter were mind-boggling. Kellner insisted that he had never met Waldo or Stella. He also maintained that he had never received any of Everett’s original writings or artwork from Waldo or his mother, either in person or by mail. He claimed instead that Stella had written him lamenting the loss of some of Everett’s manuscripts “after your mothers move to your home.”

  What Kellner would admit to possessing was material “from people who knew Everett, or in some way were involved in the search for him, or who later became deeply interested in his story, such as Randall Henderson, Harry Aleson, etc. In addition, I [have] information from Indians, government people, traders, etc., who passed over to me what they knew.”

  Kellner was indeed interested in selling Waldo his files: “At this time, Waldo, I would be willing to consider a cash offer for all of the material I have, with acknowledgment in any publication, movie, and/or TV programming. I have a wealth of material, and still have contacts with people, which I am confident has not been disclosed.”

  All of these obfuscations were couched in the friendliest of blandishments elsewhere in the letter: “[I]t was good hearing from you again”; “I very much appreciate your interest in Everetts life—it was an exception, especially during those times”; “[C]onvey my best to Conchita and the family. I look forward to one day meeting all of you.”

  Waldo wrote back and offered Kellner $200 for his material, in hopes of making the papers available to Bud Rusho. In his answering letter, Kellner fawned once more: “Believe me, Waldo, I commend you highly for this undertaking. It is a fine tribute to Everett, and the entire story needs to be told.” But then he wrote,

  The majority of the material I have is in the form of letters and interviews with people who knew Everett, and spans about a 20-year period on my behalf. Considering the $200 offer, this would amount to $10.00 a year, or less than $1.00 a month. I feel, personally, that the offer is not realistic, not only from the stand point of my continued efforts, but also for the safe-guarding of the material I have.

  Yet, like a fisherman playing a hooked trout, Kellner added, “However, this is not closing the door, Waldo. It is my opinion, and that of other authors and historians, that this material would greatly expound [sic] on Everett’s life.”

  On August 24, 1982, Tom Wright managed to meet Kellner in person in Tucson. The next day he summarized this “very good visit” in a letter to Waldo. Kellner must have turned on the charm, for Wright concluded, “I think he is fair and honest and will make a real attempt to cooperate.” But what Kellner told Wright did not exactly match what he had written to Waldo. As Wright reported:

  Concerning Everett’s letters, photos, diaries, etc., Larry says he has a mixture of originals and typewritten copies.… [H]e says that everything that came from your family was either a copy or an original of which you kept a copy. He says that the material is either labelled with words to the effect of “duplicate—you may keep this” or that the letters accompanying the material when it was sent to him said the same thing.

  Now, however, Kellner told Wright that he was willing to “make his collection of Everett’s material available to Peregrine Smith” (Gibbs Smith’s imprint), but not “the research he’s done over the years or his own writing about Everett’s life.” Even though Wright never saw a single page of Kellner’s putative research or writing, the former park ranger somehow won Wright’s sympathy: “He is, understandably, reluctant to give away or even sell the results of a 25-year involvement in Everett’s story.”

  In exasperation, Waldo turned over the negotiations to Gibbs Smith. The next April, Waldo wrote to an acquaintance, “Gibbs offered Kellner $500 or $1000 for all of his E papers and data collected since the early 1960s or so, I believe, but I guess he wanted more than that.”

  In the end, Bud Rusho wrote A Vagabond for Beauty without the benefit of a single glance at the Kellner collection. Five more years passed. On November 16, 1987, after visiting Kellner in Globe, Tom Wright wrote Waldo with the news he dreaded to hear:

  He told me … that he had sold all his material on Everett. It was sold through a dealer in Santa Fe to a private collector, “an author,” living in Richfield, Utah, for $3000. I told Larry that, in the interest of keeping track of the material for the benefit of future historians, I’d be very interested in having the name and address of this “author.” Larry replied that he couldn’t remember the man’s name but that he could get it for me.… That was on August 6th, and I haven’t heard from him since.

  Twenty-nine years after he had first contacted Stella, Larry Kellner was still holding to his story. But the Richfield “author” did not exist. Kellner had, however, sold the collection to a Santa Fe book dealer.

  In 1988, the final chapter of this dismal saga was written. On September 14 of that year, Waldo wrote a last letter to Kellner:

  I had heard that a half year ago or maybe a year ago you sold all the things re Everett to someone and have wondered about this because it seems to me my Mother and I sent you so many Everett things which you promised to guard with your life and return to us,—original letters, diaries, etc. Can you comment on this?

  Did you give up on publishing a book about E?

  Kellner never responded.

  Meanwhile, the Santa Fe dealer had contacted Ken Sanders, founder and owner of a legendary used bookstore in Salt Lake City, and one of the most ardent guardians of the Ruess flame. In 1984 and again in 1985, Sanders had published an “Everett Ruess Calendar,” the squares for various days adorned with pithy quotes from Everett’s letters and diaries. (March 15: “I go to make my destiny.” March 23: “Beauty has always been my god.”)

  The Santa Fe dealer asked Sanders if he was interested in buying the Kellner collection. In 2009, Sanders recalled the tumult of emotions the offer stirred up. “The Santa Fe guy wanted big money. I called Ken Sleight and asked,
‘What should I do?’ He said, ‘Ken, you have to buy this collection. Otherwise it will disappear forever.’ So I made an offer to the Santa Fe dealer, and he took it. He overnighted the stuff in a big silver box. It was full of Kellner’s quest to track down Everett. Letters to all kinds of people, even J. Edgar Hoover. Correspondence with the Ruesses. It was obsessive.”

  Waldo got wind of Sanders’s purchase. On February 10, 1988, he wrote to the Salt Lake City bookstore owner. After detailing all the materials he and Stella had shipped to Kellner in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Waldo pleaded, “So, Ken, it certainly seems to me you should return any photos and original papers you bought from Kellner, as being stolen property he sent you.”

  But Sanders wrote back, “I sincerely doubt that there are any letters I have that you don’t already have. They are all copies.… The only original correspondence is that which Kelner [sic] sent off to various people and agencies trying to find out information on Everett.” As for diaries, according to Sanders, the only thing in the collection was a copy—not the original—of an apparently youthful journal in Everett’s hand.

  If this is true, there may be two possible explanations. One is that Kellner sold off the original letters and diaries piecemeal over the years. The other is that he kept them separate from the collection that he sold to the Santa Fe dealer, and that they remained in his possession after 1987. It is not possible that Waldo’s memory of having sent precious originals to Kellner almost thirty years earlier was faulty, for Kellner’s own letters express fulsome gratitude for the “loan” of those documents.

  In 2009, Ken Sanders told this writer what happened next. “In a moment of weakness, during a period of poverty, I sold the Kellner materials to a certain individual from Indiana. He considers himself the caretaker of the collection. He thinks it should eventually be donated to a museum or library in Indiana [where Everett lived for several years as an adolescent]. He’s another Everett Ruess fanatic.”

  Sanders would not reveal the private collector’s name or address. He promised to forward a letter I wrote to the man, beseeching him to donate or sell the Kellner collection to the University of Utah, so that it could be united with the Ruess Family Papers archived there and accessible to the public. I never got a response.

  In 2004, however, at the age of ninety-five, Waldo attended the first Everett Ruess Days festival in Escalante, a celebration that would become an annual event. With him were his wife, Conchita, and three of their adult children. There the family met the Indiana collector—whose name, unfortunately, none of the Ruesses can remember. The man greeted Waldo warmly and posed for some photographs with him. According to Waldo’s daughter Michèle Ruess, “He came across to me as awkward and shy. He felt he had obtained the papers in an honest manner. He learned from us that they included stolen property, but he didn’t feel any compulsion whatsoever to right the wrong. Apparently he had paid dearly for them. After meeting him I felt that future endeavors to have our property returned to us would be futile.”

  Waldo’s son Brian Ruess adds, “At one point, he indicated a willingness to donate the papers to the University of Utah. But he had some kind of plan to use the materials first—for a book, or a movie, or both. He coyly refused to give our family any access to the materials until after he had finished his project.”

  Seven years later, the Kellner papers remain in the hands of the Indiana collector. What lost letters, diaries, and artwork of Everett’s may be among them, only he, Ken Sanders, and perhaps a handful of other people know.

  NINE

  “No Least Desire for Fame”

  AFTER WALLACE STEGNER, the next major writer to salute Everett was Edward Abbey, in his 1968 book, Desert Solitaire, which many Abbey fans consider his finest work. In a characteristic passage, the self-styled “desert rat” complained that while “the majority of the world’s great spirits,” from Homer to Joseph Conrad, had responded deeply to the open sea, relatively few good writers had hymned the desert. To a short list ranging from C. M. Doughty (Travels in Arabia Deserta) to Joseph Wood Krutch (The Voice of the Desert), Abbey appended “such obscure figures as the lad Everett Reuss, author of On Desert Trails.” Summing up Everett’s story in a single sentence, Abbey added a whimsical conceit: “For all we know he is still down in there somewhere, living on prickly pear and wild onions, communing with the gods of river, canyon and cliff.”

  When this passage was brought to Waldo’s attention, he wrote Abbey a letter scolding him for misspelling Everett’s last name and for calling him “an obscure literary figure.” Abbey wrote back, “I think if you will read my passages about Everett over again you will find that underneath the perhaps over-facetious or sardonic style there is genuine admiration. If I did not admire him so much I would never have mentioned him at all.”

  It was Abbey who, in 1980, directed Gibbs Smith’s attention to Everett. In 1998, Smith wrote,

  [Abbey] viewed Everett as a kindred spirit and urged me to try to find out more about him. After some detective work, I located Everett’s brother, who entrusted me with Everett’s letters, other writings, and artwork. We both hoped that a new book would result.… I worked with the material for two years in my spare time, then asked my good friend W. L. Rusho to help organize a book. Bud and I worked together, and the book Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty, published in 1983, was the result.

  In 2009, Smith elaborated on his first contact with Waldo during a visit to Santa Barbara. “Waldo had a garden shed full of Everett’s stuff,” Smith reminisced, “all of it in boxes and old orange crates. He let me take the letters back to Utah. I had them by my bed for two years. I’d read a few at a time. I slowly realized, these letters are really important. That’s when I went to Bud.”

  On a meager advance, Rusho conducted a great deal of original research, much of it in Escalante, where he interviewed old-timers who had met Everett in 1934. The bulk of Vagabond is a selective anthology of some of Everett’s letters from 1930 through 1934, interspersed with excerpts from his essays, a few passages from the 1932 and 1933 diaries, reproductions of some of his best blockprints, and photos of Everett in the field.

  For continuity, Rusho inserted paragraphs of boldface text in his own voice summarizing Everett’s doings between trips. And he book-ended the anthology with a prefatory chapter called “The Beauty and the Tragedy of Everett Ruess” and four short closing chapters summarizing the decades of search for the lost wanderer, the theories about his fate, and the lasting import of his legacy.

  The book was not an immediate success. Within the first year, Vagabond sold only 1,700 copies of the ten thousand in print. But slowly and steadily the book gained the status of a cult classic. By 2002, more than 100,000 copies of Vagabond and the 1998 follow-up, Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess, had been sold.

  In 2009, speaking at a conference in Escalante, Gibbs Smith said, “I’ve been in publishing for forty years, and this is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever published. It’s had a life of its own. It’s been carried almost entirely by word of mouth.

  “Everett, in my opinion, was the first unscientific appreciator of this land. His letters are still the best expression of why we so appreciate the beauty of this landscape.”

  In his closing chapters, Rusho judiciously weighed the four leading theories about what happened to Everett, but committed to none of them. Each of the four, he concluded, was plausible, but each raised fundamental problems. The theory that Everett had deliberately disappeared or gone native was tempting (especially in view of the numerous “sightings” of Everett in later years, ranging from Florida to Mexico), but the chances of this story being true, Rusho concluded, were “small to the point of being remote.” Moreover, wrote Rusho, “From his letters, it appears that he remained too close to his parents and to his brother, Waldo, to suddenly and deliberately cut all communication—forever.”

  The idea that Everett might have committed suicide, in Rusho’s analysis, was linked to the hypothesis of
a deliberate escape from the world. But “He was not a recluse; he liked to converse with everyone he met.…” And “Whatever his feelings upon leaving the cities, his letters indicate a gradual return of confidence and good humor” through the summer and early fall of 1934. Stella and Christopher had come to the same conclusion: the last letters home had been too full of joy and enthusiasm to spring from a youth contemplating suicide.

  The widely held belief that Everett might have fallen to his death from one of his daring climbs into prehistoric ruins, leaving his body lodged in some inaccessible canyon nook or crevice, ran up against the odd fact that the 1935 searchers found evidence of his last campsite, but not his cooking and camping equipment, food, or painting kit. Everett would not, Rusho argued, have been likely to carry all that gear with him on a climb to a ruin.

  Rusho devoted his most serious attention to the theory that rustlers had murdered Everett. In Escalante, he learned that rustling had become so widespread in 1934 that the Cattlemen’s Association had spread the false rumor that a government investigator had been dispatched to the region, traveling through it incognito as he hoped to catch the lawbreakers red-handed. Rustlers startled by the sudden advent of a stranger leading his burros might have thought Everett was the government spy.

  “It was into this atmosphere of deceit and suspicion that Everett innocently rode his burros south from Escalante,” Rusho wrote. “Of course, Everett must have looked about as dangerous as a puppy dog, but who can account for the possible reaction to him in the mind of a petty thief?”