Philip L. Fradkin - Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife

PRAISE FOR PHILIP FRADKIN AND HIS WORK

In all cultures, every religion, men and women have gone into isolation and returned with insight. Or, often equally fascinating, they have not returned. Are they lost souls hiding somewhere or victims of misadventure? They lead many to speculate about the significance of life and the significance of mystery. This book about Everett Ruess is an adventure story that builds into a mystery. So read and ponder. It kept me up nights.

WILLIAM KITTREDGE, author of The Willow Field

Philip Fradkin has long been one of the shrewdest interpreters of the landscapes of the American West. Here he beautifully humanizes and does justice to a haunted young man who has become a caricature. This is a gripping story told amidst the indelible, stark beauty of the canyon West.

WILLIAM DEVERELL, author of Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past and Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

Important or famous people can sometimes disappear into legend. Innumerable young people of aspiration and talent, howeversuch as Everett Ruesscan vanish into a vast and devouring darkness, lured there by dreams that can never come true and demons that give no rest.

KEVIN STARR, University of Southern California and author of Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge

The mysterious disappearance of the vagabond artist and poet Everett Ruess has fascinated historians and canyonlands buffs for nearly eighty years. Fradkin doesnt solve the mystery of Everetts fate, but he does a meticulous job demythologizing Ruess and making him humancurious, quixotic, intense, often foolishbut very much the embodiment of the youthful loner possessed by a romanticized search for truth and beauty.

PAGE STEGNER, author of Adios Amigos: Tales of Sustenance and Purification in the American West

Philip Fradkin is much more than a first-rate journalist and writer. He is Trickster exposing the lies and assumptions of our culture with a fierce intellect, while at the same time creating a tenderness of heart toward all that is beautiful and just. His language is hard-edged, authentic, and clear.

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, author of Refuge and Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Fradkin is an impassioned writer who knows his subject.

San Francisco Chronicle

Fradkin experiences our worst public events as the very stuff of life. This lends his writing a stirring urgency.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

With a reporters eye for detail, Fradkin delivers in a most compelling fashion.

Sacramento Bee

Wallace Stegner and the American West

A widely published author on wilderness and the West, the Pulitzer Prizewinning Fradkin was the first environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Which is to say, hes thoroughly steeped in the very landscapes and conflicts with which Stegner spent his life grappling.

HAMPTON SIDES, author of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

Fradkins dynamic and probing portrait of Stegner brilliantly combines literary and environmental history, and provides a fresh and telling perspective on the rampant development of the arid West.

Booklist

A River No More

A River No More makes a statement of the utmost importance and gravity.

WALLACE STEGNER, The New Republic

Everett Ruess

ALSO BY PHILIP L. FRADKIN

California, the Golden Coast (1974)

A River No More (1981)

Sagebrush Country (1989)

Fallout (1989)

Wanderings of an Environmental Journalist (1993)

The Seven States of California (1995)

Magnitude 8 (1998)

Wildest Alaska (2001)

Stagecoach (2002)

The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 (2005)

Wallace Stegner and the American West (2008)

The Left Coast (2011)

HIS SHORT LIFE, MYSTERIOUS DEATH,
AND ASTONISHING AFTER LIFE

Philip L. Fradkin

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished
university presses in the United States, enriches lives around
the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social
sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by
the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions
from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit
www.ucpress.edu .

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England

2011 by Philip L. Fradkin

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fradkin, Philip L.

Everett Ruess : his short life, mysterious death, and
astonishing afterlife / Philip L. Fradkin.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-26542-4 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Ruess, Everett, b. 1914. 2. Poets, American20th
centuryBiography. 3. ExplorersSouthwest, New
Biography. I. Title.

PS3535.U26Z63 2011

811.52dc22 2011011203

[B]

Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally
responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC
Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100%
post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked,
processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable
biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

For my parents,
and all parents
who have lost
a young son or daughter

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Marilyn Lee and Harvey Schneider as members of the Literati Circle of the University of California Press Foundation.

The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.

In the desert one comes in direct confrontation with
the bones of existence, the bare incomprehensible
absolute is-ness of being.

EDWARD ABBEY,
Confessions of a Barbarian

Nothing so augmented the interest in Ambrose Bierce
as his disappearance. Obscurity is obscurity, but
disappearance is fame.

CAREY MCWILLIAMS,
Ambrose Bierce: A Biography

And they never found my body, boys
Or understood my mind.

DAVE ALVIN,
the refrain from Everett Ruess

APPENDIX A
Wilderness Song

APPENDIX B
Father and Son Dialogue

Illustrations follow

Map 1. Ruesss travels on roads and trails in California, 1930 and 1933.

Map 2. Ruesss travels on roads and trails in the Southwest, 1931, 1932, and 1934.