My favorite quotes from the personal letters of Everett Ruess, as found in Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty (W.L. Rusho)

I am determined to make my own way, but each day spent in stupid labor, I shall consider wasted. You and I seem both to suffer from backwardness, not caring or not able to “sell” ourselves.

–

The beauty of the wet desert was overpowering. I was not happy for there was no one with whom I could share it, but I thought, how much better than to be in a schoolroom with rain on the windows, or at home in my dreary bedroom. My tragedy is that I don’t fit in with any class of people.

–

Physically, I am not very tough. I haven’t the constitution of a day laborer. I soon wear out at a job like road building, or digging and lifting. This seems to be my physical makeup, because though I have tried many times, I find I can’t do a man’s work in physical labor. Aside from this, however, I am well able to take care of myself, to a certain extent I know my capabilities, and I pride myself on sincerity and steadiness. I don’t have much trouble getting along with people, but I have the greatest difficulty in finding the sort of companionship I want.

–

I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a lone wanderer of the wilderness. God, how the trail lures me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me. After all the lone trail is the best. I hope I’ll be able to buy good horses and a better saddle. I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.

–

God, how the wild calls to me. There can be no other life for me but that of the lone wilderness wanderer. It has an irresistible fascination. The lone trail is the best for me.

–

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 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.

You might be interested in an essay I wrote today. I’ll quote you a portion.

“Work is a malevolent goddess, made impossibly conceited by unlimited and untempered flattery. She does not even make any effort to attract new lovers, knowing that no matter how insolent and indifferent she is to them, they will cast themselves on her sacrificial pyre unasked.

“It may not mean much to her who has everything she could want already, but I am vain enough to hope that she is nettled when, strolling insouciantly through her temple, I raise my eyebrows in amused contempt as I look at her marble eyelids, and walking with a slight swagger, feeling her hostile eyes boring through my back, I saunter gracefully out of the dim, reeking temple. When I am bowled over and trampled upon by the contemptible fools who rush madly to cast themselves upon her pyre, my face flushes to the roots of my hair, but I do not look back to see the evil leer in the eyes of the thwarted goddess as I pick myself up, flick decorously at my smirched clothes, and thread my way past the pitiable throngs swarming to her sacrificial altar.

“Although thousands are going in and I am the only one going out, I go my way firm in my inner convictions, though for a second there is a wry twist to my lips and a swifter beating of the heart in unwilling trepidation, as I pause at the portals. Then, nostrils dilated in derision as I meet the eyes of the malignantly leering goddess for the last time, I go forth alone into the outer sunlight where I meet no one save straggling contemptible fools who are hastening anxiously to the temple, eyeing me askance as they pass. It may be that I am more pathetic in my solitary independence than they in their submission, but I have left the temple irrevocably behind me. Lone and proud I fare forth into the sunlight.”

–

I have been feeling so happy and filled to overflowing with the beauty of life, that I felt I must write to you. It is all a golden dream, with mysterious, high, rushing winds leaning down to caress me, and warm and perfect colors flowing before my eyes. Time and the need of time have ceased entirely. A gentle, dreamy haze fills my soul, the rustling of the aspens lulls my senses, and the surpassing beauty and perfection of everything fills me with quiet joy and a deep pervading love for my world.

My solitude is unbroken. Above, the white, castellated cliffs glitter fairy-like against the turquoise sky. The wild silences have enfolded me unresisting. 

Beauty and peace have been with me, wherever I have gone. At night I have watched pale granite towers in the dim starlight, aspiring to the powdered sky, tremulous and dreamlike, fantastical in the melting darkness.

I have watched white-maned rapids, shaking their crests in wild abandon, surging, roaring, overwhelming the senses with their white fury, only to froth and foam down the current into lucent green pools, quiet and clear in the mellow sunlight.

On the trail, the musical tinkle of the burro bells mingles with the sound of wind and water, and is only heard subconsciously.

On the lake at night, the crescent moon gleams liquidly in the dark water, mists drift and rise like lifting enchantments, and tall, shadowed peaks stand guard in watchful silence.

–

During the last few weeks, I have been having the time of my life. Much of the time I feel so exuberant that I can hardly contain myself. The colors are so glorious, the forests so magnificent, the mountains so splendid, and the streams so utterly, wildly, tumultuously, effervescently joyful that to me at least, the world is a riot of intense sensual delight. In addition to all, the people are genial and generous and happy, and everyone seems to be at his best.

–

I ate a Gargantuan mess of sandwiches and fried yams while I read about Pantagruel and Panurge, how they discomfited Impgarva and his giants. When the fire faded the embers took on a more intense glow, the trees loomed higher, and the starlight poured straight down.

So now you know how I deport myself. Do you, in your turn, inform me of your various adventures. I hope you two also are on the crest of the wave, or at least not in its trough. Tell me anything.

Irrepressibly, Everett

–

I am learning things all the time, and I certainly have never felt any handicap with Fiske and Schermerhorn. I could not do the things they are doing, but on the other hand, they are shoved into such a rut by their work that they cannot follow any of the broadly cultural lines that I follow, and I certainly do not regret my freedom. On all sides I meet people who are not able to follow things up as I am doing, and it is not I who envy them.

You can be ashamed of me if you like, but you cannot make me feel ashamed of myself, in that direction at least. Waldo has an entirely different problem, and I don’t think it is profitable to compare us as you do.

As for me, I have tasted your cake, and I prefer your unbuttered bread. I don’t wish to withdraw from life to college, and I have a notion, conceited or not, that I know what I want from life, and can act upon it.

–

I have been interested in studying the people as I go up the coast. I have been curious to observe what various people get out of life, but most of them are disappointing under close observation. Also I’ve been observing reactions to the economic situation. I was startled by the intelligence of one of the ranch hands, but most of the people are living the super simple life and have no energy for thinking.

–

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, says that adventures are a sign of unpreparedness and incompetence. I think he is largely right, nevertheless I like adventure and enjoy taking chances when skill and fortitude play a part. If we never had any adventures, we would never know what “stuff” was in us.

–

Three or four years ago I came to the conclusion that for me, at least, the lone trail was the best, and the years that followed strengthened my belief.

It is not that I am unable to enjoy companionship or unable to adapt myself to other people. But I dislike to bring into play the aggressiveness of spirit which is necessary with an assertive companion, and I have found it easier and more adventurous to face situations alone. There is a splendid freedom in solitude, and after all, it is for solitude that I go to the mountains and deserts, not for companionship. In solitude I can bare my soul to the moun tains unabashed. I can work or think, act or recline at my whim, and nothing stands between me and the Wild.

Then, on occasion, I am grateful for what unusual and fine person ality I may encounter by chance, but I have learned not to look too avidly for them. I delve into myself, into abstractions and ideas, trying to arrange the other things harmoniously, but after that, taking them as they come.

To one aware of the strangeness of life, my life in the cities was as strange as it is here. In many ways, toward the last, it was a fulfillment. I had many gloriously beautiful experiences, as well as the wild and intense adventures which seem to come without my searching. I do not know if I shall ever return to the cities again, but I cannot complain that I found them empty of beauty.

I was sorry, though, that our intimacy, like many things that [ are and will be, had to die with a dying fall. I do not greatly mind endings, for my life is made up of them, but sometimes they come too soon or too late, and sometimes they leave a feeling of regret as of an old mistake or an indirect futility. I like to be able to be perfectly open and sincere, and yet it is impossible to be sincere to all of one’s self at once, so for the deepest understanding one must seek those with whom one can be most truly one’s self. And never be blind to the in effable drollery of it all.

So here too I have been leading a life of strange contrasts, violent indeed when considered separately, yet flowing naturally enough into one another. There has been deep peace, vast calm and fury, strange comradeships and intimacies, and many times my life and all my posses sions have tottered on the far side of the balance, but as yet, from each such encounter I have in the end come away, unharmed, and even toughened.

But much as I love people, the most important thing to me is still the nearly unbearable beauty of what I see. I won’t wish that you could see it, for you might not find it easy to bear either, but yet I do sincerely wish for you a little at least of the impossible.

–

Once more I am roaring drunk with the lust of life and adventure and unbearable beauty. I have the devil’s own conception of a perfect time; adventure seems to beset me on all quarters without my even searching for it; I find gay comradeships and lead the wild, free life wherever I am. And yet, there is always an undercurrent of restlessness and wild longing; “the wind is in my hair, there’s a fire in my heels,” and I shall always be a rover, I know. Always I’ll be able to scorn the worlds I’ve known like half-burnt candles when the sun is rising, and sally forth to others now unknown. I’m game; I’ve passed my own rigorous tests, and I know that I can take it. And I’m lucky too, or have been. Time and again, my life or all my possessions have swung on the far side of the balance, and always thus far I’ve come out on top and unharmed, even toughened by the chances I’ve taken.

“Live blindly and upon the hour; the Lord, who was the future, died full long ago.” Among others, I’ve tried that way, and found it good, too. Finality does not appall me, and I seem always to enjoy things the more intensely because of the certainty that they will not last. Oh it’s a wild, gay time! Life can be rich to overflowing. I’ve been so happy that I can’t think of containing myself. I’ve no complaints to make, and time and the world are my own, to do with as I please. And I’ve had it up and down; no tedious, humdrum middle course has been mine, but a riotously plunging and soaring existence.

Again I say, it’s a wild gay time. I’ve slept under hundreds of roofs, and shall know others yet. I’ve carved a way for myself, turned hostile strangers into staunch friends, swaggered and sung through surplus of delight where nothing and no one cared whether I lived or died.

The things I’ve loved and given up without a complaint have returned to me doubled. There’s no one in the world I envy. Around me stretches the illimitable desert, and far off and nearby are the outposts of suffering, struggling, greedy, grumbling humanity. But I don’t choose to join on that footing. I’m sorry for it and I help it when I can, but I’ll not shoulder its woes. To live is to be happy; to be carefree, to be overwhelmed by the glory of it all. Not to be happy is a living death.

Alone I shoulder the sky and hurl my defiance and shout the song of the conqueror to the four winds, earth, sea, sun, moon, and stars. I live!

–

Strange, sad winds sweep down the canyon, roaring in the firs and the tall pines, swaying their crests. I don’t know how you feel about it, Edward, but I can never accept life as a matter of course. Much as I seem to have shaped my own way, following after my own thinking and my own desires, I never cease to wonder at the impossibility that I live. Even when to my senses the world is not incredibly beautiful or fantastic, I am overwhelmed by the appalling strangeness and intricacy of the curiously tangled knot of life, and at the way that knot unwinds, making everything clear and inevitable, however unfortunate or wonderful.

Here are a couple of things I dashed off today. You might ask to see the letter I wrote Bill, and show him this for contrast.

“The love and perception of beauty are real, but they do not lead to happiness. Happiness lies in a large measure of self-forgetfulness, either in work, accomplishment, or in the love of others.

“When analyzed, both work and love are shown to be futile, and the joys imaginary and evanescent. All accomplished works or deeds perish or are forgotten eventually. No love lives forever, and no two can completely understand one another, or if they do, it kills their love, which is in reality only a projected form of self love.

–

“But he who has looked long on naked beauty may never return to the world, and though he should try, he will find its occupation empty and vain, and human intercourse purposeless and futile. Alone and lost, he must die on the altar of beauty.

“The absorbing passion of any highly sensitive person is to forget himself, whether by drinking or by agonized love, by furious work or play, or by submerging himself in the creative arts. Sometimes, if his will is powerful, he can pretend to himself that he does not know what he knows, and can act a part as one of the rest. But the pretense cannot endure, and unless he can find another as highly strung as himself with whom to share the murderous pain of living, he will surely go insane. Moral: Do not develop your faculties.”

Such and so have I written. Now the last light lingers on the topmost rim of the red sandstone cliffs, touching a lone tree with gold. Now that has faded. The flowers are closing and the cicadas sing shrilly.

Edward, you do not know how ridiculous life is unless you have had strange experiences and seen the ineffable absurdity of it all.

–

I certainly don’t like to let opportunities for living slip by ungrasped, and I never liked the game of sitting back in a corner and wishing. And when people interest me and I like them, I nearly always follow up until I know them well. There are too many uninteresting people. . .

–

Such is my cry, such is my plaint, and I know there is no reply. Mine seems a task essentially futile. Try as I may, I have never yet, that I know of, succeeded in conveying more than a glimpse of my visions. I am condemned to feel the withering fire of beauty pouring into me. I am condemned to the need of putting this fire outside myself and spreading it somewhere, somehow, and I am torn by the knowledge that what I have felt cannot be given to another. I cannot bear to contain these rending flames, and I am helpless to let them out. So I wonder how I can go on living and being casual as one must.

–

The perfection of this place is one reason why I distrust ever returning to the cities. Here I wander in beauty and perfection. There one walks in the midst of ugliness and mistakes. All is made for man, but where can one find surroundings to match one’s ideals and imaginings? It is possible to live and dream in ugly, ill-fitting places, but how much better to be where all is beautiful and unscarred.

With plenty of money, the way is smoothed, and it is fun to create a place to match your personality. Sometimes too it is fun to tinker away in a picturesque hovel, but the struggle for a mean existence is not worth it.

–

I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one’s true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover one’s self? It is true that in the world such lack of reserve usually meets with hostility, misunderstanding, and scorn. Here in isolation I need not fear on that score, though the strangers I do encounter usually judge me wrongly. But I was never one to be content with less than the most from life, and shall go on reaching, and leaving my soul defenseless to attacks. I seldom retaliate, for I perceive too well the ultimate futility.

–

As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty and carry it with me in things that are a constant delight, like my gorgeous Navajo saddle blankets, and the silver bracelet on my wrist, whose three turquoises gleam in the firelight.

Even from your scant description, I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead. I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.

Block prints by Ruess (hijacked from various places on the internet)