ROBERTLOUIS
DEMAYO
ROBERTThe Legend of Everett Ruess follows the adventures of the young vagabond as he roamed the southwest in the early thirties.
In this compelling narrative, Robert Louis DeMayo has taken journal excerpts, poems, and letters
Everett sent to family and friends and turned them into historical fiction. Through this recreation of Everett's travels, we are given rare glimpses of the
young artist as he traveled the southwest—much of which was still an unexplored wilderness in the 1930s.
Everett traveled alone, accompanied only by a dog
named Curly, but he often stayed with Navajo or Hopi. Using only burros or horses, Everett explored much of Utah and Arizona, covering about twenty miles a day. He crossed the Grand Canyon regularly. The Navajo and Hopi that came across him miles from any road thought he was a mystic and called him Picture Man. They allowed him to witness—and participate in—ceremonies that today are mostly off-limits to non-Indians.
His letters about these experiences flushed out in this story, show how unique his time in the Southwest was. In his last letter to his brother, Waldo, he wrote, “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.”
On a dark, windy night in 1930, sixteen-year-old Everett Ruess climbed Agathla Rock
and wrote a poem about it.
Pledge to the Wind
by Everett Ruess
Onward from vast uncharted spaces,
Forward through timeless voids,
Into all of us surges and races
The measureless might of the wind.
Strongly sweeping from open plains,
Keen and pure from mountain heights,
Freshly blowing after rains,
It welds itself into our souls.
In the steep silence of thin blue air,
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air has a clear, clean rarity,
I give to the wind…my pledge:
“By the strength of my arm, but the sight of my eye,
By the skill of my fingers, I swear,
As long as life dwells in me, never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind.
I will feel the wind’s buoyancy until I die;
I will work with the wind’s exhilaration:
I will search for its purity; and never will I
Follow any way but the sweeping way of the wind.”
Here in the utter stillness,
High on a lonely cliff-ledge,
Where the air is trembling with lightning,
I have given the wind my pledge.
Traveling with Curly and Chocolatero
Trying to get a pack burro up onto Skeleton Mesa.
The Patriarchs, Zion.
The Narrows, Zion.
The Temple and the Virgin River, Zion.
Everett walked into the desert as a young man...
...but left as a legend.
**Map Photo Credit to David Roberts.
