an American original

The wind whips fiercely as she stumbles along the desert floor. It is winter and the white sun gives light but little warmth. It suits her mood. She has always been drawn to the dry, empty waste that is the West. Here poets write, painters sit and saints pray. She is none of these. She has come to seek his bones.

He has been missing for over 80 years; but she hears his voice sometimes. Is it that face, full of youth and maleness? Or is it the picture of his burros, abandoned and grazing idly by the stream ?Or is it enough that he was a young painter and poet who cut all  ties to be as free as the eagle? She is haunted.

This young man took the road less traveled and left these words behind: "I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear."By foot and burro he would walk the empty spaces of Utah and the surrounding states for months, seeing no one.Setting up his easel occasionally and with great simplicity, he painted what he saw.

"Where is Everett," his parents in California were asked time and again."Oh, he's wandering ", they always said." We send him money to a post office in Utah and that keeps him going. He comes home once in a while."And then all contact ended in 1934.Silence.No word. The world empty of Everett Ruess. Men searched for years. Bones were found , not his; theories expounded. The poet never found , never seen again. Did he cry out at the end? Did he regret his wildness?

His last words answer:, "I'll never stop wandering and when the time comes, I'll find the wildest, most desolate spot there is."He was 20 years old.