The Mystery of Everett Ruess
By
Bobbie L. Washington
A poet, a writer, a painter, a thinker was he
Born to become a wanderer to a short and diminished life
Not by his choosing and not by his hands
Did Everett Ruess subscribe to his fate
Somewhere in the Chinle Wash
Sixty miles from the last place he was seen
Began the tale of this lost legend
Whipped by the whispering winds of the canyon walls
Of a ghost who treks through the Sequoia lands and Yosemite Park
“As to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon”, he once said
I have not tired of the wilderness
It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty
But the Navajo medicine Man would say otherwise
For cursing Aneth Nez, caretaker of the bones
For remaining silent for thirty-seven years
He would tell his tale of the wandering stranger
And the three Ute warriors of the Four Corners
As he sat in witness on top of the desolate Comb Ridge
Did he see the final end to the wandering man
Felled by a glancing blow in a single move
Had he trespassed on sacred grounds or
Was it just the warrior’s path that was crossed
The man with two burros would disappear for a while
To find a resting place in a canyon crevasse
Under a watchful hand of the Navajo Nez
Burden with the guilt and stricken ill
His third generation he would tale his tale
And find him they did, this man of two burros
Long thought drowned in the Colorado River
He rested quietly in spirit along the High Sierra
Enjoying its beauty and the vagrant life
Preferring the saddle to the streetcar
And a star-sprinkled sky to a roof
The obscure and difficult trail
Leading into the unknown to any paved highway
And to the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities
In his final words
