By Sean Fagan
“I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time” Everett Ruess (Photo: Sean Fagan - Skellig Islands, Southwest Ireland).
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THE MANY FACES OF NATURE
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Nature means different things to different people.
For some it can be a place of adventure.
In the context of this website, nature can also be a place where we can hone and enjoy bushcraft skills.
Nature can also be a refuge, a place to get away from it all and just be.
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For a few however, nature is a place of artistic inspiration.
In a previous article I wrote about wilderness artist Bill Mason, and how Bill would use his bushcraft skills and knowledge to comfortably live in wild places - so he could paint rugged scenes of nature.
In this article I'll be touching upon a mostly unknown but great nature writer – Everett Ruess.
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I believe Bill and Everett were made of similar clay.
Like Bill, Everett was a solo wilderness explorer and would, similarly to Bill, spend months wandering through wild regions, often without human contact for long periods of time.
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Ruess found tremendous inspiration in nature, so much so that it sustained him during those lonely times when he occasionally missed human companionship.
He also had a fondness for danger and would often indulge himself in risky pastimes.
It’s believed that he most likely died as a direct result of either falling from a height, during one of his many precarious climbs, or drowned while crossing a river.
However, the reason I wrote this post was to present Ruess’s seemingly reckless, adventurous spirit in a more positive light and to offer a few positive lessons that can be gleaned from his adventurous spirit.
I hope you enjoy it.
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EVERETT RUESS
. Everett Ruess was born in California in 1914.
From a young age Everett displayed a precocious, artistic talent. He was also very adventurous. He started his first forays into wild, remote places at the young age of 17.
For Everett, the wilderness was a place of great force and beauty – a canvas on which he could live out his irrepressible, poetic vision of nature.
In a way, Everett was a hopeless nature-romantic - in the same vein as a more well-known, more modern romantic - Christopher McCandless – who painfully died during a woefully under-prepared wilderness trip - deep in the Alaskan bush.
Like McCandless, Ruess died young.
And like McCandless, he most likely perished alone.
Sadly, both Christopher and Everett perfectly exemplify what can befall the unprepared and reckless in the wild.
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To my mind, Ruess’s untimely death was a great loss to the world of outdoor literature.
Everett's vibrant writing style beautifully captured, often with stunning eloquence, the raw appeal of wilderness areas.
Despite his youth and lack of training, Everett could rightly be described as a rugged outdoors man. He carried very little into the wild and developed a tolerance for the discomforts of minimalist outdoor living with great enthusiasm.
He loved the simple freedom of travelling light, of being unencumbered as much as possible, so he could enjoy a more vivid, visceral existence among the beautiful places he frequented.
However, he often got himself into trouble and occasionally suffered great hardship on his aesthetic quests.
Heat exhaustion, dehydration, injuries and disease were some of the less desirable side effects of his many trips into the wild. He certainly suffered for his art...
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"Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary: That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun; Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseased; Lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!” ~ Everett Ruess
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It’s very probable that his minimalist, under-prepared approach to wild-living might, to our more modern sensibilities, stir up feelings of incredulity, even criticism.
Criticism for his apparently reckless attitude in remote, desolate places, where there was little or no hope of medical assistance in case of emergencies.
Still, his written descriptions of wild places are infused with great passion, and he certainly revelled in understanding the essence of wild landscapes – sure isn’t that one of the primary aims of bushcraft for many?
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A Lesson in Passion
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Yes, Reuss died young, but in the short spell of time he sought adventure, he managed to brilliantly encapsulate why so many outdoor spirits seek adventure in remote regions of the planet.
In a sense he idealised freedom, wanted to taste the very essence of wildness on his ventures.
But he was reckless - and I don’t mean to glorify risky, minimalist outdoor living – because the outdoors can be a dangerous place.
Someone with a reckless attitude in the wild will most likely run out of luck, sometimes fatally so.
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What’s great is that we can capture what Ruess so ardently sought in our own forays into wilderness.
With the right knowledge, training, practise and research we can get out there, carrying relatively little – and allow many a rugged landscape to wash over us, seep into us - just like they did with Ruess.
And we don’t have to be reckless in order to tap into that feeling of abandon that Ruess so often felt in wild places.
We can come home, a little scratched and bruised but alive, with memories that may stay with us for the rest of our lives.
I’m grateful for passionate, wilderness pioneers like Ruess, who followed his passion for wild places with a headstrong, youthful zeal.
I’m older now, more cautious – but I hope to never lose that passion for minimalist living in wild places. That same wanderlust that Ruess so evidently possessed..
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“I’ve seen almost more beauty that I can bear”
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“Always I shall be the one who loves the wilderness: swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks; I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music; I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds”
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Everett Ruess, 1914-1934
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Related articles on this website:
Links:
(Website) Everett Ruess: Poet, Artist, Adventurer, Modern Day Inspiration...
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*Check me out on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook for more outdoor-related topics.
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Informative video about the last, fatal journey of Chris McCandless in the Alaskan wilderness...
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