Pledge to the Wind, the Legend of Everett Ruess

The 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 just 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."