Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
For more on the Antelope Dance, I visited Second Mesa in September of
2010 to research the book. I had been there previously several times,
once to see a dance and another time to sit in on a meeting in the
1970s about the Black Mesa coal mine and its effect on the underground
water supply. This last time a guide showed me around. I taped my
impressions and then transcribed them when I got home. I took no photos
of the houses, plaza or kivas, but I did photograph the route of the
Antelope run which is in the book. Since the Hopis and their remote
mesas are so old and retain a sense of tradition lacking almost
anywhere else in this country, I thought it might interest readers to
read those notes. They follow:

Squat whitewashed buildings whose roofs are lined with collapsible
chairs and vigas poking out ends of the buildings with the entrance
from the north. A long street with well-tended buildings with a large,
clean rectangular space. Ladders of antelope kiva visible to the north.
Preparing for a Woman’s Dance next week. For women’s rights.
Everything is done here is community based.

The orderliness of the main plaza where the dances are held is in
start contrast to the disorder of the rest of the mesa. There is this
shining white core, carefully tended, lying north and south, and the
apparent haphazard quality of the rest of the mesa.

Age as small as 4 years old, initiate the children into the clan way.
Had dance this August. Protect ceremonies now. Long street, narrows to
the north with some new construction using concrete in the more
northerly and narrower section. A few women cross the plaza and pay no
attention to me. Otherwise, besides my guide, the Mesa seems deserted
at midday on a Friday. Kivas are at the end of the plazas. Five kivas,
Antelope Kiva reconstructed in the 1980s and found the flooring of the
original mission. The beams they took out from the floor came from the
original mission. Three kivas at the end of the plaza. One to the right
is the snake clan kiva (being reconstructed with the vigas sitting on
top of the concrete foundation), in the middle is the antelope clan
kiva with the ladder poking from the entrance in the top, one of the
far side is the Men’s Society Kiva. Women use the Antelope Kiva. 

Before the Antelope Dance, a race begins some three miles away in the
desert, up a canyon and then the trail to the top, where the runners
are greeted with shouts and prizes, all aimed at water. Race starts
with sunrise, chant to each other to encourage, coming from the
southwest the far mesa, three or four miles away, when they come closer
can hear the bells they carry and the excitement builds. Come up and
come into the kiva. Blessing of the prize in the kiva, symbolizes
water. Antelope proceeds the snake dance. Corn meal from women
scattered at the top of the mesa where the runners emerge from the
trail.

Plaza is about 75 yards long, maybe 20 wide. It is immaculate. Rest of
village is a hodge podge. At end see two long ladders leading into
Kivas and wooden logs waiting to be used. 
  

    

  I am another reader just showing up Philip.  I got my copy Tuesday and 
have been reading in my little free time, over my supper!  About 40% 
through and find the book just splendid.   Thank you for this. 

  So far the most thought provoking part for me has been the family 
background. Your account of the Ruess seniors and the world they came from 
and then that which they made to raise Everett and Waldo is striking.  It 
doesn't seem to quite fit with common accounts of the early 20th Century 
but seems quite true to me.  I had an aunt, actually an older half-sister 
of my father who left the mid-west in the mid 1920s for Los Angeles.  I 
don't know that I have ever read an account of "California" that so well 
resonates with the family accounts, and her own, of what Aunt Edna found 
in her - to those left in the mid-west - exotic Southern California life.

  I also want to thank (gberg) for his post up there a ways on the bipolar 
issue.  
  

    
There was nightly bear feeding, with everyone in their cars watching,
at Allegheny State Park in the 1960s. Not sure when they stopped it.
  

    
Scott and Peter asked some questions above which I answered in a post
which should have just preceded #51. I have asked David Gans if he
received the post. It's possible I deleted it instead of posting it
after the spellcheck. Hold on guys until I get an answer from David. 

My previous post was designed to augment what I found out about the
Antelope Dance in a 1902 publication and with the current #51 I wanted
to give you in my words of the moment the flavor of one of the most
remote, exotic, and longest continually inhabited communities in the
country. 

It is so remote that when I got in my VW camper to leave huge noises
erupted from the engine, there was no cell phone reception, and I
carefully nursed the vehicle many miles to Flagstaff and the nearest
mechanic, only to begin a series of car problems that cut into my
research time. On that same stretch of road with two burros and his two
feet serving as transportation, Everett contended with the intense
midday heat and was fortunately picked up by two youths in a Ford truck
and given a ride to Flagstaff. Same road, different troubles,
different time!
  

    
I scold my online students not to compose in the middle of a post but to
copy and paste from a hard drive! I hope we can read that 1902 account of
the Antelope Dance.

I think your "Healing" chapter was the most moving. I loved reading people's
condolences to Everett's parents, as well as evaluations of Everett's work
by people like Stegner and Momaday. Most of all I loved the accounts of the
parents' trip to the desert in June 1935 and Stella's farewell pilgrimage in
1948. It helped repair my own initial VERY dim view of a petulant little
shit who would beat an innocent dog so hard that it would disappear into the
wilderness, just like he himself did later.
  

    
Well, David tells me I apparently did not complete the posting
process, so here goes, although repetition really bores me. It will be
new for you, however.

On the existence of the Antelope Dance issue brought up by Scott
Thybony, who by the way helped me with the book and is doing one of his
own, I not only relied on what the guide, a Hopi who volunteered his
services when I asked some questions, told me in September of 2010 but
also the following two-volume book that I found in the anthropology
library at UC Berkeley, "The Mishongnovi Ceremonies of the Snake and
Antelope Fraternities," George A. Dorsey and H.R. Vo, Chicago, 1902.
There were descriptions of the Antelope run and dance witnessed by the
authors on Second Mesa in 1901 during the nine-day ceremony. 

I took a few notes from the volumes, but I don't have an actual
account, such as Frako requested. I did read an account of the
accompanying Snake Dance in a couple of other book, however. These
accounts along with the description of Second Mesa offered above were
left out of the narrative for the following reasons: it was a matter of
pacing the story a bit faster at this point because Everett is
covering some of the same ground that he traveled in previous years,
and I needed to get to his disappearance more quickly, not only because
the reader may be tiring of the journey, but also because I needed to
stay within the 100,000-word limit stipulated in the contract. See what
prosaic issues we authors also deal with?

Peter wanted to know how Everett compared to Chris McCandless in Jon
Krakauer's "Into the Wild," or vice versa. McCandless was a lost soul
from a priviledged background who cut off his ties to his family and,
had he looked around more carefully, could have found a way to walk out
of the Alaska bush, which was not really wilderness because of the
road, bridge, and bus. There is no mystery; he died of starvation.
Everett came from a middle-class family and was seeking beauty while
staying in touch with his family though correspondence and returning
home once a year. No one knows why or how he disappeared. The Escalante
Desert was also not true wilderness. There was a road and it was
grazed by cattle and sheep. Both young men adopted pseudonyms, at least
for a time. Given Everett's greater intellect, artistic talents,
promise, and innocence I found him more interesting than McCandless,
who seemed like a spoiled child.

There have been some questions about the bone's issue and DNA mixup of
2009. I think we first need to discuss Everett's disappearance in 1934
before we can take up his "resurrection," as I titled the last chapter
that deals with events seventy-five years later. So maybe we can start
with comments or questions on what readers think of his vanishing and
then deal with the bones. 

Between these two bookends is the healing or grieving chapter, which I
thought, as did a reader, was important because for whatever reasons,
what Everett and McCandless did and the results it had involved a lot
of grief for those who remained. That is a cost that should be
considered by those youngsters who want to hit the road. 
  

    

Regarding the disappearance: what are the possible scenarios?  If it was
suicide, how did he achieve it?  Jumped off a cliff?  Jumped in a river?
Wandered away from resources and started to death?

If it wasn't suicide, what was it?
  

    

 Philip,  I have to apologize because I still have not finished the book 
but I am going to risk asking a question that you may answer in your 
conclusion.

 What do you think about Everett's Romanticism? Was it in him, was it in 
his time, or is it, to an extent at least, in *our* eyes looking back at 
the time?

 
  

    
The scenarios for Everett’s disappearance are the following: an
accident, like falling off a cliff, being swept away in a flash flood,
or sinking in quicksand, etc.; a combination of accident and suicide,
like Everett consciously or unconsciously putting himself at risk with
suicide on his mind; straightforward suicide; murdered by Anglo
rustlers or Navajo Indians; drowned while attempting to swim the
Colorado River in the low-water season of a low-water year; made it
across the river and lived with the Navajos for the remainder of his
life; made it across the river and lived elsewhere, there having been
supposed sightings of him in Phoenix, South America, Florida, etc.; and
the 2009 theory that he was bludgeoned to death by Ute Indians more
than one hundred trail miles to the east in Chinle Wash. There may be
more theories I either forgot to mention or am not aware of. No matter.

No one knows for certain or posses documentation about how or why
Everett Ruess disappeared. Some people cannot live with a mystery. I
can. We ruin so much with our versions of the truth, that I find it
refreshing to say there is no known ending to this story, other than
the invented truth described in the last chapter of my book. That it
was invented by a writer, a national magazine published by a
nationally-known institution, and a batch of scientists and academics
is a perfect fit for our time when we believe we know so much but
actually know very little despite all the little electronic gadgets
that hook us up to so-called knowledge. 

I will deal shortly with this invented truth.
  

    
This post on the invented truth involved in the bones controversy and
journalism and science gone awry is rather long because the issue is
complex. As one participant in this discussion noted, it reads like a
detective story.

Various skeletons found throughout the years in the Arizona and Utah
deserts were thought to be Everett's. None were. In the summer of 2008,
seventy-five years after the Everett's disappearance, a Navajo found
bones and artifacts in a crevice burial site on the reservation near
Bluff, Utah, more than one hundred trail miles east of where Ruess and
his burros were last seen in Davis Gulch. The story of the Indian’s
grandfather seeing three Utes beat a young white man with two burros to
death was passed down to the Navajo grandson who discovered the bones.
It was given the status of an oral tradition, while, in fact, it was
really an oral crime report subject to change over time to fit the
conveniences of the moment. David Roberts, a contributing editor of
National Geographic Adventure, was alerted. Roberts had written a story
about Ruess’s unexplained disappearance in the 1999 debut issue of the
magazine. The Indian, Roberts, their friends, and a Navajo
archeologist thought it was Ruess’s remains in that narrow crevice. The
FBI, local sheriff, and Navajo criminal investigators thought it was a
Native American.

The magazine editors and Roberts needed scientific confirmation. They
contacted Family Tree DNA in Houston, Texas, which was conducting the
tests for the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project, a huge
effort to map humanity’s genetic journey. The DNA on the hairbrush of
Ruess’s brother, who died in 2007, did not match the DNA from the
remains. One problem, never stated in Roberts's article, was that there
had been a one hundred percent DNA match between the hair sample and a
laboratory technician, indicating contamination. But Family Tree
determined a tooth was from a young male of European descent. That was
considered partial confirmation.

A facial reconstruction of the skeleton overlain by two Dorothea Lange
photographs of Ruess and assembled by the computer program Photoshop
at the University of Colorado seemingly matched. The tooth’s origin and
the convergence of the two images convinced the magazine to go with
the story by Roberts on the eve of its deadline for the April/May 2009
tenth anniversary issue. A paperback book with the “best” of Adventure
articles over the last ten years containing the story was published a
few months later. Two weeks after the magazine appeared on newsstands,
National Geographic called a press conference to announce there had
been an “irrefutable” DNA match between a bone and Everett’s nieces and
nephews. This test was also undertaken at the University of Colorado.
Ken Krauter, the scientist in charge, said the physical and DNA
evidence would hold up in any court in the country. A paper was readied
for publication in a peer-review journal setting out all the facts
that led to these conclusions.

For anyone intimately familiar with the story of Ruess, there were
both major and minor inconsistencies in the article. An example of the
former was that Everett’s two burros were found in starving condition
in Davis Gulch and brought to a nearby village by searchers. Roberts
patched these rough spots to make it appear there was a smooth
narrative. His solution for the burro problem was to imply they didn’t
exist in Davis Gulch, but they were present in the Navajo’s yarn. A
well-attended public forum in support of the find was held at the
University of Utah by environmentalists, who hailed the resurrection of
their wilderness hero. Roberts was the master of ceremonies. 

Serious questions arose when Everett’s dental records were discovered
in the University of Utah library. The dental work specified in the
records was not visible in photographs of the recovered mandible.
Roberts did not see the records until after his story appeared and then
did not read them thoroughly. He questioned their authenticity. They
were genuine. The forensic and DNA scientists at the University of
Colorado had not been aware of the records, nor did they consider them
when they were told of their existence. The DNA was all the evidence
they and Roberts needed. 

Paul Leatherbury, a former Park Service archeologist, and Kevin Jones
the Utah state archeologist, working separately, came up with the
conclusion that the dental records did not match the jawbone found at
the gravesite, thus invalidating the match of the Lange photos and the
reconstructed facial bones, which had other problems. They believed the
jawbone with the teeth worn down by a stone-ground diet belonged to a
Native American.

Still, the DNA seemed unassailable. Jones, who was taken to task by
his superiors and viciously attacked for questioning the DNA results,
took his concerns public on a state history website and in newspaper
interviews. (He subsequently believed he lost his job because of his
confrontational position on the authenticity of the bones.) The probing
questions were enough for the Ruess family to quietly seek a third DNA
analysis.

First a commercial laboratory, then an academic laboratory, and now a
military laboratory weighed in, all with different results. The Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, undertook
the test without cost to the family because it would provide useful
experience for determining the bones of soldiers found years hence in
the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. The laboratory announced on
October 21 that the bones were not those of Everett Ruess and that the
Colorado lab had been unable to duplicate their original results. The
family said they would return the bones to the Navajo tribe for proper
internment. In early December the National Geographic Society announced
it was ceasing publication of Adventure because of declining ad
revenues nine months after its tenth anniversary issue. 

These events raise disturbing questions. If human errors in the Texas
lab and computer errors in Colorado were to blame, what about other DNA
results? There was, the Colorado scientists said, an “unanticipated
weakness” in the software given a 99.9% accuracy rating in tests. The
same vulnerability was present in the overwhelming journalistic desire
to make the bones fit Everett. Join journalism to science and the
combination is daunting, even for the legal system. DNA evidence is
rarely questioned in court, and few lawyers, juries, and judges are
knowledgeable about its complexities. How many defendants in criminal
cases, plaintiffs in civil cases, or people seeking to determine
paternity or their genealogy would know about or be able to afford a
second and even a third test? The last test was by one of the most
credible laboratories in the country. That favor was not about to be
extended to everyone.

Scott has asked if the above paragraph, somewhat expanded contents in
the last two pages of the book, have had any impact. I think they raise
serious questions about the validity of DNA tests, but besides two
lawyers indicating interest, I have heard nothing.

For those readers of this discussion who are intensely interested in
this issue, and the whole story of Everett that I have related here and
in the book, all my papers on this subject and my work in journalism
and twelve prior books that together span more than fifty years will
eventually be available in Special Collections at the University of
Utah library, along with Everett Ruess's and Wallace Stegner's papers
and illustrations and those of other writers, artists, and
photographers who have found the West a rich source of material for
stories and images.

I regret the length of this post, but the issue is complex and I come
from a generation that venerates thoroughness.
  

    
I myself enjoyed reading a condensed version of what I'd read in more (and
fascinating) detail in the book. But it troubles me that I can't put the
faith in DNA testing that I used to.
  

    
Thank you, Philip.  I need to read <60> carefully later.

All this stuff brings up a tangential question: What exactly is quicksand?
  

    
I can answer that in a nutshell: it's wherever water rises into coarse
granular soil, lifting the particles into partial or complete suspension and
creating a slurry. The sandy streamcourses in the Southwestern canyons are
excellent places for quicksand. And given the variability in each year's
rainfall, you can never predict where quicksand will appear in a given year.

A little more at <http://geology.about.com/od/geo_movies/a/aa_quicksand.htm>


Philip, I'm still catching up as I read the book but I wanted to say it's a
really good evocation of a young man's life and times, with emphasis on both
words. As a former Congregationalist, Boy Scout, bicoastal kid, I'm finding
this book a rich experience contemplating a life much like my own but
exaggerated. I'm still in the part of the book where Everett is alive. It's
intriguing to see how much my personal experience is something of a shared
template, forged by the Transcendentalists and their fellow-travelers. Truly
the past is, as Faulkner said, not even past. I applaud the way you
approached Everett's story, judiciously but nonjudgmentally, allowing
mystery to be mystery. Of course that's no surprise coming from the author
of the "earthquake trilogy," a series I heartily recommend to those who
enjoyed "Everett Reuss." (disclaimer: I've reviewed the series for
geology.about.com.)
  

    
Thanks for the technical description of quicksand.

My guess, and I emphasize guess, has been quicksand. Although not
approaching the status of a conclusion, and lacking any documentation,
it's interesting how we tend to apply our personal experiences to
unknowns, like how Everett disappeared. I guess quicksand for four
reasons.

1. While hiking in the dry riverbed of the Mohave River near Barstow,
I suddenly sunk up to my hips in quicksand. Still having strong legs
and a quick response, I quickly extricated myself before my wife could
help me.

2. The first ranchers who went out to search for Everett, who were
familiar with the terrain, guessed quicksand.

3. If it was quicksand, that might account for why no remnants of
Everett's body have been found.

4. Dorothea Lange's granddaughter, Dyanne Taylor, made a TV
documentary of her search for Everett in the Escalante River Basin. It
ran on the Turner channel. It rained and rained and rained, and the
focus of the film became the attempt to get to Davis Gulch, which
failed. In the film, she and a crew member jumped laughingly into
quicksand. They didn't laugh for long. It was a struggle, caught on
film, to extricate them, and in the process they were pulled out of
their boots.

I repeat: no one knows for certain how Ruess disappeared. I didn't
want to tilt readers of the book in any one direction with what was
only my guess, so it's not mentioned there. The only certainty is
voiced on the first page, when a few of us became lost temporarily at
night near Davis Gulch, and that was what must have been the loneliness
of his demise. We had each other.
  

    

> If it was quicksand, that might account for why no remnants of Everett's
> body have been found.

Does quicksand remain quicksand over time?
  

    
It's worth reading the wikipedia entry.  Here's the relevant passage.

"Someone stepping on it will start to sink. To move within the quicksand, 
a person or object must apply sufficient pressure on the compacted sand to 
re-introduce enough water to liquefy it. The forces required to do this 
are quite large: to remove a foot from quicksand at a speed of .01 m/s 
would require the same amount of force as "that needed to lift a 
medium-sized car."[1]

Because of the higher density of the quicksand, it would be impossible for 
a human or animal to completely sink in the quicksand, though natural 
hazards present around the quicksand would lead people to believe that 
quicksand is dangerous. In actuality the quicksand is harmless on its own, 
but because it greatly impedes human locomotion, the quicksand would allow 
harsher elements like solar radiation, dehydration, hypothermia or tides 
to harm a trapped person.[2] The way to escape is to wiggle the legs.[3]"


And then again, it's wikipedia.
  

    
The key fact about quicksand, for me, is that it's essentially a dense
thixotropic liquid. It's far too dense to let a human body sink in it. But
if you're struggling with it, you can easily wear yourself out because it
stiffens against your efforts. If somehow your head gets submerged, you can
drown in quicksand but you shouldn't sink out of sight in it.

My own favored explanation for Everett's death has my own historical bias. I
think he set out for a high spot and lost his balance at some point, falling
to his death. We know he gloried in these precarious settings. We can sense
from his last letters that the stakes were heightened in his mind. We know
that some of the most remote Anasazi ruins were high and hidden, promising
that unalloyed experience of being the first man ever to set foot in them.
We know the poor state of Everett's health. What makes it personal for me is
my own experience rock climbing as a youth in the Explorer Scouts. I was
drawn to heights as a way of challenging and enlivening myself. I was well
supervised, but if I had gotten it into my mind that solo rock-climbing was
the way to bliss, who knows where I'd be?

The only trouble with that scenario is that Everett's body should have been
exposed and discoverable. On the other hand, there was never a concerted,
professional search for him.
  

    
And there are scavengers.
  

    
Great stuff, all of you.  Thanks!

Philip, are the materials in the University of Utah Library available to the
public?
  

    
Thanks for the links to your quicksand articles, <alden>.  I enjoyed your
hypothesis about quicksand in the movies.  It might be interesting to make a
list of other tropes that have vanishes from the culture that way.
  

    
(vanished)
  

    
Just catching up on the discussion after returning from Utah.  Good
sketch of the bones controversy, and I agree with you on the
implications.  The legal community needs to pay attention.  After the
Comb Ridge fiasco, my thinking changed on the infallibility of DNA
evidence.  As for that Antelope Dance:

Several years ago a traditional leader and tribal judge from First
Mesa told me the Hopi do not have an Antelope Dance.  A younger Hopi
from Second Mesa, a kachina carver who is active in various
ceremonies, confirmed this.  Before leaving for Utah I had a
conversation with a retired professor who co-authored the Hopi
Dictionary.  He told me the Hopi have specific words for each of their
ceremonies, but don't have a word for Antelope Dance.  It doesn't
exist as a separate ceremony.  The Antelope people participate with
the Snake people in the Snake Dance, a multi-day ceremony, so the
confusion may come from some people calling a portion of it the
Antelope Dance.    Either way, it's unlikely Everett participated in
an actual ceremony.  The kachina carver told me it would take many
weeks of practice to learn the intricate dance steps and chants
necessary to participate in one of the dances.  Both Hopi believed
they were having fun with him.
  

    
Interesting.
 
  

    
In the end, one burning question consumes me - how did a guy who spent
all of his time in the desert manage to get poison ivy so much? ;-)

(And yes, I did read the note about how Ruess's family called poison
oak poison ivy, but there isn't any poison oak in the desert either.)
  

    
Thanks for all the research on quicksand. Along with increasing our
knowledge, it helps to keep the mystery a mystery. I didn't want to
lose that, and I see I haven't. The main point I was making, which
someone picked up on, was how our personal experiences sway our
opinions, which in my case, in terms of quicksand being the possible
cause of Everett's death, may very well be wrong. Point proved.

On poison ivy and poison oak, Everett was extremely allergic to both.
My concept before undertaking the research on that issue, was poison
ivy was confined to the East Coast where I contracted it as a youth and
poison oak was on the West Coast where I came across it in later
years. Again, personal experience. As the note on p. 27 states, which
is where is more complex. I asked a ranger/naturalist in Zion National
Park what they had where Everett had his worse case, and she said a
western variety of poison ivy. It could be that in lower deserts
neither plant grows. It's the urushoil content of a plant that counts.
Can anyone elaborate?