Aug 11, 2026 · 40 min · 13 segments
The episode delves into the intriguing world of wilderness messages, exploring cryptic notes, trail registers, enigmatic inscriptions, lost messages, and mysterious notes found in ancient sites and…
We'll start off talking about a young man named Everett Ruiz tonight who wandered into the canyon country of southern Utah in 1934 and was never seen again.
Ruiz left behind letters and artwork, campsites, two burros, and one of the strangest little wilderness inscriptions I've ever encountered.
It consisted of a single word and a single date, Nemo.
Nobody knows what happened after that.
Everett Ruiz was 20 years old when he disappeared, and he'd already spent several years doing something most 20-year-olds weren't doing in the early 1930s.
He traveled alone through the deserts and mountains of the American West, often with pack animals, writing letters and keeping journals, making woodcuts and sketches, and deliberately seeking out places that were remote enough that civilization seemed to fall away behind him.
If you traveled through places, including the Sierra Nevada, in the desert Southwest, spent time around archeological sites, and became especially drawn to canyon country of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.
He was also an obsessive writer.
He had kept journals from childhood and sent home hundreds of letters, which means we know a surprising amount about Everett, though about solitude and, or about what Everett thought about solitude and wilderness, even though we still don't know what ultimately happened to him.
I've been there.
And when I think about Everett Ruiz, and I don't know if I'm saying his last name correctly or not, but but let me know if I am or not.
But yeah, I've been in that country and I could definitely imagine myself just disappearing into Southern Utah and just exploring and yeah, that's just a really nice fantasy of mine.
Before heading into the back country again, he sent letters home.
One of the surviving passages from his final correspondence tells his brother that he doesn't expect a return to civilization anytime soon and that he hasn't become tired of the wilderness.
He talks about being surrounded by beauty and describes the year as full and rich.
At first, nobody panicked because disappearing for long stretches of time was normal for him.
His parents were accustomed to letters that arrived regularly, and Everett had already warned them that he might be unreachable for weeks.
Eventually, however, mail began accumulating that Everett should have collected, and his parents contacted the post office in Escalante.
Local men organized a search.
What they eventually found in Davis Canyon or in Davis Gulch was peculiar.
Everett's burrows were alive.
There was evidence of his campsite in a corral he had constructed.
But Everett wasn't there.
We'll start off talking about a young man named Everett Ruiz tonight who wandered into the canyon country of southern Utah in 1934 and was never seen again.
Ruiz left behind letters and artwork, campsites, two burros, and one of the strangest little wilderness inscriptions I've ever encountered.
It consisted of a single word and a single date, Nemo.
Nobody knows what happened after that.
Everett Ruiz was 20 years old when he disappeared, and he'd already spent several years doing something most 20-year-olds weren't doing in the early 1930s.
He traveled alone through the deserts and mountains of the American West, often with pack animals, writing letters and keeping journals, making woodcuts and sketches, and deliberately seeking out places that were remote enough that civilization seemed to fall away behind him.
If you traveled through places, including the Sierra Nevada, in the desert Southwest, spent time around archeological sites, and became especially drawn to canyon country of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona.
He was also an obsessive writer.
He had kept journals from childhood and sent home hundreds of letters, which means we know a surprising amount about Everett, though about solitude and, or about what Everett thought about solitude and wilderness, even though we still don't know what ultimately happened to him.
I've been there.
And when I think about Everett Ruiz, and I don't know if I'm saying his last name correctly or not, but but let me know if I am or not.
But yeah, I've been in that country and I could definitely imagine myself just disappearing into Southern Utah and just exploring and yeah, that's just a really nice fantasy of mine.
Before heading into the back country again, he sent letters home.
One of the surviving passages from his final correspondence tells his brother that he doesn't expect a return to civilization anytime soon and that he hasn't become tired of the wilderness.
He talks about being surrounded by beauty and describes the year as full and rich.
At first, nobody panicked because disappearing for long stretches of time was normal for him.
His parents were accustomed to letters that arrived regularly, and Everett had already warned them that he might be unreachable for weeks.
Eventually, however, mail began accumulating that Everett should have collected, and his parents contacted the post office in Escalante.
Local men organized a search.
What they eventually found in Davis Canyon or in Davis Gulch was peculiar.
Everett's burrows were alive.
There was evidence of his campsite in a corral he had constructed.
But Everett wasn't there.
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