The October Selection: Desert Solitaire

Desert Solitaire

“A venturesome minority will always be eager to set out on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American.”

- - - Edward Abbey


For the month of October let us now take a little field trip of the soul. I had a while to ponder my book choice, so I debated several different ones in my mind. But when I picked up Desert Solitaire: A Season In The Wilderness by Edward Abby, and read it, I knew with absolute certainty that this was the one.

This was not my first trip into Abbey’s country. I read the Monkey Wrench Gang a couple of years ago. It’s a great book too. But this one, my friend Colby assured me, would change my life. I’m not sure that it has changed my life. But it did evoke the most passionate response from me of any book that I have read in a very long time. Therefore I can’t help but share it.

Edward Abbey believed that, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.” That is what all of his writing is about. The Monkey Wrench Gang, his most famous, and controversial novel, was a best-selling fiction about a loose gang of misfits who roam the desert attempting to right the wrongs of industrial exploitation of the Earth; their ultimate goal to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. It is credited as a revolutionary flashpoint in radical environmental movements, and the term “Monkey wrenching” is still used to describe acts of vandalism, industrial sabotage, or what some might call eco-terrorism.

Desert Solitaire, on the other hand, comes from way back in his younger days. It is a more simple, purer, less politically incendiary story taken from personal journals he wrote in his time as a park ranger in Arches National Park. This was way back in the day when Arches was just a remote, scarcely visited park way off the beaten tourist track. The roads were still rugged jeep trails. You could still be alone there, and experience some peace and quiet. Now you can scarcely escape the flow of Winnebagos and Hummers loaded up with crazed camera-toting tourists who come there to take the same snapshots that everyone takes without ever leaving the air-conditioned comfort of their steel boxes on wheels. I am a photographer myself, and yet even I can not understand what motivates these people to drive across the country from West Virginia with their screaming children so that they can whiz around in their cars at the butt crack of dawn to capture a photograph that looks identical to the post cards you can buy at the gift shop.

Abbey’s book is about the value of the simple experience of being there, or anywhere else where a person can go to be alone. He evokes the beauty, and mystery, and wonder that comes with being “true to the earth”. He tells the stories of his adventures in and around Moab with incendiary wit, irreverence, and an unholy passion. His ideas are politically incorrect on both sides of the debate. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat you can get equally pissed off. Personally, I agree whole-heartedly with each and every stinking word of his filthy report. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me sick to my stomach. I was filled with joy and rage all at the same time. It’s no wonder that the likes of Hunter S. Thomson and Cormac McCarthy have cited him as an influence on their work.

So, if you have ever floated down a river with good people, or jumped off a cliff, or drank unpurified water from a mountain stream, or got lost in the wilderness, or laid down on cold sandstone to stare at the milky way, or lived out of a backpack, or surprised a rattlesnake, or questioned authority, or jumped a fence, or talked to strangers, or kissed a girl, or a boy, or stepped into quicksand, or gotten high on life, or pulled cactus needles from your best friends eye, or dreamed mystical dreams in the desert, or done something wrong just because you could, then I highly recommend this book to you. And if you have done none of those things then I am truly sorry, and I insist you must read this book. It could change your life.

So let’s do this.