Desert Solitaire Part 1

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

There is something about Edward Abbey's voice. It is so self-assured, so...irascible? In this book, it comes out of the desert, a recollection from the past of a season spent working for the Park Service at Arches National Monument. I've read Abbey's other famous book The Monkey Wrench Gang, and liked it. But I picked this one up for research, hoping it will help me build out a Wilderness Studies course I'm working to build.

Anyway, back to Abbey's voice: It somehow demands a response. He is clearly provoking the reader in his rants about "progress": "...why is the Park Service generally so anxious to accommodate that other crowd, the indolent millions born on wheels and suckled on gasoline, who expect and demand paved highways to lead them in comfort, ease, and safety into every nook and corner of the national parks?" His answer is pretty black-and-white: money. But, of course, the real answer is much more complicated than that. There is a way in which accommodating these so-called "Wheel-Chair Tourists" is a boon to the natural landscape Abbey so clearly thinks they destroy. Because there is no such thing as "pristine" -- or, in the words of the Park Service mission, "undiminished" -- wilderness. Nothing in our world can now be said to have escaped the hand of man, and it hadn't in Abbey's day either. And much of what we perceive to be untouched is actually quite heavily managed so that it seem that way. As a result, wilderness often requires money to preserve and maintain, and that money must come from somewhere. Better "Wheelchair Tourists" than oil companies paying for leases.

At least that's what I'm thinking on this night. What I'm loving about Desert Solitaire is the way in which the author draws you into his world, one in which nothing can be more important than wild country. He is, at least in his portrayal, doing what I have often said I'd long to do: Go away, far from people, and be alone in a landscape. I've never really done it, and I'm not sure if I really want to. Earth is the right place for love -- of people as well as of land. And so it's always felt more enjoyable with company. In a sense, he, too, isn't alone: He has his future readers. Did he think of me? Someone like me? Am I his intended audience? I don't know, but I'm enjoying his "Romantic dreams, romantic dreams."