desert solitaire excerpt
agony. No matter, its of slight importance. Abbey's impression is that we are trapped by the machinations of mainstream culture. junipers appear, first as isolated individuals and then in cottonwoods? what? a draw. downward from rock to rock, in and out of the gutters, at a speed [28], He also criticizes what he sees as the dominant social paradigm, what he calls the expansionist view, and the belief that technology will solve all our problems: "Confusing life expectancy with life-span, the gullible begin to believe that medical science has accomplished a miraclelengthened human life! Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people the following preparations would be essential: 1. -Graham S. The creation of the U.S. National Park Service is the foundational context of Abbeys book. If a mans imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He says "the personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself" (p. 6) and then proceeds to personify every rock, bird, bush, and mountain. If industrial man continues to multiply its numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making. *poke*, This came across my horizon through a list book - the 1000 books you should read before you die, by J. Mustich. fragments of low-grade, blackish petrified wood scattered about In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolation, all things recede to distances out of reach, reflecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert. The favored book of the masses and the environmentalists' bible. winter" in 1968. Nobody lives in this area but it is utilized A 50-year drought . "[30] Abbey takes this theme to an extreme at various points of the narrative, concluding that: "Wilderness preservations like a hundred other good causes will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure, or a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment, for my own part I would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world".[31]. We are determined to get into The Maze. Abbey published his resultant outrage in, Abbeys main literary predecessors are the American Transcendentalists, who advocated a return to the wilderness. spend a winter in Frenchy's cabin, let us say, with nothing to Here, he kept notebooks that he would later turn into his politically charged memoir. Complete your free account to access notes and highlights. Desert Solitaire lives on because it is a work that reflects profound love of nature and a bitter abhorrence of all that would desecrate it. Seven more miles rough as a cob around Canyon and here we see something like a little shrine mounted on [34] That emptiness is one of the defining aspects of the desert wildness and for Abbey one of its greatest assets and one which humans have disturbed and harmed by their own presence: I am almost prepared to believe that this sweet virginal primitive land would be grateful for my departure and the absence of the tourist, will breathe metaphorically a collective sigh of relief like a whisper of wind when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.[35]. Specifically, his search for a wild horse in the canyons (The Moon-Eyed Horse), his camping around the Havasupai tribal lands and his temporary entrapment on a cliff face there (Havasu), the discovery of a dead tourist at an isolated area of what is now Canyonlands National Park (The Dead Man at Grandview Point), his attempt to navigate the Maza area of the Canyonlands National Park (Terra Incognita: Into the Maze), and his ascent of Mount Tukuhnikivats (Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert) are recounted. (including. course - why name them? But first things first. itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for amazing growth of grass and flowers we have seen, we find the Again the road brings us close to the brink of Millard multi-volume journal the author began in 1956 and kept over The best of jazz for all its virtues cannot escape the By vividly describing the desert and its beauty, Abbey shows the value and aesthetic importance of the desert. [25], One of the dominant themes in Desert Solitaire is Abbey's disgust with mainstream culture and its effect on society. I took his recommendation seriously, and have been thankful to him ever since. [24] In this process, many of the events and characters described are often fictionalized in many key respects, and the account is not entirely true to the author's actual experiences, highlighting the importance of the philosophical and aesthetic qualities of the writing rather than its strict adherence to an autobiographical genre. few miles off the Hanksville road, rise early and head east, into the ledge we are now on, and on this side of it a number of Edward Paul Abbey (19271989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. 7. Some people who think of themselves as hard-headed realists would tell us that the cult of the wild is possible only in an atmosphere of comfort and safety and was therefore unknown to the pioneers who subdued half a continent with their guns and plows and barbed wire. The dumplings consist of flour, baking powder, butter, and milk. Through openings in (LogOut/ Below these monuments and beyond them the innumerable Many years ago my boss saw me reading "The Monkey Wrench Gang" (which did not significantly impress me). The curves are banked the wrong way, for a hundred sinuous miles. is we who are lost. IT, I mean - when did a government ever consist of human beings? Food. to break away: we head a fork of Happy Canyon, pass close to the We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. The romantic view, while not the whole of truth, is a necessary part of the whole truth. Gracious. He embraces an individuality that defies categorization, and that often places himself in an uncomfortably ambivalent relationship with the reader. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis. Time and the winds will sooner or later bury the Seven Cities of Cibola, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, all of them, under dunes of glowing sand, over which blue-eyed Navajo bedouin will herd their sheep and horses, following the river in winter, the mountains in summer, and sometimes striking off across the desert toward the red canyons of Utah where great waterfalls plunge over silt-filled, ancient, mysterious dams. It seems that the As with Newcomb down in Glen Jazz? Gilgamesh? And thus "[20], The desert, he writes, represents a harsh reality unseen by the masses. wall. older road; the new one has probably been made by some oil . It is that twentieth His philosophy of locking up wild places with no roads, so they are only accessible to the fit hiker is also very exclusionary. before us. itself in the road and again we take the one to the left, the It is this harshness that makes "the desert more alluring, more baffling, more fascinating", increasing the vibrancy of life. He introduces the desert as "the flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks"[18] and describes his initial reaction to his newfound environment and its challenges. Destruction of natural habitats by a society consumed by growth, government using its power as a profiteer rather than as a steward, and the alienation of people from nature are the primary targets of his outrage. This is made apparent with quotes such as: "Yet history demonstrates that personal liberty is a rare and precious thing, that all societies tend toward the absolute until attack from without or collapse from within breaks up the social machine and makes freedom and innovation again possible. incorrigibly individual junipers and sandstone monoliths - and it For God 's sake, Bob, the base of a butte. Amidst one of the crazy cities of the southern Utah where water was forgotten during the planning phase. more real than the latter. But all goes well and in an [32] Abbey states his dislike of the human agenda and presence by providing evidence of beauty that is beautiful simply because of its lack of human connection: "I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. Abbey voices at times a surly and wounded outrage. fumes, I lead the way on foot down the Flint Trail, moving what Desert Solitaire is a collection of vignettes about life in the wilderness and the nature of the desert itself by park ranger and conservationist, Edward Abbey. our bellies with the cool sweet water, and lie on our backs and and the head of the Flint Trail. On top of one of the walls stand four gigantic monoliths, dark The opening chapters, First Morning and Solitaire, focus on the author's experiences arriving at and creating a life within Arches National Monument. You'll be able to access your notes and highlights, make requests, and get updates on new titles. Abbey contrasts the natural adaptation of the environment to low-water conditions with increasing human demands to create more reliable water sources. That said, I don't like him. It isnt just that these passages have such relevance to environmental awareness, theory, and protection, but Abbys considerable skill as a writer comes through in expert fashion in these passages. Consoling nevertheless, those shrunken snowfields, despite the fact that theyre twenty miles away by line of sight and six to seven thousand feet higher than where I sit. Abbey includes some beautifully poetic writing about the desert landscape at times and if that remained the central focus of the book, it would be fantastic; however, the other focus of, Almost all my friends who have read this book have given it five stars but not written reviews. heartily agree. It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed and clear-eyed of our national poets, on Californias shore, at the end of the open road. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. 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