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Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire Paperback – Illustrated, January 15, 1990

by Edward Abbey (Author)

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Book 1 of 7: Edward Abbey series

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Hailed by The New York Times as “a passionately felt, deeply poetic book,” the moving autobiographical work of Edward Abbey, considered the Thoreau of the American West, and his passion for the southwestern wilderness.

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. The bookdetails the unique adventures and conflicts the author faces, from dealing with the damage caused by development of the land or excessive tourism, to discovering a dead body. However Desert Solitaire is not just a collection of one man’s stories, the book is also a philosophical memoir, full of Abbey’s reflections on the desert as a paradox, at once beautiful and liberating, but also isolating and cruel. Often compared to Thoreau’s Walden, Desert Solitaire is a powerful discussion of life’s mysteries set against the stirring backdrop of the American southwestern wilderness.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Touchstone
Publication date

January 15, 1990
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.72 x 8.44 inches
ISBN-10

0671695886
ISBN-13

978-0671695880
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Popular Highlights in this book

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I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation.
Highlighted by 244 Kindle readers
One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.
Highlighted by 214 Kindle readers
All one to me—sandstorm or sunshine I am content, so long as I have something to eat, good health, the earth to take my stand on, and light behind the eyes to see by.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, the noted author's most enduring nonfiction work, is an account of Abbey's seasons as a ranger at Arches National Park outside Moab, Utah. Abbey reflects on the nature of the Colorado Plateau desert, on the condition of our remaining wilderness, and on the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world. He also recounts adventures with scorpions and snakes, obstinate tourists and entrenched bureaucrats, and, most powerful of all, with his own mortality. Abbey's account of getting stranded in a rock pool down a side branch of the Grand Canyon is at once hilarious and terrifying.

Review

The New Yorker An American Masterpiece. A Forceful Encounter with a Man of Character and Courage.

The New York Times Book Review Like a ride on a bucking bronco...rough, tough, combative. The author is a rebel and an eloquent loner. His is a passionately felt, deeply poetic book...set down in a lean, racing prose, in a close-knit style of power and beauty.

About the Author

Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania, in 1927. He was educated at the University of New Mexico and the University of Edinburgh. He died at his home in Oracle, Arizona, in 1989.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

THE FIRST MORNING

This is the most beautiful place on earth.

There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the fight place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio or Rome -- there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling to them from up above, in the cold black outback of intersteller space.

For myself I'll take Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself, of course, but the country which surrounds it -- the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky -- all that which lies beyond the end of the roads.

The choice became apparent to me this morning when I stepped out of a Park Service housetrailer -- my caravan -- to watch for the first time in my life the sun come up over the hoodoo stone of Arches National Monument.

I wasn't able to see much of it last night. After driving all day from Albuquerque -- 450 miles -- I reached Moab after dark in cold, windy, clouded weather. At park headquarters north of town I met the superintendent and the chief ranger, the only permanent employees, except for one maintenance man, in this particular unit of America's national park system. After coffee they gave me a key to the housetrailer and directions on how to reach it; I am required to live and work not at headquarters but at this one-man station some twenty miles back in the interior, on my own. The way I wanted it, naturally, or I'd never have asked for the Job.

Leaving the headquarters area and the lights of Moab, I drove twelve miles farther north on the highway until I came to a dirt road on the right, where a small wooden sign pointed the way: Arches National Monument Eight Miles. I left the pavement, turned cast into the howling wilderness. Wind roaring out of the northwest, black clouds across the stars -- all I could see were clumps of brush and scattered junipers along the roadside. Then another modest signboard:

WARNING: QUICKSAND DO NOT CROSS WASH WHEN WATER IS RUNNING

The wash looked perfectly dry in my headlights. I drove down, across, up the other side and on into the night. Glimpses of weird humps of pale rock on either side, like petrified elephants, dinosaurs, stone-age hobgoblins. Now and then something alive scurried across the road: kangaroo mice, a jackrabbit, an animal that looked like a cross between a raccoon and a squirrel -- the ringtail cat. Farther on a pair of mule deer started from the brush and bounded obliquely through the beams of my lights, raising puffs of dust which the wind, moving faster than my pickup truck, ought and carried ahead of me out of sight into the dark. The road, narrow and rocky, twisted sharply left and right, dipped in and out of tight ravines, climbing by degrees toward a summit which I would see only in the light of the coming day.

Snow was swirling through the air when I crossed the unfenced line and passed the boundary marker of the park. A quarter-mile beyond I found the ranger station -- a wide place in the road, an informational display under a lean-to shelter, and fifty yards away the little tin government housetrailer where I would be living for the next six months.

A cold night, a cold wind, the snow falling like confetti. In the lights of the truck I unlocked the housetrailer, got out bedroll and baggage and moved in. By flashlight I found the bed, unrolled my sleeping bag, pulled off my boots and crawled in and went to sleep at once. The last I knew was the shaking of the trailer in the wind and the sound, from inside, of hungry mice scampering around with the good news that their long lean lonesome winter was over -- their friend and provider had finally arrived.

This morning I awake before sunrise, stick my head out of the sack, peer through a frosty window at a scene dim and vague with flowing mists, dark fantastic shapes looming beyond. An unlikely landscape.

I get up, moving about in long underwear and socks, stooping carefully under the low ceiling and lower doorways of the housetrailer, a machine for living built so efficiently and compactly there's hardly room for a man to breathe. An iron lung it is, with windows and venetian blinds.

The mice are silent, watching me from their hiding places, but the wind is still blowing and outside the ground is covered with snow. Cold as a tomb, a jail, a cave; I lie down on the dusty floor, on the cold linoleum sprinkled with mouse turds, and light the pilot on the butane heater. Once this thing gets going the place warms up fast, in a dense unhealthy way, with a layer of heat under the ceiling where my head is and nothing but frigid air from the knees down. But we've got all the indispensable conveniences: gas cookstove, gas refrigerator, hot water heater, sink with running water (if the pipes aren't frozen), storage cabinets and shelves, everything within ann's reach of everything else. The gas comes from two steel bottles in a shed outside; the water comes by gravity flow from a tank buried in a hill close by. Quite luxurious for the wilds. There's even a shower stall and a flush toilet with a dead rat in the bowl. Pretty soft. My poor mother raised five children without any of these luxuries and might be doing without them yet if it hadn't been for Hitler, war and general prosperity.

Time to get dressed, get out and have a look at the lay of the land, fix a breakfast. I try to pull on my boots but they're stiff as iron from the cold. I light a burner on the stove and hold the boots upside down above the flame until they are malleable enough to force my feet into. I put on a coat and step outside. Into the center of the world, God's navel, Abbey's country, the red wasteland.

The, sun is not yet in sight but signs of the advent are plain to see. Lavender clouds sail like a fleet of ships across the pale green dawn; each cloud, planed flat on the wind, has a base of fiery gold. Southeast, twenty miles by line of sight, stand the peaks of the Sierra La Sal, twelve to thirteen thousand feet above sea level, all covered with snow and rosy in the morning sunlight. The air is dry and clear as well as cold; the last fogbanks left over from last night's storm are scudding away like ghosts, fading into nothing before the wind and the sunrise.

The view is open and perfect in all directions except to the west where the ground rises and the skyline is only a few hundred yards away. Looking toward the mountains I can see the dark gorge of the Colorado River five or six miles away, carved through the sandstone mesa, though nothing of the river itself down inside the gorge. Southward, on the far side of the fiver, lies the Moab valley between thousand-foot walls of rock, with the town of Moab somewhere on the valley floor, too small to be seen from here. Beyond the Moab valley is more canyon and tableland stretching away to the Blue Mountains fifty miles south. On the north and northwest I see the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, the two-level face of the Uinta Plateau. Along the foot of those cliffs, maybe thirty miles off, invisible from where I stand, runs U.S. 6-50, a major east-west artery of commerce, traffic and rubbish, and the main line of the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad. To the east, under the spreading sunrise, are more mesas, more canyons, league on league of red cliff and arid tablelands, extending through purple haze over the bulging curve of the planet to the ranges of Colorado -- a sea of desert.

Within this vast perimeter, in the middle ground and foreground of the picture, a rather personal demesne, are the 33,000 acres of Arches National Monument of which I am now sole inhabitant, usufructuary, observer and custodian.

What are the Arches? From my place in front of the housetrailer I can see several of the hundred or more of them which have been discovered in the park. These are natural arches, holes in the rock, windows in stone, no two alike, as varied in form as in dimension. They range in size from holes just big enough to walk through to openings large enough to contain the dome of the Capitol building in Washington, D.G. Some resemble jug handles or flying buttresses, others natural bridges but with this technical distinction: a natural bridge spans a watercourse -- a natural arch does not. The arches were formed through hundreds of thousands of years by the weathering of the huge sandstone walls, or fins, in which they are found. Not the work of a cosmic hand, nor sculptured by sand-beating winds, as many people prefer to believe, the arches came into being and continue to come into being through the modest wedging action of rainwater, melting snow, frost, and ice, aided by gravity. In color they shade from off-white through buff, pink, brown and red, tones which also change With the time of day and the moods of the light, the weather, the sky.

Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not -- at least there's nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me.

The snow-covered ground glimmers with a dull blue light, reflecting the sky and the approaching sunrise. Leading away from me the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into no where, meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre.

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. 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. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

Well -- the sun will be up in a few minutes and I haven't even begun to make coffee. I take more baggage from my pickup, the grub box and cooking gear, go back in the trailer and start breakfast. Simply breathing, in a place like this, arouses the appetite. The orange juice is frozen, the milk slushy with ice. Still chilly enough inside the trailer to turn my breath to vapor, When the first rays of the sun strike the cliffs I fill a mug with steaming coffee and sit in the doorway facing the sunrise, hungry for the warmth.

Suddenly it comes, the flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks, on the canyon walls and through the windows in the sandstone fins. We greet each other, sun and I, across the black void of ninety-three million miles. The snow glitters between us, acres of diamonds almost painful to look at. Within an hour all the snow exposed to the sunlight will be gone and the rock will be damp and steaming. Within minutes, even as I watch, melting snow begins to drip from the branches of a juniper nearby; drops of water streak slowly down the side of the trailerhouse.

I am not alone after all. Three ravens are wheeling near the balanced rock, squawking at each other and at the dawn. I'm sure they're as delighted by the return of the sun as I am and I wish I knew the language, I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse. First things first. The ravens cry out in husky voices, blue-black wings flapping against the' golden sky. Over my shoulder comes the sizzle and smell of frying bacon.

That's the way it was this morning.

Copyright © 1968 by Edward Abbey

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone (January 15, 1990)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0671695886
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0671695880
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.72 x 8.44 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #11,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Environmentalist & Naturalist Biographies
- #11 in Nature Writing & Essays
- #19 in Environmentalism

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Edward Abbey

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Edward Abbey was born in Home, Pennsylvania, in 1927. He was educated at the University of New Mexico and the University of Edinburgh. He died at his home in Oracle, Arizona, in 1989.

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L. G. Cullens

Important read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2020

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Imagine what Edward Abby would have to say if he were still alive to see what humankind has further wrought.

In not having read this particular book of Abbey's before, I've shortchanged my reading experience. To me, his narrative in Desert Solitaire is befitting the setting, at once harsh and lulling, even hauntingly poetic with discordant notes. If you discern the writing's undercurrent, you may also feel its poignancy.

In this book, the best of his writing to my mind even if a little drawn out, he is more in touch with the paradoxes of the natural world than many can countenance. It is also a Nature book, pleasurable for those that can visualize the detailed settings, especially those that have alone and on foot previously experienced the awe of true wilderness.

I have to agree that Edward Abby can come across as intolerant and contemptuous of much of society, which stems from his idealism. A subjective reaction on our part though, where to the objective mind he's often enough on the mark, if abrasively so, in highlighting shortcomings we are loath to admit in ourselves. Sadly, we are for the most part subjective creatures that have followed a path to the brink of disastrous environmental changes, which evidences how lacking we are as judges.

Reading widely serves us best in stimulating critical thinking, and that to me is the real value of this book. One is not required to take as gospel all they read, but a thoughtful, objective mind can assemble the salient pieces of life's sketchy puzzle. Edward Abby serves up a smorgasbord of thoughts, applicable in extension, for the reader's mind to sort through and assimilate.

To those unacquainted with the Southwest, or wishing to recall its beauty, there are ample descriptive passages, such as:

"The cliffrose is practical as well as pretty. Concealed by the flowers at this time are the leaves, small, tough, wax-coated, bitter on the tongue—thus the name quinine bush—but popular just the same among the deer as browse when nothing better is available—buckbrush. The Indians too, a practical people, once used the bark of this plant for sandals, mats and rope, and the Hopi medicine man is said, even today, to mash and cook the leaves as an emetic for his patients."

And, of course, there are passages about the ecological consequences of human ignorance:

"Like the porcupine the deer too become victims of human meddling with the natural scheme of things—not enough coyotes around and the mountain lions close to extinction, the deer have multiplied like rabbits and are eating themselves out of house and home, which means that many each year are condemned to a slow death by starvation."

That paradoxically, so it would seem, together with the acceptance of Nature's model of life continuance, that of life fueled by life:

"We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!"

As to Edward Abby's abrasiveness, how better could we be insulted than with the glaring light of human destructiveness we shield our eyes from? Sawing away at branches of evolution as we are, despite being on one of the branches. Points well made in assessing where the wild places have gone and why. Can the public granted their desires escape anymore the stress and turmoil of the sardine can existence they are trying to leave behind for a while?

"Modern politics is expensive—power follows money.
. . .
"Loop drives are extremely popular with the petroleum industry—they bring the motorist right back to the same gas station from which he started.
. . .
"To all accusations of excessive development the administrators can reply, as they will if pressed hard enough, that they are giving the public what it wants, that their primary duty is to serve the public not preserve the wilds."

Rounding out he book's board stroke there are engaging side stories, a bit of desert survival advice, insights (e.g. "prejudice cultivates prejudice"), and prophesying born out since its writing.

"What reason have we Americans to think that our own society will necessarily escape the world-wide drift toward the totalitarian organization of men and institutions?

"... 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."

And yes, satirical humor with significant points:

"Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angels and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous—however roseate—Unmoved Mover. (Play safe; worship only in clockwise direction; let’s all have fun together.) That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the Church Fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference, passing on into the oblivion it so richly deserved, while the Paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand."

Though this book is in good part studies of the animals, plants, geography, and climate of the region around Arches National Monument, maybe in reading and broadening focus one might glean a better understanding of the value of wilderness.

"Wilderness, wilderness.… We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.

"The word suggests the past and the unknown, the womb of earth from which we all emerged. It means something lost and something still present, something remote and at the same time intimate, something buried in our blood and nerves, something beyond us and without limit."

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Clifford

Wonderful collection of humorous, philosophical and eco-tinged essays that feels like a novel.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 2, 2013

Verified Purchase

Read it, loved it, have since bought and read all of his other work- books I will keep.

On the completion of "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey
Earlier today I completed reading "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey, a book that was for me full of immeasurable personal connection and inspiration. By connection I mean I felt connected to the material as one is connected to their own feelings and philosophies. In many regards I feel Edward Abbey and I to exist almost as one in thought and perspective, but of course I feel equally the chasm by which every man is separated from every other. It is entirely apparent he is Edward Abbey and I am Clifford Novey- each replete with as many idiosyncrasies as one can imagine.
The reading of this book took place over the period of what I would say was close to 2 months, mostly in short visits to the coffee shop and sitting in the sun. I found myself looking forward to each reading- treasuring my dog eared paperback- knowing that I was going somewhere I wanted to be- a wise place- a wild place- a place of beauty- a place of sobering reality- a place of angry outcry and of sublime affection.
Southeastern Utah. The mid 60s. Ed has taken the job of park ranger for the still relatively unadulterated Arches National Monument. For a season anyway. April 1st- his first day on the job and what a few years later would be the day of my very own birth. There is the pickup truck and the little trailer- separated by 20 miles of desert and rock and pure inspiration before the next house or bar located in Moab. He makes the rounds- describes his life in the desert- his trailer- the heat- the clouds- the vultures- the plants- sand- rocks. He takes occasional journeys- as hired hand rounding up cattle- to Moab for supplies and a little human contact- to remote canyons in search of a horse called Moon Eye- to aid in the search of a dead man- to the mountains for a mid summer respite from the heat and sand - to Glen Canyon before it was flooded- and to The Maze. One chapter may be practical and to the point- daily life- the ways and means- the mundane and minute. The next chapter could almost be written by someone else entirely- literally pure poetry- describing in beautiful detail the scents, sounds, the air, the stones- the sky- the horizon- the sun. Next you might have a dramatic accounting from days gone by- straight off the screen of a 50s noir set in the desert. And through it all the dry wit and humor endearing you to this writer slowly melting into the desert like so much sandstone from mesa into canyon to river into earth.
But I don't wish to get caught in specifics- I wish to convey the sublime- the big picture- the inspirer (Edward Abbey) to the potential inspiree(you).
In my bed- half asleep- half dreaming- recuperating from too many weeks of late night interests, I see Edward Abbey sitting in 2 chairs. One chair is on a porch. Could be a rocking chair or a simple square back wooden chair complete with creaks- no matter. This first chair holds the weight of a man who is an everyman- the salt of the earth as it were- with a simple wit and conviction and wisdom born of a life connected with hard labor and simple living. Trucks, tractors, wagons, wheels, pulleys, levers, beams, rods, tarps, knives, gullies, dirt, trees, livestock, dive bars, stiff drinks and cold beers after a hard days work, lawn mower repairs, rakes, hammers nails and bolts, and an appreciation, suspicion, and condemnation of such "modern conveniences" like the refrigerator, automobile, revolver, and bureaucracy .
Then there is the other chair- the one I saw in my dream-like state. It is very old- wooden- hand carved with ornate design and sits in some library centuries old. Here sits the scholar, the philosopher, the intellectual. Here is the man who quotes Socrates and Sartre, the ideas of Nietzsche and Hitler- contrasting his experiences with the words of Christ, Confucious, and organized religions. Edward Abbey states he is not an atheist, but an earthiest. He believes in the Earth and what he sees and feels before him as he drifts down the Colorado river in a small rubber boat- he and his companion taking in the magnificence of Glen Canyon soon before it is to be flooded by the completion of another modern sign of "progress" called the Glen Canyon Dam. He, like myself- stands and sees heaven and Eden all at once- right where he stands- gazing into the little pool of crystal clear water, noticing the minnows and grains of sand at it's bottom, taking in the eons and cycles that created then eroded the earth into the beautiful and graceful sandstone slot canyon where he now stands.
I see now his effect and the truth that Edward Abbey sits not in 2 chairs, but only one. In my own ramblings I have unknowingly emulated his style and shown that in this one chair he is all of those things- laborer, philosopher, revolutionary, simple conformist, and outspoken advocate of the desert and all things natural and wild. He uses his knowledge, his patience, respect, openness and stubbornness as he sits at campfire with a stranger and talks…
"Revealing my desert thoughts to a visitor one evening, I was accused of being against civilization, against science, against humanity. Naturally I was flattered and at the same time surprised, hurt, a little shocked. He repeated the charge. But how, I replied, being myself a member of humanity (albeit involuntarily, without prior consultation), could I be against humanity without being against myself, whom I love- though not very much; how can I be against science, when I gratefully admire, as much as any man, Thales, Democritus, Aristarchus, Faustus, Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein; and finally, how could I be against civilization when all which I most willingly defend and venerate-including the love of wilderness-is comprehended by the term?
We were not communicating very well. All night long we thrashed the matter out, burning up half a pinyon pine in the process, transforming its mass into energy, warmth, light, and toward morning worked out a rough agreement. With his help I discovered I was not opposed to mankind but only to man-centeredness, anthropocentricity, the opinion that the world exists solely for the sake of man; not to science, which means simply knowledge, but to science misapplied, to the worship of technique and technology, and to that perversion of science properly called scientism; and not to civilization but to culture" – E.A., Desert Solitare
C.N., September 1, 2007

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Lightning Hopkins

Very good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 2, 2022

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I bought this book because I got tired of checking it out at the library. I have since learned that this book combines 3 years of his employment at Arches National Monument, not just one season and thats fine with me, more stories. Mr. Abbeys finest writing even though I guess the book was not his favorite but according to Ken Sanders ( a friend of Ed's) the book is selling better than ever. I read and re-read it often because it puts me in a good place. Have a nice day.

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David Juhasz

It's Edward Abbey. What else is there to say.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 3, 2022

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I had to "add back" to my library when I bought this copy.
I read it many years ago and still am inspired by it.
Inspired to become more aware of the "First One's" and their associated history.
So many different stories and so many insights to be gained, especially if you pay attention to what's between the lines.

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GZP

Entertaining account of life in the desert.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 26, 2017

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I have spent some time in all of Utah's national parks, and my favourites by far are Arches and Canyonlands (both just outside Moab) both of which happen to be the settings of this book. (Note that the cover photo is of Monument Valley in Arizona, which does not feature as a location in the book.)

The book is Abbey's account of his time as a park ranger in Arches in the 50s, some time before paved access roads were built. At this time access to Arches was only for the hardy and determined, its majesty unspoilt by motor vehicles, RVs and tourists. Abbey rails against the future plans to increase access, and worries that the magic of the park will be lost. Of course those plans were executed, and now millions visit Arches every year. Has the park been ruined as a result? I'm sure Abbey would have hated the current situation, but I don't think the outcome is quite as bad as he feared. True, many tourists just breaze through in their cars and don't really engage with the park. Some areas, like delicate Arch, have become like a Disney theme park, but I think the impact is limited. 90% plus of the area of these great parks remains pretty unspoilt IMO.

Abbey's curmudgeonly account of his time in Arches is a fascinating and highly entertaining read. If you love the desert landscape and Utah, this book is for you. Expect to feel pangs of guilt as you read it, as I'm sure, like me, you're guilty of being one of the motorised tourists Abbey so hates! In my defence I truly do love these parks, have ditched the car and hiked deep in to them, full of wonder, awe and respect. Perhaps Abbey wouldn't have completely hated me!

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Ed

IT FLOWS WITH MY DREAMS

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 14, 2011

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I bought this book after reading a statement by the author sent to me by a like minded soul. If you have any interest in saving your planet or your heritage then this will interest you. If you have any interest in the history of forgotten people especially Native Americans, this will interest you If you like a good true adventure story, this will interest you. If you like your story well illustrated with words not pictures, this will interest you. Now that I have your interest, buy the book.

5 people found this helpful

Broken iPod owner

OK but no amazing enlightenment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 14, 2014

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I'd heard this book spoken of as some great spiritual insight. I've been round the Arches park and was keen to read it, but it is much less profound than I expected. I thought it might be like Walden or something, but the language and thoughts are much more pedestrian. Put me more in mind of a book written by someone on tour on a motorbike than someone experiencing deep insight from isolation

Still, not a bad book

One person found this helpful

Client d'Amazon

The descriptions of wilderness are wonderful. The writing is clear and strong and Abbey ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 17, 2017

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One of the half-dozen books I shall be re-reading until i die. The descriptions of wilderness are wonderful. The writing is clear and strong and Abbey himself is a deep-thinking individualist in an age of group-think sheeple. The perfect tonic to living in the modern world.

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MR PETER D WARNER

Excellent writing, but of its time.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

Great stories for the age prior to roads in Moab. He did go on rather with his long., long descriptions.

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Desert Solitaire Paperback – Illustrated, January 15, 1990

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