Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Abbey has some beautiful descriptions of the desert and some incredible stories. I felt vertigo just from reading his descriptions of rappelling down into a canyon. But his overall tone is one of superiority and mockery of anyone who doesn't share his all-encompassing love of the wild.

Gorgeous writing, although the man was definitely of his time. Actually, was it ever really okay to call people “cripples” and dismiss them as unimportant?? Beautiful writer, ugly human.

You may or may not know this about me: I adore the national park system. Have been to many of them. Love nature, love hiking, love that we preserve nature for hiking, etc. And that is why I love Edward Abbey. The American west is a strange place. Southern Utah, in particular, looks almost martian in many regards. It is beautiful and hostile in equal parts, and to capture the sublimity of the desert in writing is, I think, an astonishing gift. This book is often straight from Abbey's diaries during his time as a renegade park ranger at Arches, when Arches was just a national monument instead of the park it is today, and HOT DAMN, does he do the area justice. He also mixes in a fair bit of anarchist get-the-fuck-out-of-your-godforsaken-cars-and-walk ranting that really resonates with me. It's sometimes a relief to know that things he strongly advocated for (disallowing camping in Arches, because of how easily sandstone erodes) have come to pass, and sometimes disheartening that other things have gotten worse (I've been stuck in a bona fide traffic jam in Yellowstone, for example). Regardless, southern Utah couldn't have asked for a more eloquent spokesperson. If you haven't seen any scenery so beautiful it stuns you silent, fly out here, I will drive your ass to Moab, and buy you your very own copy of this book.