Some of the best known naturalists seem to take to their work from a desire to be alone in the wild. Think of John Muir hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains for weeks at a time or Peter Matthiessen trekking in the Himalayas in search of snow leopards. The urge for solitude can also be seen sometimes in nature writers. For some writers this urge seems to be rooted in a Thoreau-vian desire to get out of the city and connect to the world in a new way. In others though, the drive for solitude seems to be rooted in a deep dissatisfaction with the human race. Edward Abbey often seems to be of the latter school. Abbey’s writing can at times be harsh and biting, like the arid landscapes of New Mexico and Arizona about which he writes. At the same time, though, there is a thread of beauty in Abbey’s writing that mirrors the beauty of the American southwest. Abbey does not suffer fools gladly, and his roster of fools can be pretty extensive. Abbey expresses the view, to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, that moderation in defense of the natural world is no virtue.
Although it can be acerbic, Abbey’s writing has a strong sense of both the loveliness and the danger of the desert Southwest that draws the reader in. He has a deep and abiding affection for the desert landscape, and the reader senses how Abbey’s passion for the mesas and red rock canyons drives both his prose and his life. In Desert Solitaire, Abbey chronicles his work as a seasonal ranger in Arches National Monument in Moab, Utah. The descriptions of the desert landscapes and the ever changing weather are lyrical but in a spare style. Abbey captures the desert light like no other writer I have ever read. There is humor here, and Abbey can be at his most humorous, and most exasperated, when writing about bureaucracy. These essays are often elegiac. Abbey sees the threats to the natural world that he loves, and realizes that for this world to survive as he would like, there will have to be a major shift in the way people think about their relationship to the land. Throughout his writings, Abbey calls on us to make that change. First written forty years ago, Abbey’s call is equally important today.
Check the WRL catalog for Desert Solitaire
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