When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. It is almost like a coming home. Permanent springs or waterholes are likewise few and far between though not so rare as the streams. While Mackie indulged himself in a smoke I looked at the scenery, staring out from under the shelter of my hat brim. We reach the rim a little before sundown and after a quick supper for its cold and windy up here go early to bed. In the year 1572 a temporary star appeared near this constellation bright enough to be seen in full sunshine, throwing all the Christians of Europe into uproar. He stared and stared and then something off in the corner of his field of vision caught his attention. Taking the Windows road first, I drive beneath the overhanging Balanced Rock, 3500 tons of seamless Entrada sandstone perched on a ridiculous, inadequate pedestal of the Carmel formation, soft and rotten stone eaten away by the wind, deformed by the weight above. Shine, perishing republic. Couldnt hardly afford to leave it there., The cow had still not moved. INTO THE MAZE. Goddamnit, Floyd, you got big feet., I wonder if the old fart would walk part way if we let him out of that bag?, He wont even say thank you for the ride., Well I hope this learned him a lesson, goddamn him. The gradual cell-by-cell replacement or infiltration of buried logs by hot, silica-bearing waters in a process so exact that the original cellular structure of the wood is preserved in all its detail forms this desert jewelry agatized rainbows in rock. Light. His only request is that they cut their strings first. He is interested in my opinion and listens at first with some care. Puzzled and suspicious, she and the fawn at her side, madonna and child, stare at me for several long seconds. This too will be replaced. My feet are wet and cold. Look at those tracks unshod. A smell of ozone. For example, "World war II" (with quotes) will give Thinking that. Although we still have plenty of water in the Land Rover we are mighty glad to see it. In the desert, wrote Balzac, somewhere, there is all and there is nothing. ), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. You damned stupid harrr I croaked, and gave it up. Have failed. The automobile, which began as a transportation convenience, has become a bloody tyrant (50,000 lives a year), and it is the responsibility of the Park Service, as well as that of everyone else concerned with preserving both wilderness and civilization, to begin a campaign of resistance. I pause when necessary beneath pinyon pine or juniper for rest and shade and for a precious drink of water. He was picking peaches one day in his own backyard, taking it easy, and he had a stroke. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. From my point of view, friends. Politically unpalatable? I wish to point out therefore that the Park Service has labored under severe pressure from powerful forces for many decades and that under the circumstances and so far it has done its work rather well. More, this is bliss, pure smug animal satisfaction. A bush growing out of the hard sun-baked mud. What drove the ancient ones out of the canyonlands? It seems that the U.S. Government what country is that? I hadnt forgotten the moon-eyed horse. Because I prefer to. The poets lie too much, said Jeffers. The main or wider canyon turns to the left, revealing vistas of alluvium flats covered with sagebrush, more cottonwoods, more and more branching canyons with deep alcoves high in their walls, likely sites for Indian ruins. On my feet again, I explored the abandoned silver mines in the canyon walls, found a few sticks of dynamite but no caps or fuses. Eh? I thought of the Minotaur. But, in his favor, he is inexpensive; he is economical; he works full-time seven days a week for room and board and a hundred dollars a month. We shove off, keeping to the shady side of the canyon, and commence the second day of our journey. Certainly in Salt Lake City itself there is no lack of intriguing social problems air pollution, traffic jams, angry adolescents, babies born from sinlock and all the rest of it and very soon the Latter-Day Saints will be forced to confront directly the symptoms of discontent and desperation with which most Americans are now familiar: from LDS to LSD. A farewell? Exclusion of automobiles would also require a revolution in the thinking of Park Service officialdom and in the assumptions of most American tourists. Next, get rid of all these homely rangers in their Smokey the Bear suits. This situation came about through the conscientious efforts of a federal agency known formerly as the Wildlife Service, which keeps its people busy in trapping, shooting and poisoning wildlife, particularly coyotes and mountain lions. So there is at least one remaining in the area, perhaps the same coyote I heard two weeks ago wailing at the evening moon. The splendid new rapids thus created we will name Floyd E. Dominy Falls, in honor of the chief of the Reclamation Bureau; a more suitable memorial could hardly be devised for such an esteemed and loyal public servant. Rainer Maria Rilke, I explain, was a German poet who lived off countesses. I empty the garbage cans, read the discarded newspapers, sweep out the outhouses and disengage the Kleenex from the clutches of cliffrose and cactus. I was glad enough to see him. Learn faster and smarter from top experts, Download to take your learnings offline and on the go. Most of them are making good wages and/or doing work they like to do; they are, you might say, happy. When I reach one of the islandlike areas of solid rock in the midst of the scree I lie down for a while to catch my breath and examine at close range, six inches, the buttercups, the Sticky Polemonium, the moss campion (lovely name) and the miniature alpine violets with their flowers no bigger than the head of a thumbtack. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Im just starting up to investigate the ridge when Waterman appears, tracking me up the canyon floor. I look for a quick and easy way to return. As for the technical competence of the artists, its measure is apparent in the fact that these pictographs and petroglyphs though exposed to the attack of wind, sand, rain, heat, cold and sunlight for centuries still survive vivid and clear. You can use ? In one of these I accidentally start a brush fire, and am nearly cooked alive. Arriving at his trailer in Arches National Monument, where hell live and work for the summer, Abbey notes the surrounding wildlife and accepts the fact that hell be sharing his space with the animals who inhabit the area. Near the very beginning their boat overturned, cast them out, and went down the river on its own. There are no trail markers but even on the naked sandstone I can make out the passage of human feet, boot-shod, leading into the unlikely passage on the left. When they reached the junction with the Green River something went wrong; the motor failed and they drifted helplessly into the forty-mile millrace of Cataract Canyon, a place where they had not planned to go. To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure; Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov, cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L.A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood. He could not live anymore and after three days even the strongest of the doctors let him go. The red nose, the gray hair, the yellow teeth and fingers, a white stubble of whiskers on his bony jaw, his leathery flat cheeks he looked like an old horse all right but still tough and viable. It is the driest season of a dry country. Even offer to bring him supplies at regular times, and the news, and anything else he might need. Ill be back before Im fairly out of sight. In the heat and stillness nothing moves, nothing stirs. Revealing my desert thoughts to a visitor one evening, I was accused of being against civilization, against science, against humanity. Even the night has changed. Its surely after midnight but who wants to sleep? They jogged ahead, half-trotting, and the green dung streamed down their legs. He repeated the charge. This might be so; but how can we be sure unless we dare the experiment? ( Desert Solitaire, p. x) A chapter titled "The First Morning" describes Abbey's arrival at Arches at the beginning of April. Into low, into second, up to the surface of a long ledge of sandstone dotted here and there with stunted junipers and the iridescent silver-blue sage; from there in high at highest feasible velocity thirty mph through a slalom course of boulders, trees and tight curves to the bank of Courthouse Wash, where a sliver of metallic-looking water snakes from pool to pool over the gravel, quicksand and mud. Waterman follows with the vehicle in first gear, low range and four-wheel drive, creeping and lurching downward from rock to rock, in and out of the gutters, at a speed too slow to register on the speedometer. After the reconnoitering dust-devils comes the real the serious wind, the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last years scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper. Where the trail widened I jogged my horse beside Mackies and after a while, with a little prodding, extracted from him the story of the independent horse. In a dank and shady place he found a cluster of plants with large white trumpetlike flowers the color of moonlight. Teamwork and initiative. Dont actually care for ants. If you wish to see it as it should be seen, dont wait theres little time. Afterwards I put on hat and coat and go outside again, sit on the table, and watch the sky and the desert dissolve slowly into mystery under the chemistry of twilight. From the distance came the softened roar of the waterfall, that white noise as soothing as hypnosis. I paused. His career followed an irregular course; every other year the bank took his little ranch away from him and every other year Leslie managed to get it back. He backs under it. They hesitate. 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? Shakily I tamp my pipe and fumble through the pockets of my shirt. Where trails or primitive dirt roads already exist, the Industry expects it hardly needs to ask that these be developed into modern paved highways. A place to throw empty beer cans on Sunday, said Mencken.) In the sand I see the prints of deer and coyote and bobcat, also a few cattle tracks, strays perhaps, fairly fresh. Since the land belongs to the tribe no individual within the tribe is legally empowered to sell any portion of it. My own, my children, mine by right of possession, possession by right of love, by divine right, I now surrender them all to the winds of winter and the snow and the starving deer and the pinyon jays and the emptiness and the silence unbroken by even a thought. 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. In most of these places the water is so sparingly measured that it never reaches the canyon floor at all but is taken up entirely by the thirsty plant life and transformed into living tissue. From the vicinity of Balanced Rock comes the cry of the great horned owl. Through Congress the tourism industry can bring enormous pressure to bear upon such a slender reed in the executive branch as the poor old Park Service, a pressure which is also exerted on every other possible level local, state, regional and through advertising and the well-established habits of a wasteful nation. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations. We are rounding a bend in the river and I see, far ahead on the left-hand shore, something white, rigid, rectangular, out of place. Once in the shade we can rest, expand, unsquint our eyes, and see. A war of nerves. The desert storm is over and through the pure sweet pellucid air the cliff swallows and the nighthawks plunge and swerve, making cries of hunger and warning and who knows? The floor of the boat is nothing but a single layer of rubberized canvas and sags like jelly beneath my weight. Does that mean he is also a herd animal? Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) Or anything else worth a damn. The gopher snake. At noon he found water. boots, socks, a pair of old and ragged blue jeans, a flimsy T-shirt, an ancient and rotten sombrero of straw. Why the difference? We collected them all after a time and got them moving together down the wash, pushing them steadily but not fast. Today, Desert Solitaire asks if any of our incalculable natural treasures can be saved before the bulldozers strike again. Husk reeled out of the bar into the blinding sunlight, Mr. Graham following, and after some confusion led the way to the camp in Courthouse Wash. Mrs. Husk was pleased to make his acquaintance and the children also took to Mr. Graham at once except for Billy-Joe who was a very shy boy. Who cares? It is doubtful, however, that the Navajo way of life, as distinguished from Navajos, can survive. There I find the other members of the search party holding a consultation: Merle and Floyd from park headquarters, the county sheriff and one of his deputies, a relative of the missing man, and my brother Johnny who is also working for the Park Service this summer. He is gone we remain, others come. Im sinking, he said. Maya. Keeping the flame alive. Mormons, he implied, have few compunctions about separating a Gentile from his money. You may find shards of pottery. The little fire wavers, flickers, begins to die. We make tea but have no appetite for any supper but a tin of fruit each. Nor can I hear anything but the clatter of the generator. Browse the world's largest eBookstore and start reading today on the web, tablet, phone, or ereader. Turnbow Cabin itself is a well-preserved ruin (nothing decays around here) made of juniper, pinyon and cottonwood logs, no two alike in shape or size. A few of the little amphibians will continue their metamorphosis by way of the nerves and tissues of one of the higher animals, in which process the joy of one becomes the contentment of the second. We waited then, the horse and I, enduring the endless afternoon, the heartbreaking heat, and passed the time as best we could in one-sided conversation. No rapids here; only a subtle roiling of the water, ripples corresponding to the ripples on the rivers sandy bed. Supper will come. Instinctively we expect a miracle: the dam will never be completed, theyll run out of cement or slide rules, the engineers will all be shipped to Upper Volta. Investigating the wreckage we found only the broken bodies, the broken bottles, the stain and smell of Tokay, and a couple of cardboard suitcases exploded open and revealing their former owners worldly goods dirty socks, some underwear, a copy of. 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. He shuffled past them without glancing back, neither slowing nor increasing his pace. His doctors gave him six months. Where he and his brave men once lined the rapids and glided through silent canyons two thousand feet deep the motorboats now smoke and whine, scumming the water with cigarette butts, beer cans and oil, dragging the water skiers on their endless rounds, clockwise. (including. Someone tells a bad joke, and the party breaks up. He spotted my campfire burning out back of the housetrailer and invited himself over, along with his beer. Here we share our water supply and split up, Johnny hiking along the rim to the northwest and I taking the opposite way. Or Ingraham the name has been obscured by the many variants of the narrative. Abbeys last retreat, with his student friend Bob Waterman, is to a complex of dangerous canyons known as The Maze. Supposedly a blissful and sleep-inducing impression on edgy nerves. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness Mass Market Paperback - January 1, 1971 by Edward Abbey (Author) 4,185 ratings Book 1 of 7: Edward Abbey series See all formats and editions Kindle $8.54 Read with Our Free App Audiobook $0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover $35.96 Other new, used and collectible from $18.69 Paperback I have plenty of time before sundown for another hike. I happen to glance out the little window near the refrigerator and see two gopher snakes on my verandah engaged in what seems to be a kind of ritual dance. A small dark cloud no bigger than my hand. I think of the second movement from Beethovens Eroica. Desert Solitaire Summary. Now and then we are offered tantalizing views, far ahead, of the blue dome of Navajo Mountain, another laccolith, a holy place, home of gods, navel of the world in the eyes of the Indians, and the shiplike prow of the high Kaiparowits Plateau. The trailerhouse is cleaned out, locked up, water lines drained, gas disconnected, windows shut tight, power plant under canvas. Still there. Beneath the shade of boulders jammed in the middle of the streambed lay a basin of quicksand with a pool at its center. There was a bush. Thats French Spring. I see it now; the point is to stay flat. Snorting like a truck he came forward, right at me, bursting through the branches. But tomorrow well worry. I picked up my flattened hat, reformed it, put it on. As I type these words, several years after the little episode of the gray jeep and the thirsty engineers, all that was foretold has come to pass. The longer you rest the harder it is to get up and go on. Heeyah! he shouted, lez go man, Jesus Christ! The cow stumbled toward the herd, Viviano pressing it hard. His father stood up suddenly and roared. that the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society. I hit rock bottom hard, but without any physical injury. Author's Introduction 1. Throughout the afternoon the mountains are wrapped in a storm of clouds, a furious battleground. We are ready to go. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic. But what was I wearing? Should have brought tennis shoes. What I need is a braking device. I come to the North Window, a great opening fifty feet high in a wall of rock, through which I see the clouded sky and the hazy mountains and feel the funneled rush of the wind. He waited. I took it and stood it on the most solid stone in the pile, behind the two topmost stones. I stop to orient myself and to look for the best route to the top. And why not? 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. Not a chance of weaving such a wardrobe into a rope eighty feet long, or even twenty feet long. Husk requesting further information, Mr. Graham reluctantly conceded that he himself had a few such properties, including a very promising group of uranium claims along the San Rafael River. Or nearly nothing. You wouldnt know him; this happened three years ago. Roy paused. Id speak a sentence and wait about ten minutes for the next thought and speak again. It is a region more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the Himalayas, but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a years toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be equaled on the hither side of Paradise.. Poor as the land is it still attracts the avarice of certain whites in neighboring areas who can see in it the opportunity for profit if only the present occupants are removed. The lawyer said that he had been authorized by an interested party to negotiate with Mrs. Husk the purchase of her share in these properties. Watching the sky I see shooting stars, blue-green and vivid, course across the narrow band of sky between the canyon walls. Of more interest is the view to the north, east and west, revealing the general lay of the land through which we have voyaged in our little boats. The surface of the river is wide and gleaming, slick as glass; an immaculate stillness pervades the canyon, pointed up deftly now and then by a gurgling eddy near the shore, the call of a bird. I come out on the surface of a rolling plain of cross-bedded sandstone, the petrified dunes of the Navajo formation, and win the view Id been hoping for. The roads, branching out, lead to within easy walking distance of most of the principal arches, none more than two miles beyond the end of a road. eh? Now weve mentioned quicksand. A poor image. From the rear many of them look like women; many of them. Even if I burned my clothing the chances of the smoke being seen by some Hualapai Indian high on the south rim were very small; and if he did see the smoke, what then? After a lifetime of dread it is more than likely that the rabbit yields to the owl during that last moment with a sense of gratitude, as pleased to be eaten finally! In the evening the wind stops. I also happen to know that the natural bridge itself is still six miles up the canyon by foot trail, a distance regarded as semiastronomical by the standard breed of mechanized tourist. While many of the pictures may have had for their makers a religious or ceremonial significance, others look like apparitions out of bad dreams. The sun, close to the horizon, shines through the clear air beneath the cloud layers, illuminating in soft variations of rose, vermillion, umber, slate-blue, the complex features and details, defined sharply by shadow, of the Glen Canyon landscape. Halls Creek? Words say more about the people who use them than about the reality these people want to describejust like Abbeys mock-arrogant name for his summer home. Irrigation systems were then built with the cooperative labor of all, the irrigable land divided fairly among the member families, and the back country canyon and mesa left open to all who might wish to engage in cattle raising, as well as farming. He tried to move and a sickening jet of pain coursed through his shoulder. He brought with him his young and pleasant-looking (if somewhat thin and anxious) second wife, his eleven-year-old son Billy-Joe, and two little girls younger than the boy. There are times in this hot and arid place when my thirst becomes so intense I cannot seem to drink any liquid fast enough to quench it. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us if only we were worthy of it. He imagines that the mans energy has been recirculated into the bodies of buzzards who eat him. That, and a few coal mines here and there, and jobs away from the reservation, and more welfare, will enable the Navajos to carry on through the near future. The horse remained rigid, ears up. Each mans death diminishes me? Well, that shows you cant ever trust the weather., How much do you get paid for this kind of work?, Too much. More clouds emerge from empty sky, anvil-headed giants with glints of lightning in their depths. Desert Solitaire - Chapter 2 Solitaire Summary & Analysis Edward Abbey This Study Guide consists of approximately 41 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Desert Solitaire. Summer down here. His English is about fifty per cent profanity, rough but intelligible, and he can sing, play the guitar, and read your fortune in the cards, the rewards of what I would call his liberal education. Of all the featherless beasts only man, chained by his self-imposed slavery to the clock, denies the elemental fire and proceeds as best he can about his business, suffering quietly, martyr to his madness. I guess hell stay put after this. Linked to Pegasus by one star is Andromeda, the chained lady, low in the eastern sky. I thought of tearing my clothes into strips and plaiting a rope. Or the small-town atheist for that matter, with his Little Blue Books and sneering jokes against ancient and venerable institutions. There was an awful lot of loose play in the steering. On the crest of the flood as it came, above the churning debris of bushes, vines, weeds and logs, floated a delicate and rosy vapor, a fine pink mist suffused with the glow of sunlight. When he tried to lift the arm a wave of pain surged through his body. The fierce wind fans the fire and chases sparks, coals, and shreds of juniper bark over the edge of the cliff, ten feet away. At times I hear voices up the road, familiar voices I look; and no one is there. Here he met his benefactor, a man known as Charles Chuck Graham. Below these monuments and beyond them the innumerable canyons extend into the base of Elaterite Mesa (which underlies Elaterite Butte) and into the south and southeast for as far as we can see. In the lights of the truck I unlocked the housetrailer, got out bedroll and baggage and moved in. By honest effort, as opposed to the current dishonest effort with its emphasis on phoney social services which benefit no one but the professional social workers, I mean a direct confrontation with the two actual basic causes of poverty: (1) too many children and (here I reveal the secret, the elusive and mysterious key to the whole problem) (2) too little money. By society I do not mean the roar of city streets or the cultured and cultural talk of the schoolmen (reach for your revolver!) Its time to go home, oldtimer.. 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 its possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. The driest season of a dry country desert solitaire the first morning lightning in their depths it hard himself in storm! 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