It is the driest season of a dry country. I recognize that when and where they serve purposes of mine they do so for beautifully selfish reasons of their own. The same thing holds true, to an even greater degree, for the automobile. The good eye glared at me, the bad one shone like a boiled egg monocular vision. But the flood itself did not yet appear. [17], However, Abbey deliberately highlights many of the paradoxes and comments on them in his final chapter, particularly in regard to his conception of the desert landscape itself. A mile from where we stand is the mesas edge and a twelve-hundred-foot drop straight down to what is called the White Rim Bench. Planted in rocks close to the water, the sign bears a message and it is meant for us. I dont want. Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelope the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, the sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time, now matter how long, somewhere, living things will emerge and join and stand once again, this time perhaps to take a different and better course. This poison spring is quite clear. Too much money, I suggested theyll never go for it back in Washington. Within a short distance we come to another big tributary canyon on the port side or southerly shore of the river. For anyone with sense enough to get out of the rain now is the time to seek shelter. Then I thought of Newcomb and began to run. Walking up the Escalante is like penetrating a surrealist corridor in a Tamayo dream: all is curved and rounded, the course of the mainstream and canyon as indirect as a sidewinder, winding upon itself like the intestines of a giant. The horse Moon-Eye seemed safe and well-behaved but his actual feelings were revealed one day on a sightseeing tour through the Arches when all his angers came to a boil and he bucked off a middle-aged lady from Salt Lake City. The sound of nothingness? What are they doing up there in the middle of the sky at the apex of the day? Impartial and neutralist, taking no chances, I wish good fortune to both sides, good swill for all. I place both Floyd and Merle under arrest at once, urging them to stay and have supper with me. What we must do, prodding the Park Service into the forefront of the demonstration, is provide these young people with the opportunity, the assistance, and the necessary encouragement. Let our people travel light and free on their bicycles nothing on the back but a shirt, nothing tied to the bike but a slicker, in case of rain. 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. You may therefore find proof for or against His existence. We move deeper inside until we see in the dimness what looks like a white beach attached precariously to the foot of a sheer wall. 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. [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. three? There is no indication that the men who carved and painted the figures made any attempt to compose them into coherent murals; the endless variety of style, subject and scale suggests the work of many individuals from different times and places who for one reason or another came by, stopped, camped for days or weeks and left a sign of their passing on the rock. Certainly I was still by myself, so to speak there were no other people around and there still are none but in the midst of such a grand tableau it was impossible to give full and serious consideration to Albuquerque. He was a giant about seventeen hands high, with a buckskin hide as faded as an old rug and a big ugly coffin-shaped head. It is the southern end of the Waterpocket Fold, a fifty-mile-long monocline or ridge of warped sandstone, eroded along its base into triangular studs of naked rock that look, from here, like the teeth of a mowing machine. On the inside of the door someone has written a cautionary note: Attention: Watch out for rattlesnakes, coral snakes, whip snakes, vinegaroons, centipedes, millipedes, ticks, mites, black widows, cone-nosed kissing bugs, solpugids, tarantulas, horned toads, Gila monsters, red ants, fire ants, Jerusalem crickets, chinch bugs and Giant Hairy Desert Scorpions before being seated. There is no wind here, though I can see by the streamers of cloud off the peaks that it is still blowing up above. One can imagine easily the fondness, the sympathy, the genuine affection with which the owl regards the rabbit before rending it into edible portions. It has philosophy. For example, the last time I was in Kayenta I witnessed the following incident: One of the old men, one of the old Longhairs with a Mongolian mustache and tall black hat, is standing in the dust and sunlight in front of the Holiday Inn, talking with two of his wives. Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear the earth remains, slightly modified. I mean, enough lambs to keep the coyotes sleek, healthy and well fed. He looked away and into the emptiness, thinking again; the smoke from his forgotten cigarette rose slowly into the haze beneath the ceiling. What difference does it make?, He eats. Desert solitaire : a season in the wilderness / An account of the author's experiences, observations, and reflections as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah. Everything all right? I say, badge and all, ambling up to what looks like a cheerful group. A war of nerves. I looked back to see what was hunting me but there was only the naked canyon in the dim, bluish light that filtered down from far above. On the way, in an area where spruce and fir mingle with quaking aspen, in a cool shady well-watered place, I discover a blue columbine, rarest and loveliest of mountain flowers. 5. As I am returning to the campground and the truck I see a young cottontail jump from the brush, scamper across the trail and freeze under a second bush. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Stars which are unusually bold and close, with an icy glitter in their light glints of blue, emerald, gold. And advertise, for godsake, advertise! Hastily I assemble a couple of sandwiches: lettuce, leftover bacon from breakfast, sliced ham, peanut butter, salami, longhorn cheese, cashews, raisins, horseradish, anything else that will fit comfortably between two slices of bread and take the dewy-cold pitcher of juice and hasten outside and through the storm of sunlight over the baking sandstone of the 33,000-acre terrace to the shade and relative coolness of the ramada. Descend to the alkali flats of Salt Valley and you find an entirely different grouping: shadscale, four-winged saltbush, greasewood, spiny horsebrush, asters, milk vetch, budsage, galletagrass. I am thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our lives the domestic routine (same old wife every night), the stupid and useless degrading jobs, the insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the business men, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back in the capital, the foul diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and TV machines and telephone![27]. From the bar they moved to a table in the corner where Mr. Graham produced a large tectonic map and explained to Husk as well as he could (for Husk had only the dimmest notions of geology) what the prospects were for making fresh uranium discoveries in the Colorado Plateau. We were in the mouth of the canyon. Flies drifted in and out and a white butterfly with wilted wings rested on the dust of the doorstep. 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. Ralph starts supper. Here is Powells description of the place: On entering we find a little grove of box-elder and cottonwood trees, and turning to the right, we find ourselves in a vast chamber carved out of rock. My favorite juniper stands before me glittering shaggily in the sunrise, ragged roots clutching at the rock on which it feeds, rough dark boughs bedecked with a rash, with a shower of turquoise-colored berries. Equipped with powerful scintillometers, they cruised in airplanes back and forth above the Colorado Plateau, mapping the hot spots. A new ranger, Bob Ferris, offers to drive me up to the town of Thompson where I can catch a Western & Rio Grande night train to Denver. (2) No more new roads in national parks. I push the boats off and roll in; we paddle away as hard as we can from the fiery shore, the final wild flare of heat. The racing creek as it soared free over the edge created a continuous turbulence in the air sufficient to keep away all flying insects. And how could they hope to find this treasure which has no name and has never been seen? My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class., Requesting a new guide requires a free LitCharts account. There I lived, mostly alone except for the ghosts, for the next thirty-five days. For godsake let them go in peace, I tell myself. We need more predators. The explicitly representational often comes side by side with the highly abstract. All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. Instant downloads of all 1715 LitChart PDFs The unknown birds continue to creak and chirrup. What the ornithologist terms l.g.b.s little gray birds they flit about from point to point on noiseless wings, their origins obscure. Over a late campfire, kept going now for heat as well as liturgical requirements, I see new constellations dominating the sky. that the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society. The game. Yeah, Floyd says, give us a report at the end of the summer.. The dry sand, scattered with pebbles, seemed alive. Viviano and Roy joined me, unhurried, lay down in the shade nearby and lit up cigarettes. When his wife went out to look for him he was on the ground on top of a bushel basket and he was dead. Mr. Graham shot him a third time, in the back. I am content, however, to view the remains from below. But I can tell you where it was. Nevertheless I will feel their presence watching over me like totemic deities, keeping the rattlesnakes far back in the brush where I like them best, cropping off the surplus mouse population, maintaining useful connections with the primeval. You cant see the desert if you cant smell it. Through the ceiling and on through the rock for a thousand feet above, there is a narrow, winding skylight; and this is all carved out by a little stream which runs only during the few showers that fall now and then in this arid country.. Finally, in this discussion of water in the desert, I should make note of a distinctive human contribution, one which has become a part of the Southwestern landscape no less typical than the giant cactus, the juniper growing out of solid rock or the red walls of a Navajo canyon. (Where are you now, J. Soderlund? The pinnacles, arches, balanced rocks, fins and elephant-backs of sandstone, glazed with water but still in sunlight, gleam like old gray silver and everything appears transfixed in the strange wild unholy light of the moment. In fact he was already pretty well dug in. Hed shrug his shoulders, sigh, and take another pull from his Tokay bottle. If you want to search for multiple variations of a word, you can substitute a special symbol He was born and raised on a small ranch in New Mexico, went to the University of Virginia, and has made his living as a cattle rancher, dude rancher, CCC supervisor (during the Great Depression) and, since 1940, as a ranger in the National Park Service. The horse made no move. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. Im sure theyre as delighted by the return of the sun as I am and I wish I knew the language. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (1988, Hardcover, Reprint,Anniversary) at the best online prices at eBay! The fire is dying, the sparks scattering over the sand and stone there is nothing to do but go. Put them to work. At the main entrance to each national park and national monument we shall erect a billboard one hundred feet high, two hundred feet wide, gorgeously filigreed in brilliant neon and outlined with blinker lights, exploding stars, flashing prayer wheels and great Byzantine phallic symbols that gush like geysers every thirty seconds. The heart-shaped prints of deer led in and out. It seems to bulge a little, to expand for a moment, and then it drops abruptly over the edge. Seven more miles rough as a cob around the crumbling base of Elaterite Butte, some hesitation and backtracking among alternate jeep trails, all of them dead ends, and we finally come out near sundown on the brink of things, nothing beyond but nothingness a veil, blue with remoteness and below the edge the northerly portion of The Maze. The clouds melt away, the thunder fades and the sun breaks through again, blazing with redoubled intensity upon sand and rock and scattered, introverted shrub and tree. 7000 feet up now; we put on jackets and hoods as a fine sleet drives down from the sky and turns the dust into mud. It is a strange fact that in the canyon country the closer you get to the river which is the living artery of the entire area, the drier, more barren, less habitable the land becomes. Although it initially garnered little attention, Desert Solitaire was eventually recognized as an iconic work of nature writing and a staple of early environmentalist writing, bringing Abbey critical acclaim and popularity as a writer of environmental, political, and philosophical issues. And the basic rocks basalt, granite, gneiss, limestone, sandstone, marble, slate, gabbro, shale. Theres something in the prospect southwest from Barstow which makes one hesitate. The royalties from the sale of oil, uranium, coal and natural gas, while hardly enough to relieve the Indians general poverty, have enabled them to develop a tribal timber business, to provide a few college scholarships for the brainiest (not necessarily the best) of their young people, to build community centers and finance an annual tribal fair (a source of much enjoyment to The People), and to drill a useful number of water wells for the benefit of the old sheep and goat raising families still hanging on in the backlands. The birds, returning from wherever they go in winter, seem inclined to agree. My job began on the first of April and ended on the last day of September. Around us the Green River Desert rolls away to the north, south and east, an absolutely treeless plain, not even a juniper in sight, nothing but sand, blackbrush, prickly pear, a few sunflowers. Well theyre no chickens here, I said. Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. maybe of exultation. There is also the abyss. Rude and sensitive. Both Abbey and this book are all of these and more. Long ago the cliff dwellings were abandoned. Finally he was discovered ten days after the search began near an abandoned miners shack below Dead Horse Point. As we went on I looked back and saw the holes the cow had made fill up and brim over with water, like suppurating sores. This is a courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the weight of all modern history behind it. Moon-Eye is very shy. No rapids here; only a subtle roiling of the water, ripples corresponding to the ripples on the rivers sandy bed. Most readers, while generally sympathetic to this latter point of view, will feel, as do the administrators of the National Park Service, that although wilderness is a fine thing, certain compromises and adjustments are necessary in order to meet the ever-expanding demand for outdoor recreation. Loop drives are extremely popular with the petroleum industry they bring the motorist right back to the same gas station from which he started. 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