I discovered Edward Abbey (now deceased, and supposedly buried in a remote area of the Cabeza Prieta Nat'l Wildlife Refuge, in far southwestern AZ) through an article in BACKPACKER magazine. Mr. Abbey was a "desert rat" and hailed as the Thoreau of the American Southwest, where he lived, although he apparently made a practice of throwing his empty beer cans out the car window during regular drives along AZ's Interstate 10. He argued that the landscape was already decimated by the building of the road itself. . .
DESERT SOLITAIRE was the first book I read by Abbey, and it was his first book published, in 1968. ("Everything's free today!". . . ) * Abbey had accepted a job as a temporary ranger at Arches Nat'l Monument some years earlier and this little book describes his life and work there. It was the transition point for Arches, just before it's inclusion into the National Park system, just before new, maintained roads and trails would be built. In DESERT SOLITAIRE, we get an intimate glimpse at a rough and raw place that we now know as sacred to us, and, therefore, controlled and sterile.
BEYOND THE WALL is a collection of his essays published in various journals throughout his career. One of the most striking pieces depicts his hiking/rafting adventures in Glen Canyon before it was dammed. Abbey says he wrote the piece to commemorate those remote, sacred places forever hidden to us now because they're under water. But it also his plea for leaving natural places alone, and not make them into "National Parking Lots".
Most of the essays are about the Southwest, except one, about a foray with several other strangers into a remote area of Alaska, reachable only by plane or helicopter. Apparently, Abbey always wanted to see a grizzly bear in the wild, but never did. He refers to it as "the alleged grizzly." This was the essay that was reprinted in BACKPACKER, and I think this piece, more than the others, reveals how Abbey is his own man, with his own unique and personal opinions, that were often at odds with other "environmentalists".
Of the two, I enjoyed DESERT SOLITAIRE more, but I really cannot say why. DESERT SOLITAIRE almost reads like an epic poem, although his journey is over time, in the same place. He shows the place - Arches National Monument - from many different angles - personal, historical, geological, botanical . .
Abbey's writing style, in general, is quiet, but tense, and rambling. I think both books would appeal to pink 'n green types, as well as libertarians tainted in either color.
This describes Abbey's work more eloquently than I have done here.
*quote from a Godard film, (I think, TOUT VA BIEN is the title, but I'm not sure.) Anyway, in the film, it's post -May 1968 and a group of students storm a supermarket and declare "Everything's free today!"
