Posted by Carlos on June 05, 1998 at 10:36:54:
I just finished reading Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey, written in 1968. The book was recommended in a book of essays that I recently read called Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, by David Quammran.
Desert Solitaire was superb. It has been compared to Walden, but it is Walden with an edge, Walden with attitude. Most of the book chronicles Abbey's summer as a park ranger in the Arches National Monument area of southern Utah. There is also an account of a raft trip he took down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon before the dam was built, creating Lake Powell.
Abbey was an environmentalist, but not one of the "save the snail darter" variety. Perhaps environmentalist is the wrong word - he was an atavism, a true frontier man, an anarchist. He is sometimes infuriating, always entertaining. Because he was in Utah, he does have some interesting Mormon anecdotes and observations, but they are peripheral to the story.
Here is a quote from the book to give you a flavor of his writing:
"Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear - the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break. Turning Plato and Hegel on their heads, I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun."
"Under the desert sun, in that dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any human qualification. Therefore, sublime."
It is not often I find a book I've never heard of that I come to consider a classic. This is one - read it.
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