I’m willing to bet that a good portion of you reading this developed a deeper passion for the outdoors, deeper than simply liking to be outside, because you read Desert Solitaire when you were young. Or maybe you became an environmental activist after The Monkey Wrench Gang. Do you, like me, feel drawn to the “A” section of the dwindling amount of used bookstores in mountain towns, your fingers tracing the cracked spines of Abbey’s books, wondering what adventures those bundles of paper have been on, the sights they’ve taken in?
I remember reading Down the River, cover to cover in one day, at Leon’s Books, in downtown San Luis Obispo, California, a long-gone used bookstore, a squat blue and grey building that smelled exactly as it should, of dust and yellowed, rotting paper, and ancient oak shelves. A high school friend had suggested Abbey one afternoon while we wrenched on his old ’72 Bronco, drinking Rainiers pilfered from his dad’s workshop fridge. Weeks later I found myself wandering the aisles at Leon’s, saw a few tattered copies of Abbey’s books, pulled Down the River from their number, and sat on the ground, back pressed against a cold brick wall, and opened the book. Didn’t close it until I was finished much later that day. Paid for the book, stuffed it into my back pocket, and walked into the dusk, a different man.
When Abbey wrote of taking a small boat, shoving off into the Green River with a few cans of beans, tins of beer, and bacon wrapped in newspaper, you felt the same delirious anticipation he did; who knew what was around the bend?
Abbey’s legacy today is mixed, as tattered as my copy of Down the River (I lost it, years later, on a backpacking trip in the High Sierra. It worked its way out of my backpack’s side pocket and tumbled free, somewhere near the Rae Lakes up from Kings Canyon. I think Abbey would have liked that). He was cantankerous, a hypocrite, probably racist, a bit misogynist. He was also writing 50 years ago, a voice from an entirely different social moment. I wouldn’t want to live like Abbey, often alone, way, way out there, pleasantly pickled on beer and salt pork. I wouldn’t necessarily want his dour worldview either.
I am envious, though, of his ability to capture the West. To somehow use words to render the West’s impossible openness, its spirit, its possibilities. When Abbey wrote of taking a small boat, shoving off into the Green River with a few cans of beans, tins of beer, and bacon wrapped in newspaper, you felt the same delirious anticipation he did; who knew what was around the bend? Where did this canyon he was hiking without enough water, and certainly no map, lead? Didn’t matter, really. What would come, would come, and it would be beautiful, even if it was death.
The man had his faults. We all do. He also had a rare gift. Did one influence the other? Impossible to say. I never knew the man. I knew only the curated, edited thoughts he left behind.
But for me, and countless others, those thoughts molded my own. I hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the impossibly old, weathered volcanic nubs and hills of California’s Central Coast that ringed my hometown until the day I walked out of Leon’s books, my mind swirling with Abbey. I remember looking east, toward the 2,000-foot Cuesta Ridge, that divides placid, flat San Luis Obispo from Los Padres National Forest, and wondering: What the hell is over that ridge? Adventure, that’s what.
What would come, would come, and it would be beautiful, even if it was death.
On a hike on Cuesta Ridge a handful of years later, now deeply familiar with that ridge and the pine forests that stretched beyond—a mostly unseen bit of the state that begins to separate California into two halves just inland from where the coast bends eastward at Point Conception, still a wild-ish place, free from development—the unthinkable: I startled a black bear. There weren’t meant to be bears there anymore; we’d killed them all to make room for the mission and the malls. The bear and I looked at each other, and I left that place. Not physically, but spiritually, and I was no longer in San Luis Obispo, my downtown apartment a few miles away, but I was in the bear’s place. A wild, rugged land, capable of supporting this apex predator and, well, who the hell knows what else? The bear shuffled on, and I kept walking, the trail now a mystery, and anything could have appeared around the next bend.
That’s not a metaphor for anything, Abbey isn’t the bear in this story, but my own backyard became infinitely stranger after I read Abbey. Both literally in the case of bear encounters, and philosophically, as I came to see it as a dwindling piece of the West Abbey loved so much.
For me, that’s Abbey’s legacy. He made my life wilder.
Today would be his birthday. In honor of old Ed, check out our list of some of his best quotes. Here are a few to end on:
“In the first place you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.”
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”
“I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that’s patriotism.”
“How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.”
“There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.”
When’s the last time you read yourself some Abbey? Get him here:
Desert Solitaire
The Monkeywrench Gang
Fire on the Mountain
Hayduke Lives!
The Best of Edward Abbey
Top photo: Terrence Moore
You need something to read? We have something to read!
Adventure Journal’s print stories are only available in print. They are deeper, longer, and more nuanced than what you find online. Find out why 99% of subscribers renew every single year.
Order a subscription and current issue you today and most U.S. address will have their copy in three days. West Coast addresses it’s 1-2 days.
Justin, that was a nice read. You captured my own sentiments about Abbey with this article. Over the past few years I have read about his racism and misogyny. Sometimes it is really hard to learn that a hero is a flawed person, though with Ed I suppose it wasn’t much of a surprise.
I first read “The Monkeywrench Gang” during a winter in Utah, working at a ski area. It was my first year out West and when I read those slickrock car chase scenes and about the grizzled, idealistic characters, I knew that this was it for me. I live in Colorado now and still bring my copy of “Desert Solitaire” anytime I make the long weekend trip to the red rocks of Utah. Today I’ll be listening to “The Ballad of Edward Abbey” by Tom Russell a couple times.
I choose not to look too hard at Ed’s flaws, and that’s my own decision. I don’t think it makes me a bad person to do that, just as my opinion doesn’t make him a good person. I guess it’s a coping mechanism.
Maybe instead of typing all of this I should have responded as he would have… “No Comment”
Thanks, Will. I know the feeling.
Like all human beings, flawed. His redeeming qualities go a long way to balance the scales. Were is Hayduke when we need him!
In part, Ed had it right: no TV. I’ve never owned a TV. I grew up with one, but haven’t owned one in 55 years as an adult. I’ve no cel phone to distract me.
The (more-recent) bad news is – I’ve become consumed by my computer.
Ha! Same here without a phone, but typing now on a computer. I think of Abbey when traveling and hiking with no cell phone and only paper maps.
Long Live Abbey!!
“I am envious, though, of his ability to capture the West.”
It took me years to understand and finally embrace that exact sentiment. It was easy for me to make Abbey a hero. As I age, I see a fallacy in elevating people to hero status, as we are all inherently flawed. And as society’s accepted norms evolve with time, our icons lose their luster.
Abbey articulated the magic of wild lands better than any other writer I have read. I hope his enduring legacy is not as an individual, but rather his ability, through his writing, to inspire people to protect these lands that are so important.
This is a nice article and tribute. I’ve always loved Abbey’s quote about “getting out of the car.” So true.
This might be one of my favorite articles you’ve written Justin, fucking fantastic.
Thanks so much
Nice piece, Justin. Abbey was/is an inspiration to many. Don’t forget The Fool’s Progress, his self-proclaimed “fat masterpiece.” One of the best gifts I ever received was an autographed first edition, which now sits proudly on my bookshelf.
As for his flaws, I believe he recognized them in himself.
As James Bishop wrote of him in Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist:
“In many of Abbey’s obituary notices, he was labeled as a cantankerous, misanthropic curmudgeon with many enemies. Abbey would have appreciated that, for his definition of a curmudgeon was anyone who hates hypocrisy, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism–anyone who has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts, who takes the trouble to string those facts on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric truth, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, he said, `it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.'”
Good piece
Photo credit
Terrence Moore
Thx.
Thank you Terrence, that came from an older piece of ours and with the reformatting, the original photo credit was lost. One of my favorite photos of the man.
In high school my friend gave me a dogeared copy of Black Sun to read and I enjoyed the book at the time. Then twenty plus years later I was volunteering with the local Search and Rescue and we had to check a fire watch tower. While there my brain would not shake the story of Black Sun but I did not know the name of the book or author and it chewed on subconscious so thickly I logged into Facebook to reach my friend to ask the name of the book. Within 24 hours I had the answer and two weeks later I had consumed three of his books. Thank you Adventure Journal for reminding about this man. Here is a beer to the Desert Rat
Great article!
As a longtime fan of Ed Abbey I of course remember both today’s date ( actually his 94th birthday ) and March 14th, the day he died. I first read Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, in 1979. After a few years of reading alarming and depressing environmental books it felt wonderful to get the environmental angle from a voice like Ed’s. He was definitely concerned about the state of the world, but he was also – funny! And outraged. And he was one of us. He was NOT a biologist or a Sierra Club spokesman or anything else, just a man ( yes ) and a fully-alive one at that. He was Zorba the Nature Lover. He unabashedly loved women and beer and more than anything freedom.
I was fortunate to meet him on two different occasions, in 1980 and 1988. In 1980 he came to my college campus ( U of Oregon ) and since I was a staff writer at our newspaper I got to interview him. In 1988 I attended a reading on his final book tour, in Seattle.
If you ever read his “Postcards From Ed” I have one of those famous postcards myself, something I have cherished.
Cheers!
He’d have been 94 years old today.
George Washington Heyduke will always be my hero
Today, I was cleaning off a bookshelf and came across my old tattered copy of Desert Solitaire and I threw it away. Didn’t know it was his birthday or that I’d be reading this article. I’m headed to the trash bin now. Please forgive me for I have sinned.
Beautiful essay Justin, as a longtime EA admirer, and as a resident of Los Osos-
Barely a handful of books changed my life, and Desert Solitaire was one of them. Not that long ago, the book-pack-rat left my mind, and over 1,000 tomes went to other homes. All of Cactus Ed’s stayed, now living on their own shelf, near fewer than 100 fellow travelers. And I’d dump half of those if I though too much about it.
Every few years I dust off Ed’s books, and once again I’m enthralled and disgusted by a man who didn’t hide his flaws. A rare commodity in our preening-for-social-media world. Somehow I learned long ago to separate the good from the bad in everyone, and appreciate the good where I can. Not a popular approach right now.
I’ve been devouring Abbey’s books for about 50 years. Hope that 50 years from now they haven’t all been purged in some bout of misguided censorship. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
And I finally live in a house where I could piss from the front porch, and no one would care. Except my wife. So I don’t. At least when she’s looking.
Thanks.
Well written piece, thanks Justin. I have always subscribed to the idea of separating the art from the artist. Abbey’s stated human flaws leave no mark on the enduring works he left behind. They stand alone with the same power and influence as if written by an anonymous (and highly talented) author.
Abbey gave far more than he took.
Nice piece Justin. Abbey the writer, the human & the giant enigma. In my youth Abbey read at our university after Desert Solitaire came out. That was in an early spring. Early summer a friend & I drove to Kalispell Montana (intending to hike in Glacier); we parked, drove to a store & there was Abbey. He said he had come down from his fire lookout post to get groceries & take a short break. We told him we’d seen him a few months earlier, bought his book & he smiled. That was the last time I ever saw him. During Abbey’s time in Glacier is when he met Doug Peacock, also doing fire lookout (author of many books & model for Haduke in MWG). Back then Peacock shot video of grizzly & later wrote the iconic piece “Grizzly Years”. I’ve met Peacock a handful of times at book readings, & run into him in Montana where he resides. Ken Sleight (Seldom Seen Smith in MWG) originally was from N Utah, then off to Green River (UT) & then to the Pack Creek Ranch (S of Moab). I sat one eve at the Pack Creek Ranch, ate with he & his wife & heard him spin stories as to how Abbey “pecked” (on a type writer) his last book, at a cabin on the ranch. Sleight had many “lives” and stories that spanned generations, as did Peacock who lived back east, was in the War & then “escaped” to the wilds of the West (Montana & other spots). Both Peacock & Sleight are “complicated & diverse humans’ with authentic & strong personalities. Easy to see how Abbey cast them in his MWG “play” (book) & made them (especially Hayduke) larger than life (Peacock use to have a big barrel chest). Those that pass on never get to see or experience the next & the next generation after their passing. I often think of pulling Abbey back & plugging him on “high perch” watching as the Moab Jeep Safari “unloads” for about 8 days, & then after that a swarm of UTV unload “in city” & then in the hills (BLM land where the 4×4 were). Then to the slickrock area for mountain bikers, back to the river for the boat people & then up the canyon to see the climbers & cliff jumpers. (Abbey had more of an affinity with the quiet cattle people in the area than he did with many others), when he was briefly a ranger in Arches, long ago when the W entrance was still the main gathering. And I’ll finish, the environmental & natural history/outdoor writers (groups) had a wake for Abbey up on the W slickrock bench (where years ago I use to camp) & thousands showed up & I watched & listened & said good bye to Ed. I suppose most or all of you know Ed was an imperfect human, husband, father & friend. I’ve read much about him & have spoken with a handful that have spent time with him. A complicated, gifted but troubled human, having trouble “living under” his own skin. (I heard that line from two people). Regardless, lets honor the guy, to high heaven, & wherever he abides, (his bones are in S AZ) the angel’s that have read his works, dance in delight.