How much later? This would be good country, a tourist says to me, if only you had some water., If we had water here, I reply, this country would not be what it is. If you wish to see it as it should be seen, dont wait theres little time. After Delicate Arch the others are anticlimactic but I go on to inspect them, as Im paid to do. Check my hands: not a trace of blood. Cold as a tomb, a jail, a cave; I lie down on the dusty floor, on the cold linoleum sprinkled with mouse turds, and light the pilot on the butane heater. And no shoes, living out here in the middle of nothing, it must be a, Old Moon-Eye is what you might call an independent horse. I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time. I can see the switchbacks of the trail, the fan of greenery at the outlet of the side canyon, but no sign of Newcomb or the boats, deep in the shade of the willows. Surely it is no accident that the most thorough of tyrannies appeared in Europes most thoroughly scientific and industrialized nation. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre. PARK YOUR CAR, JEEP, TRUCK, TANK, MOTORBIKE, MOTORBOAT, JETBOAT, AIRBOAT, SUBMARINE, AIRPLANE, JETPLANE, HELICOPTER, HOVERCRAFT, WINGED MOTORCYCLE, SNOWMOBILE, ROCKETSHIP, OR ANY OTHER CONCEIVABLE TYPE OF MOTORIZED VEHICLE IN THE WORLDS BIGGEST PARKINGLOT BEHIND THE COMFORT STATION IMMEDIATELY TO YOUR REAR. He loaded a clip and slipped it into the pistol, drew the slide back and pushed it forward, placing a round in the firing chamber. I am also eager for a drink of water; the keen chill air of the upper world whets my thirst and Im carrying no water in my pack. When the A.E.C.s ten-year guarantee ran out most of the independents went out with it out of business. I swim across it, following a turn in the narrow canyon, here no more than ten feet wide, and emerge beyond into a curving tunnel of rock with running water on its floor. Desert Solitaire is a nonfiction book by Edward Abbey.The author appreciates the wilderness in the US and discusses the adverse impacts of technology and development on the natural habitat. What the ornithologist terms l.g.b.s little gray birds they flit about from point to point on noiseless wings, their origins obscure. Moon-Eye was still around. Nothing is lost, except an individual consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even illusory phenomenon. Too dull-witted to get out of the way, they trot along in front of the truck for a quarter of a mile before I can pass them. The desert waits outside, desolate and still and strange, unfamiliar and often grotesque in its forms and colors, inhabited by rare, furtive creatures of incredible hardiness and cunning, sparingly colonized by weird mutants from the plant kingdom, most of them as spiny, thorny, stunted and twisted as they are tenacious. A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time. How they could have made such a discovery without poisoning themselves to death nobody knows; but then nobody knows how so-called primitive man made his many other discoveries. The horses shuffled slowly through the dead leaves, ripping up the grass with their powerful, hungry jaws a solid and pleasing sound. Streambeds are usually dry. Well he had to sell out a couple years after you left. In my book a pioneer is a man who comes to virgin country, traps off all the fur, kills off all the wild meat, cuts down all the trees, grazes off all the grass, plows the roots up and strings ten million miles of wire. He wants to stand and fight, but I am patient; I insist on herding him well away from the trailer. One of these days that rock is going to fall in ten, fifty, or five hundred years. The grooves are well worn, smooth as a pebble to the touch. After the droning mechanical grind of the long pull up the mountain the silence of the forest seems startling, deafening, most welcome. No matter, its of slight importance. The ravens mock us as we float by. The air is hot, clear, dry and our canteens nearly empty; weve taken three hours in the descent. Not all is rock: we see a redtailed hawk skimming along the cliff, once a golden eagle, and vultures soar in the distance. Throughout the book, Abbey describes his vivid and moving encounters with nature in her various forms: animals, storms, trees, rock formations, cliffs and mountains.He communicates an uncommon reverence for nature, and an unmistakable disdain for tame . Rejoicing in my innocence and power I stride down the trail beneath the elephantine forms of melting sandstone, past the stark shadows of Double Arch. In this awful place He watched me and listened. We went on for another mile and emerged abruptly and to me unexpectedly into full day again, the glare of the sun and the scalding heat. The ancient canyon art of Utah belongs in that same international museum without walls which makes African sculpture, Melanesian masks, and the junkyards of New Jersey equally interesting those voices of silence which speak to us in the first world language. His nervous, timorous prey, terribly insecure, hear that cry and tremble. Depending on your preconceptions you may see the eroded remnant of a sandstone fin, a giant engagement ring cemented in rock, a bow-legged pair of petrified cowboy chaps, a triumphal arch for a procession of angels, an illogical geologic freak, a happening a something that happened and will never happen quite that way again, a frame more significant than its picture, a simple monolith eaten away by weather and time and soon to disintegrate into a chaos of falling rock (not surprisingly there have been some, even in the Park Service, who advocate spraying Delicate Arch with a fixative of some sort Elmers Glue perhaps or Lady Clairol Spray-Net). I rest for a while in the shade, dream and sleep through the worst of the midday glare. To Abbey, the desert represents both the end to one life and the beginning of another: The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our staying or our going. Without a bridge. I wash my face in the icy stream, shocking myself wide awake. But since I stopped abruptly and froze, she isnt sure that I am dangerous. ), 4. One afternoon in June I squatted there for an hour two hours? There is in fact no illusion of the sort called mirage, only the faint deception of motion where nothing is actually moving but the overheated air. I listen closely for the call of an owl, a dove, a nighthawk, but can hear only the crackle of my fire, a breath of wind. Unless a way is found to stabilize the nations population, the parks cannot be saved. Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur Tears of the Desert (One World/Ballantine, ISBN 0345506251) is the first memoir by a woman telling the true story of the horrors in Darfur. In the evening the wind stops. Wildcard Searching I set a light grill over the flames and on the grill roll out a big thin tough beefsteak, which happens to be the kind of beefsteak I prefer. A smell of burning coffee on the wind. In the bark of the nearest aspen, deeply inscribed, are the initials C.E.M., without a date. Gusts of sand swirl before me, stinging my face. These notes remained unpublished for almost a decade while Abbey pursued other jobs and attempted with only moderate success to pursue other writing projects, including three novels which proved to be commercial and critical failures. Bad Bunny fever has reached Coachella, and there's no going back. At a point where rocks come very near the surface, the water forms a chute above, strikes, and is shot up 10 or 15 feet, and piles back in gentle curves, as in a fountain; and on the river tumbles and roars. If not him, his twin brother. The fire is dying, the sparks scattering over the sand and stone there is nothing to do but go. Far off, the muted kettledrums of thunder. Even the tourists that creep in and creep out in their lumbering, dust-covered automobiles reveal a certain weariness with desert travel, a certain longing to be elsewhere, to be where its high, cool, breezy, fresh mountain or seashore. Who else? Absorbed in these thoughts, wind in my eyes, I round a corner of the cliff and theres a doe and her fawn not ten yards away, browsing on the cliffrose. Not showing off, for Id seen his exhibitions of recklessness at other times, but simply out of high spirits, for the fun and the hell of it. Face down or face up? Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless. After lunch we get into the cab of the government pickup, all three of us, and tour the park. Impartial and neutralist, taking no chances, I wish good fortune to both sides, good swill for all. But taking my meal outside by the burning juniper in the fireplace with more desert and mountains than I could explore in a lifetime open to view, I was invited to contemplate a far larger world, one which extends into a past and into a future without any limits known to the human kind. [1] It is written as a series of vignettes about Abbey's experiences in the Colorado Plateau region of the desert Southwestern United States, ranging from vivid descriptions of the fauna, flora, geology, and human inhabitants of the area, to firsthand accounts of wilderness exploration and river running, to a polemic against development and excessive tourism in the national parks, to stories of the author's work with a search and rescue team to pull a human corpse out of the desert. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts. he asks. It signifies water, and not only water but also shade, in a country where shelter from the sun is sometimes almost as precious as water. Glimpses of weird humps of pale rock on either side, like petrified elephants, dinosaurs, stone-age hobgoblins. Evening now, a later day. The crudity of the construction followed from the scarcity of wood, not lack of skill. Hesitating, I realize that the cause of the high water is not what Id been half-consciously fearing all along, a flash flood from the world above us, but simply a strong wind blowing waves into the canyon from the river. Alone-ness became loneliness and the sensation was strong enough to remind me (how could I have forgotten?) When he looked up again the meteor had crossed about two-thirds of the interval between canyon walls and was still advancing. A grim business, returning to civilization. How can you exploit a man who enjoys his work? Contents Desert Solitaire is a collection of treatises and autobiographical excerpts describing Abbey's experiences as a park ranger and wilderness enthusiast in 1956 and 1957. Its snowy and beautiful at the summit, and he admires the birdsong, the aspen trees, and the landscape far below, which he jokingly renames from his perch, drawing attention to the possessive and arbitrary nature of language. Standing by the inert and helpless engine, I hear its last vibrations die like ripples on a pool somewhere far out on the tranquil sea of desert, somewhere beyond Delicate Arch, beyond the Yellow Cat badlands, beyond the shadow line. What. When Abbey is lounging in his chair in 110-degree heat at Arches and observes that the mountains are snow-capped and crystal clear, it shows what nature provides: one extreme is able to counter another. That stumped me. The Indians never came down to my part of the canyon except when guiding occasional tourists to the falls or hunting a stray horse. My belly is full of water, gurgling like a wineskin, but I can almost feel it being drawn away; the knowledge that Ive brought no canteen along adds poignancy to my premature thirst. But during the flight over the canyons he had shown Husk not only his own properties but also several small uranium mines in the vicinity actually in operation: yes, Husk could see for himself the test holes, the adits and tailings, the winding jeep roads along the verge of dizzy ledges. Embittered little bastards. Among these people a liberal hospitality is taken for granted and selfishness regarded with horror. Here are the buttercups, alpine or subalpine, with their hairy sepals, divided leaves, shiny yellow petals: hold one close to your nose, the old wives say, and if your nose reflects the yellow you are a butter-lover. Where the draft board waits for him, Robert Waterman. A few flies are already circling above the dark shape on the stretcher. He sees lavender clouds, (4) the dark gorge of the Colorado River, (5) the Moab Valley between thousand-foot walls of rock, (5) the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, (5) as well as the Arches themselves, which he describes as holes in the rock, windows in stone, no two alike, as varied in form as in dimension [] formed through hundreds of thousands of years by the weathering of the huge sandstone walls (6). Again. Im sinking, he said. The romantic view, while not the whole of truth, is a necessary part of the whole truth. Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" is a memoir of his experiences as a park ranger in Utah. Among the visitors on this last big weekend are many Moabites and other native Utahns: the Mormons, the Latter-Day Saints. My hands tingle, burning with cold. All over the slickrock country there are natural cisterns or potholes, tubs, tanks and basins sculptured in the soft sandstone by the erosive force of weathering, wind and sand. I prefer not to kill animals. The lawyer said that he had been authorized to offer Mrs. Husk $4500 twice what her late husband had paid for them. On this bedrock of animal faith I take my stand, close by the old road that leads eventually out of the valley of paradox. The little cups on the wind gauge are barely turning, but this breath of air, such as it is, comes from the southwest. This must be it, the way to Rainbow Bridge; it appears that we may have come too late. 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.. The horse stood motionless as a rock. The sun beat down on our backs and the sweat trickled into our eyes. Then they came again, louder and as it seemed from all sides, out of the rock itself, surrounding me. This flower is indeed irresistibly attractive to insects; I have yet to look into one and not find a honeybee or bumblebee wallowing drunkenly inside, powdered with pollen, glutting itself on what must be a marvelous nectar. filling my canteen. The song is so laconic and melancholic that it very nearly takes all the joy out of my smoke. Idle speculations, feeble and hopeless protest. Looking down at the graceful curve of the thousand-foot snowfield it seems to me that the descent should not require more than five minutes. Stars appear one by one, forming incomplete constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius and the Big Dipper. In the blend of sunset and twilight they saw the flickering lights before they saw the machine itself coming like a bright metallic dragonfly out of the east and circling once, twice above them before landing. Or if these fail some unknown hero with a rucksack full of dynamite strapped to his back will descend into the bowels of the dam; there he will hide his high explosives where theyll do the most good, attach blasting caps to the lot and with angelic ingenuity link the caps to the official dam wiring system in such a way that when the time comes for the grand opening ceremony, when the President and the Secretary of the Interior and the governors of the Four-Corner states are all in full regalia assembled, the button which the President pushes will ignite the loveliest explosion ever seen by man, reducing the great dam to a heap of rubble in the path of the river. Bouillon cubes and raisins are good enough for me, so long as they are seasoned with plenty of sun and storm and adventure, but Newcomb, somewhat of a gourmet, has different ideas. 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