I recently borrowed a stack of books from a good friend who teaches environmental science at a local university. I forget sometimes that there are entire genres of books that I never touch, and environmental nonfiction is one of them. Actually, "never" isn't the right word, as one of the first English classes I took in college was Literature of the American Environment. I was a freshman amidst a small group of senior English majors, I was terrified, and I loved the class. I wrote a lot that semester, but my culminating assignment was (what I remember to be) a cool paper on the American West in Thelma and Louise. But that class was almost twenty years ago, so I've plenty of additional reading to do.
Desert Solitaire has a lot in common with Wendell Berry's essays (I wasn't surprised to learn later that they were friends), even though Abbey's focused on the wilderness and Berry with responsible farming. Still, both men are deeply concerned with man's relationship with the land, and in particular, the way capitalism demands destruction of and separation from the land. The Berry essays I read last fall were far more didactic overall than Abbey's, though the latter in no way buries or obscures his point of view and his scathing indictment of wilderness development. There's something unnerving about reading about his concerns with development in the National Parks (Arches specifically, where he spends two summers) in a book published in 1968. Fifty years later, and we're in even worse shape with our National Parks. The most popular sections are overrun with tourists (I'm not exempt, I've certainly been one) and are under constant danger because of it. By seeking to "appreciate" nature by visiting it, we're also destroying it.
Berry and Abbey also share a similar tone--that of grumpy curmudgeon. I found myself of two minds with the tone. On the on hand, Abbey's frustrations with naïve tourists are always funny. On the other hand, Abbey's indictments reflect both arrogance and privilege. Abbey was in a position to explore Arches and other wild locations in their primitive forms. He rails against others accessing them yes, to protect the environment, but also to protect the isolated experience he enjoys. He can enjoy them the right way; others (in his view) can't.
But ultimately Abbey is not concerned only with selfishly keeping others out and criticizing development. Instead, he seeks to evokes the wilderness' power, beauty, indifference, and fragility. That means plenty of the essays are stories of Abbey's experiences, whether his near-death hike in Havasupai or his time kayaking down the Colorado River. In such stories, Abbey is bold, sometimes a little foolish, and always ready to be awed. I had a student write recently about whether we're losing our sense of wonder, but that's something Abbey never lacks. It's infectious--and no doubt the reason so many people, including myself, have been taken with the book.
I started Desert Solitaire in Ohio but finished it while on spring break in Texas. Though not quite the land Abbey's describing, I still felt that I was imbibing some of that desert spirit as I looked out over gentle, vast hills. In some ways, his advice seems more doable than Berry's. I know I'm never going to start a farm, but I can choose to explore what wilderness remains by foot rather than by car; by the challenging path rather than the quick scenic overlook. I can appreciate that there's something to be gained by staring up at the star-filled sky while in the middle of nowhere--and it's something that I can't get inside an air-conditioned hotel.
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