Desert Solitaire a Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey

American History

A Season in the Wilderness -- by Edward Abbey

The author, Edward Abbey, explains to the reader in the Author's Introduction, what it was like to work for three summer seasons as a "seasonal park ranger" in the Arches National Monument in Utah. He kept a journal during those seasons, which recorded his feelings and his activities: the desert where he worked, he writes, is a "vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea." But his book isn't just about the stunning beauty of the land in southwest Utah, although Abbey says (1) the desert where he worked " ... is the most beautiful place on earth."

In fact, Abbey's book is a reflection of his anger at the way in which the park is managed by the Department of the Interior, and other branches of government. In a very unusual introductory statement, Abbey offers an apology (xii) for the fact that "much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive -- even frankly antisocial in its point-of-view."

Summary

For a person who loves the outdoors, and is comfortable living in a trailer that shakes in the wind and enjoys working in a wild desert environment, serving as a park ranger in the Arches National Monument is a great job, according to the author. He looks at the 33,000 acres of the park upon his arrival and he wants to know it "intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman" (5). He describes his love of nature and of wild things ("I'd rather kill a man than a snake") in a kind of reverence bordering on extremism. (But "extreme" is part and parcel of this book, so readers beware!)

It is clear that Abbey truly enjoys and even cherishes mornings in the park, with the "pinyon jays" that whirl "in garrulous, gregarious flocks from one stunted tree to the next and back again" and canyon wrens, ravens, doves -- even the mice.

But above and beyond reporting on the beauty of the park, Abbey writes at length about the park's over-crowded conditions -- and he bitterly condemns the many city-dwellers in their "serpentine streams of baroque automobiles." He criticizes the tourists in "elaborate housetrailers in quilted aluminum" (44) that prowl the park during the tourist season.

He presents opposing arguments (47) on the issue of opening the park up to more and more tourists by building roads and facilities; his view is that the government should "preserve intact and undiminished what little still remains"; the National Park Service view, he writes, is to allow "certain compromises and adjustments" to be able to meet "the ever-expanding demand for outdoor recreation."

His book is descriptive yet it has many contradictions: on page 95, for example, the author writes about the "lonely hours" in the desert, which are like "a prison term"; but earlier, on page 44, he shows anger at visitors, who arrive in "gigantic camper-trucks of Fiberglas and molded plastic..." And he despises "knobby-kneed oldsters in plaid Bermudas" who roar up and down the new asphalt park roads "on motorbikes."

Abbey also writes very informative narrative about the Native Americans who once lived where he now works, he criticizes the Mormon religion (236), he takes the reader on a nice journey in the back-country along the stark rock formations, and in the end, he shaves his beard, and returns to New York, wondering if he will ever come back to desert.

Criticism / Analysis

First, it is fair to say that the author deserves respect for his ability to describe in great detail all the wildlife (birds, snakes, deer, and insects) in the southeastern Utah desert. Abbey obviously took very good notes and kept an elaborate journal in order to later put a book together packed with rich detail and glowing narrative.

He writes about the vulture (also known as a buzzard) (thought in many minds to be an uncouth scavenger) and how this bird stays aloft "for hours at a time without ever stirring his long black white-trimmed wings" (134). One can almost visualize the buzzard Abbey describes as he "hovers on a thermal, rocking slightly, rising slowly, slips off, sails forward and upward without lifting a feather ... " For these kinds of descriptions, Abbey deserves high marks, and readers who have never seen a buzzard may wish to go to the rural areas of America where there are buzzards in plentiful supply, to catch a glimpse of this great bird.

Abbey also notes that the vulture lingers on rising air "a thousand feet above the landscape, bleak eyes missing nothing that moves below. Or maybe," Abbey conjectures, "who can be sure? -- he is fast asleep up there, dreaming of a previous incarnation when wings were only a dream."

Earlier in the book, Abbey had equated the desert with the ocean, and to his credit, he returns to that theme on page 135, in describing "the dwarf trees of pinyon pine and juniper" which, he writes, "waver like algae under water ... "

Another plus for Abbey in the book is his descriptions of how it really feels to be in the desert, when it's steamy hot, so torrid that a person can hardly stand to be inside his trailer for more than a few minutes. One thing that comes along with that heat is "dehydration": the "desert air sucks moisture from every pore," he explains on page 135. "Noontime here is like a drug. The light is psychedelic, the dry electric air narcotic."

And indeed, while this book does contain a wealth of worthwhile information about the desert region -- the weather and natural landscape -- it also features many editorial viewpoints that are probably not necessary in this kind of book. Certainly, authors can take whatever editorial positions they wish to, and make any diversions they care to along the way. But this book misses out on being a truly inspiring tale of what it's like to be a park ranger in a lovely desert setting, because of the bitterness and anger the author injects the book with.