Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey: Summary and Analysis

Introduction

In his Author's Introduction to Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, Edward Abbey explains what it was like to work for three summer seasons as a seasonal park ranger at Arches National Monument in Utah. He kept a journal during those seasons, recording his feelings and his daily 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 is not merely a tribute to the stunning beauty of southwestern Utah, though Abbey does declare (p. 1) that the desert where he worked is "the most beautiful place on earth."

In fact, Desert Solitaire is equally a reflection of Abbey's anger at the way the park is managed by the Department of the Interior and other branches of government. In a strikingly candid introductory statement, Abbey offers an apology (p. 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 of Desert Solitaire

For a person who loves the outdoors, is comfortable living in a trailer that shakes in the wind, and enjoys working in a wild desert environment, serving as a park ranger at Arches National Monument is a great job, according to Abbey. He looks out at the 33,000 acres of the park upon his arrival and wants to know it "intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman" (p. 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 that borders on extremism. Readers should be forewarned: extremism is part and parcel of this book.

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, and even the mice.

But above and beyond reporting on the park's beauty, Abbey writes at length about its overcrowded conditions, bitterly condemning the many city-dwellers arriving in their "serpentine streams of baroque automobiles." He criticizes tourists in "elaborate housetrailers in quilted aluminum" (p. 44) that prowl the park during tourist season. He also despises "knobby-kneed oldsters in plaid Bermudas" who roar up and down the new asphalt park roads "on motorbikes."

Abbey presents opposing arguments (p. 47) on the issue of opening the park to more tourists by building roads and facilities. His own view is that the government should "preserve intact and undiminished what little still remains," while the National Park Service position, he writes, is to allow "certain compromises and adjustments" in order to meet "the ever-expanding demand for outdoor recreation."

The book is descriptive yet filled with contradictions. On page 95, for example, Abbey writes about the "lonely hours" in the desert, which are like "a prison term," yet earlier, on page 44, he expresses anger at the visitors who arrive in "gigantic camper-trucks of Fiberglas and molded plastic." Abbey also provides informative narrative about the Native Americans who once lived where he now works, offers criticism of the Mormon religion (p. 236), takes the reader on a journey through the backcountry along stark rock formations, and in the end shaves his beard and returns to New York, wondering whether he will ever come back to the desert.

Abbey's Nature Writing and Descriptive Strengths

It is fair to say that Abbey deserves respect for his ability to describe in great detail all the wildlife — birds, snakes, deer, and insects — of the southeastern Utah desert. He obviously kept an elaborate journal in order to later assemble a book packed with rich detail and glowing narrative.

He writes about the vulture, also known as a buzzard, and how this bird stays aloft "for hours at a time without ever stirring his long black white-trimmed wings" (p. 134). One can almost visualize the bird Abbey describes as it "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 seek one out in the rural areas of America to catch a glimpse of this remarkable 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 he returns to that theme on page 135, describing "the dwarf trees of pinyon pine and juniper" which, he writes, "waver like algae under water." Abbey's desert ecology observations extend to the physical experience of heat as well. He explains how the "desert air sucks moisture from every pore" (p. 135), and writes memorably: "Noontime here is like a drug. The light is psychedelic, the dry electric air narcotic."

Conclusion

This book was published in 1968, and since then many national parks have become far more developed and far more accessible to automobiles and off-road vehicles than when Abbey was working in Utah. A reader cannot help but wonder what Abbey would be writing about today, given the ongoing debates over road-building in national forests and wilderness access policy. It is likely the entire book would read as a raging editorial.