The Wilderness Between

“Progress has come to the Arches at last, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived.” (55)

At last, a nature writer with some bite. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire was a blast to read. It reminded me so much of one of my favorite fiction writers, Kurt Vonnegut. His style (without quoting from my presentation too much) is a tenuously balanced mixture of fact, romanticism, philosophy, and biting wit and humor. And after my latest trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park, “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks” hit especially hard. Abbey likes to keep the reader guessing at what he will do or say next.

One of the most shocking moments is when he kills the rabbit in “Cliffrose and Bayonets.” With the same dispassion Oates displayed, killing the ants with her fingers, one by one, Abbey kills the rabbit with a rock. As a nature writer (even if he did not want to have such a title) and crusader for the natural and the wild, it is odd to us that he could needlessly kill a living thing. Abbey knows this, and despite his apparent innocence at the end, he spends quite a few paragraphs rationalizing his deeds. He also has no interest in ever killing again as he says, “The experiment was a complete success; it will never be necessary to perform it again” (42).

I think this scene is crucial to much of the idea that he is trying to convey throughout the book: a picture of modern man living in the wild. Like Thoreau, he has decided to seclude himself in the wild for a few seasons or years. Abbey scoffs at tourists and their automobiles, their cushy campsites. He explores secluded and forbidden areas of the Arches. He drinks river water when he runs out of beer in “Down the River.” He (very resourcefully) uses a gopher snake to rid him of the rattlers instead of killing the rattlesnakes. However, he does not truly live off of the wildness. Abbey eats beans and bacon for much of the book, which, last I heard, were not natural to the Arches.

Abbey kills the rabbit because he must know that he is really a part of this whole wilderness, even if he eats beans and finds shelter in a trailer. Abbey kills the rabbit, because he needs to know that he can survive out there, not as a sportsman or scientist, but as a part of the natural world. He says: “No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey” (41-42).

My favorite part of Abbey’s book has to be in “Water” when Abbey’s friend, Newcomb, gets stuck in the quicksand. You can’t help but feel terrible for poor Newcomb, who could only cry out in long lonesome wails, sure that the quicksand would be the end of him. Abbey was no help either with his wit and amusement at his friend’s distress. I was very glad when Abbey pulled him to the solid ground.

If I take anything I’ve learned from Abbey, I think it will be his sarcasm.