Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

by Edward Abbey

“Rough, tough, combative . . . a passionately felt, deeply poetic book.”—Edwin Way Teale, The New York Times Book Review
 
“This is not primarily a book about the desert,” writes Edward Abbey in his introduction. “In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. But the desertis a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea. Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.”

• ISBN10: 0345326490
• ISBN13: 9780345326492
• Publish Date: 12 January 1985 (first published 12 March 1983)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Ballantine Books Inc.
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780345326492

Reviews

[nsperry92]

This book appears to be beautifully written, thought provoking, and inspiring when Edward Abbey speaks of the beautiful lands and animals he has the blessed opportunity to live with. However, I get the feeling that he feels only a certain standard of people should get to experience the public lands of America. He praises experienced campers, outdoorsmen, and those who frequently commune with nature. Sadly, not everyone can live this life. People have disabilities, time constraints, lack of money, among other things. Grouping these people into the stereotype of the naive and bumbling American tourist is wrong. Not everyone can hike for weeks on end or attempt to tame a wild horse in the blazing desert of Utah. For some people, all they can do to create a personal connection with nature is drive to a place, take pictures, and maybe walk around. There is no shame in that. For our public lands to be protected, Americans must create a personal connection to nature. Reserving this connection to a limited few contradicts Abbey’s efforts in environmentalism, in my opinion.

[jamiereadthis]

The only problem with waiting so long to read a seminal work, by a seminal author, is that you have the idea in your head who they will be. This? I kept thinking. This is the controversial Edward Abbey? This is what’s considered polemic? What, this good-humored common sense?

More funny than it has a right to be. More alive. Also, what Abbey held up himself as his standard: interesting, original, important, and true. A deep respect for our wilderness— and more importantly, our wildness— and a deep offense taken at the myriad threats to it. I like finding my people. Abbey is my people, without a box to hold him.

(I knew myself well enough to have more Abbey on hand once I read my first one, and what’s interesting is, in Postcards From Ed, how harsh his own commentary is on Desert Solitaire. Well, not harsh. He honored it. But he saw it as the first stepping stone, one rock of many, whereas, apparently, he got weary of the lifelong fire from those who saw fault and not virtue— and humor— in what he called its “superficial notions.” “With Desert Solitaire I was only getting started,” Abbey wrote, and thank God for that.)