The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

by Edward Abbey

Edward Paul Abbey (1927 – 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. The Journey Home ranges from the surreal cityscapes of Hoboken and Manhattan to the solitary splendor of the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. It is alive with ranchers, dam builders, kissing bugs, and mountain lions. In a voice edged with chagrin, Edward Abbey offers a portrait of the American West that we’ll not soon forget, offering us the observations of a man who left the urban world behind to think about the natural world and the myths buried therein.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Environment, Outdoors, Philosophy, Travel

242 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Edward Paul Abbey (1927–1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views.

Abbey attended college in New Mexico and then worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service in the Southwest. It was during this time that he developed the relationship with the area’s environment that influenced his writing. During his service, he was in close proximity to the ruins of ancient Native American cultures and saw the expansion and destruction of modern civilization.

His love for nature and extreme distrust of the industrial world influenced much of his work and helped garner a cult following.

Abbey died on March 14, 1989, due to complications from surgery. He was buried as he had requested: in a sleeping bag—no embalming fluid, no casket. His body was secretly interred in an unmarked grave in southern Arizona.

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the imperialist and sexist bullshit, i can't manage to quite give up on Ed Abbey, and this collection is one of the reasons why. I'm interested in his unabashed embracing of his own hypocrisies and contradictions, and this book contained some of the most compelling examples of those contradictions. There are evocative descriptions of many places i know well and some i don't know at all. Interesting to read his 30+ year old writing on the necessity of zero population growth as global population reached 7 billion.
Much to my surprise, one of my favorites was "Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night." Having only spent about 6 hours in New York City, 2 of which were spent staring at Georgia O'Keefe paintings, i wasn't expecting this one to resonate at all, but this may have been one of the most haunting and beautiful descriptions of urban ecology and landscape that i've read. For example: "When I was there I thought New York was dying. Maybe it really is. I know I was dying to get out. But if it's dying it's going to be a prolonged, strange, infinitely complex process, a death of terror and grandeur. Imagine a carcinoma 300 miles long, a mile thick, embracing 50 million souls. Whatever else (I tell myself) you may think about New York now, looking back at it from this desert perspective, you've got to admit that Wolf Hole, Arizona, can never have so rich a death."
Yes, there are the usual tired metaphors of environmental destruction as sexual violence, but there are also moments of descriptive genius and real insight into Abbey as an artist and human figuring out how to live on earth.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A taste of mountains; I could not say I had come to know them in any significant way. All I had learned was something about myself. I had discovered that I am the kind of person who cannot live comfortably, tolerably, on all-flat terrain. For the sake of inner equilibrium there has to be at least one mountain range on at least one of the four quarters of my horizon— and not more than a day’s walk away.”

All I had learned was something about myself.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of stories is disappointing. Early on Abbey talks about taking his fiancé’s “brand-new Ford convertible, a gift from her father,” on a closed road in Big Bend. It didn’t work out. He wrecked the car going through the many washouts and she left him, for good. The self-indulgence is grating.

The book has too much of what - of overwriting? Rather than being used to tell a story artfully, language focuses on how something is said, not what is said. Thus, while hiking in Glacier and encountering grizzlies, Abbey goes through a list of what he would sacrifice, with the last option being to “push my wife his [the grizzly’s] way.” We might presume that this is not even close to being true, so why is it being said? In the story about taking his fiancé’s convertible on the closed road he writes that after the first day, the car “lacked some of its youthful ‘élan.’” Given his account of what he went through with that car, the comment was pointless.

Abbey has his opinions on this and that, many of which reflect solid values that don’t seem to apply to himself. Respect the Earth, yes, but Abbey leaves a trail of beer cans on his trips across the landscape; then again, as with the Ford convertible story, tossing beer cans becomes a point of pride, of asserting his freedom, as if he’s the only one in the world. He says we have too many people on the planet, far too many. He’s an advocate for ZPG, and even mentions support for a one child policy, yet he had five of them (no disrespect to them intended) himself.

His opposition to government and industry and bad guys is almost mindlessly crackpot. He vents, vents and vents. The least government is best, but then he complains that EPA is not doing enough to keep the miners and energy people under control. He is an advocate for permissiveness, an “open society” which, though he doesn’t say this, applies to his bad guys having their way with the world. Farmers and ranchers, elsewhere his bad guys (water hogs, destroyers of natural landscapes) are the victims when it comes to the miners. He’s a hard core materialist, critical of religion and its "obsolete" mythologies, yet he writes about “the poets and the prophets” who have been telling us for three thousand years that there’s “a better way to live.” His distrust of government is such that he sees “what little wilderness remains as a place of refuge, as a hideout, as a base from which to carry on guerrilla warfare against the totalitarianism of my nightmares.” This is Black Helicopter stuff. He, incidentally, has a theory that Mallory was the first on the top of Everest, leaving a “tattered flag and stick” that Hillary “casually kicked over the edge, before Tensing could see it”

Abbey’s writing in many ways is less about wilderness and more about his boredom. In another era, Abbey would have been struggling on the margins, with meaning built into existence itself. In today’s world, that is no longer the case. Now we have “surplus energy” as he calls it, and what do you do with that? You move out onto the ledge and look down. “I approach nature with a certain surly ill-will, daring Her to make trouble,” he writes. “To be alive is to take risks; to be always safe and secure is death.” “We love the taste of freedom. We enjoy the smell of danger,” he writes with emphasis. “We take pleasure in the consummation of mental, spiritual, and physical effort; it is the achievement of the summit that brings the three together, stamps them with the harmony and unity of a point. Of a meaning….” Then, in his summary statement he writes that “of all our terrors none is more terrible than boredom, the nothingness of a static existence….”

And yet Abbey’s freedom, and the wilderness that expresses it the most, yells out, and that’s his appeal. Through all that bluster he’s rebelling against people telling us what to do, all the time (the “global village,” the “technological termitorium”). Maybe that’s the meaning behind the tossing of his beer cans, and the meaning behind the name of his home in Tucson (Fort Llatikcuf – spell it backwards). It’s the voice of a primal spirit who needs to be free of rules and conventions, of a soul that needs to be what it must be. When Abbey settles down he is really more about a Taoist-like balance, “a return to” the “middle way,” letting us be ourselves and part of that is to keep others from controlling us, or from telling us who we need to be. This is the Abbey that also comes through in these stories, though you have to shove some of the other stuff aside to see it.

[Caleb Tankersley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a surprisingly profound effect on me. The Journey Home is a collection of essays "in defense of the American West," but Abbey fills it with more emotion than that, more spirit. A better explanation of the book might be: "in defense of humanity's need for wildness and wilderness; in defense of the spiritual renewal that can be gained from the American West."

This book is not just cheesy nature writing. It's fresh. It's gutsy. And it's a plain interesting style. Abbey inexplicably includes a chapter about Manhattan, that metal wilderness. It's far from him usual topics, but the writing of it is indeed beautiful.

The Journey Home is well worth reading, but I must give you a warning: it creates a deep, powerful wanderlust. So many specific, mysterious places are discussed, one cannot help but be compelled to travel to some of them. Enjoy

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updated January 2022: what was I thinking when I read this before? Some of Abbey’s best writing is here. The BLOB Comes to Arizona; The Second Rape of the West; Walking; The Crooked Wood ; Mountain Music; Shadows from the Big Woods; Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom. I know Abbey did not think of himself as a “prophet” but there is much that is prophetic in here:

“The citizens of our American cities enjoy a high relative degree of political, intellectual and economic liberty; but if the entire nation is urbanized, industrialized, mechanized and administered, then our liberties continue only at the sufferance of the technological megamachine that functions both as servant and master, and our freedoms depend on the pleasure of the privileged few who sit at the control consoles of that machine. What makes life in our cities at once still tolerable, exciting, and stimulating is the existence of an alternative option, whether exercised or not, whether even appreciated or not, of a radically different mode of being out there, in the forests, on the lakes and rivers, in the deserts, up in the mountains.” Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom

“The administrators laying out the blueprints for the technological totalitarianism of tomorrow like to think of the earth as a big space capsule, a machine for living. They are wrong: the earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and it’s own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself—not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.” Shadows from the Big Woods

And from “The Great American Desert”: “Keep America Beautiful. Grow a Beard. Take a Bath. Burn a Billboard.”

[Ed Salerno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Each of the essays in this volume stands alone. I give two stars as a whole because while I loved the first few essays and his overall writing style (there are some great quotes early on in this book) some of the essays in the latter half are understandably (nearly 4 decades later) out of date and consequently hard to sit through.

There IS relevance to his overall themes of preservation, solitude and the allure of desert landscapes, but when it comes to the inner-workings and failures of state politics and policies one would be better off reading something a bit more up-to-date.

The best bits are his autobiographical pieces about hitch-hiking as a youth, working as a fire-lookout, and offroading misadventures with his very displeased wife, as well as some small noticings about the habits of gila monsters and mountain lions and such.

[Ants · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward Abbey is not going to influence my philosophy or provide guidance for my actions. However, I still read him for several reasons. Abbey has spent time in many locations that I would like to travel to and spend time at. So, the descriptions of places and sights give me incentive to chose one place over an other.

However, do I need to hear another story of how Abbey trashes a car in the wilderness. Not for me.

And, at times, Abbey comes up with a wonderful story/essay that I like to read. So, I read and allow myself to be informed or amazed.

Enjoy.

[Andrew Flach · Rating 5 out of 5]

poignant, poetic, abrasive. edward abbey in a nutshell. no one has done it better

[John Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eward Abbey could be called a naturalist, but I don't think that's a rough enough sounding description for him. I don't think he ever pressed a flower into his journal. I doubt he ever collected rocks. He was content to explore the earth and leave it as he found it. And if he found it paved he was content to throw a beer can out his car window because, as he'd say, it's already ruined.

He fantasized about blowing up the Glen Canyon Dam, the massive piece of industrial violence that caused the flooding of the Colorado river, forming what is now known as Lake Powell - a misnomer if there ever was one because Mr. Powell loved that river and would surely have been as appalled by the dam as Mr. Abbey. Abbey was one of the last people to raft the now flooded section of river, tread its sandbars and wooded side canyons before they were drowned, entombed in the gathering silt. He wrote about it in Desert Solitaire and he vented his ecoterrorist impulses in the hilarious novel "The Monkey Wrench Gang."

He lived most of his life in Moab, Utah and became identified with the Desert Southwest, but like many western Americans he had eastern roots and lived for a while in New York City. He was as keen an observer of urbanity as he was of nature and though he ultimately reviled the city's toxic vitality, he also found beauty in it. In the rust and oil. In the crumbling bricks. In the sprigs of spring growth pushing up through the pavement. The story this excerpt is taken from is a rare glimpse of his time in the city and it is so keen and lyrical, so Kerouacian in its lithe, rhythmic execution that it makes one wish Mr Abbey had turned his lens more often on the world of men.

From the story "Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night":

"For two years I lived in Hoboken, far from my natural habitat. The bitter bread of exile. Two years in the gray light of the sulfur dioxide and the smell of burning coffee beans from the Maxwell House plant at the end of Hudson Street. In a dark, dank, decaying apartment house where the cockroaches - shell-backed, glossy, insolent Blatella germanica - festered and spawned under the linoleum on the sagging floors, behind the rippled wallpaper on the sweating walls, among the teacups in the cupboard. Everywhere. While the rats raced in ferocious packs, like wolves, inside the walls and up and down the cobblestone alleyways that always glistened, night and day, in any kind of weather, with a thin chill greasy patina of poisonous dew. The fly ash everywhere, falling softly and perpetually from the pregnant sky. We watched the seasons come and go in a small rectangle of walled-in space we called our yard: in spring and summer the black grass; in fall and winter the black snow. Overhead and in our hearts a black sun.

Down in the cellar and up in the attic of that fantastic house - four stories high, brownstone, a stoop, wide, polished banisters, brass fittings on the street entrance, a half-sunken apartment for the superintendent, high ceilings, high windows and a grand stairway on the main floor, all quite decently middle class and in the better part of town, near the parks, near the Stevens Institute of Technology - hung draperies of dust and cobweb that had not been seen in the light of day or touched by the hand of man since the time of the assassination of President William McKinley.

In the sunless attic the spiders had long since given up, for all their prey had turned to dust; but the rats roamed freely. Down in the basement, built like a dungeon with ceiling too low to permit a man of normal stature to stand erect, there were more rats, of course - they loved the heat of the furnace in winter - and dampish stains on the wall and floor where the great waterbugs, like cockroaches out of Kafka, crawled sluggishly from darkness into darkness. One might notice here, at times, the odor of sewer gas.

The infinite richness. The ecology, the natural history of it all. An excellent workshop for the philosopher, for who would venture out into that gray miasma of perpetual smoke and fog that filled the streets if he might remain walled up with books, sipping black coffee, smoking black Russian cigarettes, thinking long, black, inky thoughts? To be sure. but there were the streets. The call of the streets.

We lived one block from the waterfront. The same waterfront where Marlon Brando once played Marlon Brando, where the rust-covered tramp steamers, black freighters, derelict Dutchmen, death ships came to call under Liberian flags to unload their bananas, baled hemp, teakwood, sacks of coffee beans, cowhides, Argentine beef, to take on kegs of nails, jeep trucks, Cadillacs and crated machine guns. Abandoned by the Holland-American Line in '65, at least for passenger service, the Hoboken docks - like Hoboken bars and Hoboken tenements - were sinking into an ever deepening state of decay. The longshoremen were lucky to get two days' work a week. Some of the Great warehouses had been empty for years; the kids played Mafia in them.

The moment I stepped out the front door I was faced again with Manhattan. There it was, oh splendid ship of concrete and steel, aluminum, glass and electricity, forging forever up the dark river. (The Hudson - like a river of oil, filthy and rich, gleaming with silver lights.) Manhattan at twilight: floating gardens of tender neon, the lavender towers where each window glittered at sundown with reflected incandescence, where each crosstown street became at evening a gash of golden fire, and the endless flow of the endless traffic on the West Side Highway resembled a luminous necklace strung round the island's shoulders."

[Sydney Austad]

I’m just here to make Edward Abbey fans frustrated because this is my first Edward Abbey book even though it’s obviously not his best work!!

Some stories a little boring, others really moving, and, don’t worry Edward Abbey fans, I recognize the technically great writing and appreciate the bone dry sense of humor. Will pick up some of his other books.

[Fletcher Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite non-fiction Abbey book after Desert Solitaire

[Tina Cipolla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge huge fan of Edward Abbey and this book did not disappoint. I have been slowly reading through his works for years. I read the Monkey Wrench Gang probably 20 years ago. I read Desert Solitare about a year ago and this year I read the Journey Home. This book is differnt that Desert Solitare in that is is a collection of self contained essays--because it is Abbey all of them are entertaining. His personality comes through so loud and clear in his writing. I can imagine so clearly why all of those wives he talkes about all left him one by one. What I like best of all about Edward Abbey--and it is particularly evident in this book--is the contradictions in the man himself. Here he is, this ardent environmentalist, the guy whose philosophy underlies the entire modern environmentalist movement and was the inspiration for Earth First, and there he is with 5 children and tossing beer cans out the window of his truck. You have to love him-- but I would never want to have to live with him.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars

[justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

apart from "Desert Solitaire," Abbey's nonfiction is rather indistinguishable to me, still I've read and enjoyed it, and always take some Abbey with me on trips to the desert--

"Be Prepared. That is my belief and that is my motto. My practice, however, is a little different. I tend to go off in a more or less random direction myself, half-baked, half-assed, half-cocked, and half-ripped. Why? Well, because I have an indolent and melancholy nature and don't care to be bothered getting all those things together--all that bloody gear--maps, compass, binoculars, poncho, pup tent, shoes, first-aid kid, rope, flashlight, inspirational poetry, water, food--and because anyhow I approach nature with a certain surly ill-will daring Her to make trouble."

[Terry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays describing Abbey's love of the West but I wasn't able to appreciate his "leave it as it was" attitude. He paints himself a jerk by throwing beer cans on the roads and destroying a girlfriend's new car. Perhaps the American West would be better of with more of his novels and fewer of his essays.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

ed abbey was the rare writer adept at composing both fiction and nonfiction. though the essays in this collection are now over thirty years old, they still read as if they could have been written in the last five. candor, wit, insight, sass- abbey exemplified it all.

[Mark Hartzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Edward Abbey is a genuinely interesting and talented writer, he was also something of a jerk as a human being. Will Byrnes recently reviewed ‘Desert Solitaire’ which prompted me to go back and take a look again at ‘The Journey Home’. I was relieved that Will gave Abbey only 3 stars for that book because while I certainly sympathize with Abbey’s love of wildness and nature, I can’t stomach the casual misogyny and general ‘screw you’ attitude. It’s like the ick factor you note about your sweet grandfather who just happens to be a KKK member. You can’t just ignore the dark side once you’ve seen it.

The 1st problem is how he sees ‘wilderness’ as something of a walled garden where the great unwashed (those of us not named Edward Abbey) are effectively locked out. He is particularly incensed that a new (at the time) ski resort (Telluride) was being planned since we already have Aspen. For anyone who has traveled in Colorado or Wyoming, there is a LOT of wild land out there. Yes, much of it is privately owned, but if you are interested, you can find some pretty remote places that are wilderness, or very, very close.

The 2nd problem is casual misogyny. The entire 3rd chapter is devoted to Abbey driving his fiancé’s brand new Mustang through the Big Bend area of west Texas. “I pulled up the ‘No Road’ sign, drove through, stopped, replaced the sign.” (p 25) Not surprisingly, Abbey trashed the car to the point of inoperability. “The car, as I later heard, was salvaged by my sweetheart and her friends, but never recovered its original esprit de Ford. Nor did I ever see my fiancé again. Our permanent relationship had been wrecked, permanently. Not that I could blame her one bit. She was fully justified. Who could question that statement? All the same it hurt; the pain lingered for weeks. Small consolation to me was the homely wisdom of the philosopher, to wit: A woman is only a woman But a good Ford is a car.” (p 29) Har har; that’s a real kneeslapper.

The 3rd problem is that all things considered, Abbey is simply, a jerk. “Rumbling along in my 1962 Dodge D-100, the last good truck Dodge ever made, I tossed my empty out the window and popped the top from another can of Schlitz. Littering the public highway? Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it’s not the beer cans that are ugly; it’s the highway that is ugly. Beer cans are beautiful, and someday, when recycling becomes a serious enterprise, the government can put one million kids to work each summer picking up the cans I and others have thoughtfully stored along the roadways.” (p 128) This isn’t funny even if it’s hyperbole. It’s just cringe. 3 stars

[Peter Parziale · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read some other books by Edward Abbey, and this was my least favorite. It's a collection of essays and stories -- I think they were each previously published elsewhere -- so the compilation came across as a bit of a mishmash, and uneven. Some of the stories appealed, and were better written, more than others. Also, oddly, although the subtitle emphasizes the West, there are a couple of stories set in the eastern U.S. For me, this jerky nature of the collection interfered with the overall narrative.

Included in the story Shadows from the Big Woods is Abbey's well-known aphorism "The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders." A noble sentiment, which contrasts with Abbey's burning of precious mesquite on a desert overnighter and his casual discarding of beer cans along the highway. These sins rankle, and I don't care to dismiss or rationalize these misbehaviors. I realize that in living our lives it's very hard to avoid hypocritical behavior, but Abbey has a my-way-or-the-highway approach to eco-activism which leaves himself open to criticism. Abbey is often atop his soapbox -- I can get on mine.

My favorite story was Hallelujah I'm a Bum.
My least favorite: Disorder and Early Sorrow.

[Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seems that all we’re encouraged to read of Abbey is Desert Solitaire, but this book, The Journey Home, is a real gem. From a drive down a closed desert road, to time in a fire watchtower, to a treatise on the importance of wilderness, this book is full of interesting journeys. This book is well worth the read.

Edward abbey makes me laugh. “The mountain glittered under the sun with that harsh perfection characteristic of God’s early work. Almost too perfect; I should have brought a few beer cans to throw around, give the place a natural look.”

The Journey Home p221

I see the preservation of wilderness as one sector of the front in the war against the encroaching industrial state. Every square mile of range and desert saved from the strip miners, every river saved from the dam builders, every forest saved from the loggers, every swamp saved from the land speculators means another square mile saved for the play of human freedom.

Edward Abbey, The Journey Home pp235-6

[Joan Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Noted nature writer and iconoclast, Abbey’s oeuvre is centered in the deserts and canyon countries of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. These essays focus on ecology and the preservation of the land. Written in the 1970’s it is certainly prophetic as he warns against the corporate takeover of the wilderness, the extraction of oil and minerals which taint the earth and particularly the question of water which is one that desert inhabitants are increasingly encountering. One of the strongest voices in the preservationist movement, Abbey pulled no punches and we should honor his contributions. Abbey who died in 1987 at the age of 62 was buried in the environmental style he desired, wrapped in a sleeping bag and put into the earth by his friends.

[Savannah Madeira · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Edward Abbey has some often beautiful and sometimes insane things to say about the west, but despite myself I can’t help but like best what he has to say about Pennsylvania:
“After three months of wandering I was homesick. I longed for the warm green hills of Pennsylvania, for the little wooden baseball towns, the sulfurous creeks and covered bridges, the smoky evenings rich with fireflies; I thought of the winding red-dog road that led under oak and maple trees toward the creaking old farmhouse that was our home, where the dogs waited on the front porch, where my sister and brothers played in the twilight under the giant sugar maple, where my father and mother sat inside in the amber light of the kerosene lamps, listening to their battery-powered Zenith radio, waiting for me.”

[Myridian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so uneven. It covers memoire like stories of Abbey’s experiences along with satires, rhapsodies on nature, and even a mood piece. To be completely honest, I didn’t quite know what to make of the collection. I know I agree with Abbey’s desire to protect wilderness, to leave space for adventure and a simpler way of life, but some of the anger, the espousing of extreme views (was this for effect?) was irritating if not downright distressing. Misogyny? Pro alcohol use? Use not preserve wilderness even if this is for “adventure.” Abbey is no messiah for wilderness, but his voice is definitely worth listening to.

[fire_on_the_mountain · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my money, no one evokes the wild desert landscape in its totality quite like Edward Abbey, in a way that I feel deep in my bones. This keeps me coming back. His critical analysis of the culture of extractive industry, including mechanized tourism, is sadly borne out, and his masterful use of humor and acid wit takes the piss out of his enemies far more successfully then something extremely earnest or fire-breathingly righteous can, or does. I could, however, really do without his sociological and cultural analyses that trend for more into racism and classism without any real sense of self-reflection. I take from this what I value: a true accounting of our wild desert lands, what they mean, and why we need them. There are few that can compare.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a significant helping of environmentalist literature over the last 6 months and this was by far the best. Abbey's humor (while at times offensive and disagreeable), dazzling imagery, and philosophy for the laymen create a book both lively and easy-to-read, yet rich in value and meaning. These more radical or 'deep' ecological books are important to pick up in the 21st century, where our society is more out of balance with the wild than ever, and as more people realize this, the anthropocentric world view is cracking like the Glen Canyon Dam. Cactus Ed provides the best perspective on these issues that I have read.

[Merek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read, I am not sure if this type of book appeals to me. His imagery and literary style is impressive and he does make some great points. My favorite quote that I will take away from this book is :"everyone wants to be the last immigrant, and then put a 10 ft glass wall around the town..." He does have a couple good tales, but I feel like he gets wrapped up in his literary style too much affecting the coherence of his story. I understand he wants to critique western hedonistic culture but he the way he jumps around or even gets too involved with details makes it a slower read.

[Jack Rumery · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Something like a shadow has fallen between present and past, an abyss wide as war that cannot be bridged by any tangible connection, so that memory is undermined and the image of our beginnings betrayed, dissolved, rendered not mythical but illusory. We have connived in the murder of our own origins. Little wonder that those who travel nowhere but in their own heads, reducing all existence to the space of one skull, maintain dreamily that only the pinpoint tip of the moment is real. They are right: A fanatical greed, an arrogant stupidity, has robbed them of the past and transformed their future into a nightmare. They deny the world because the only world they know has denied them."

[Bern J · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best of these essays is"The Second Rape of the West", second best is "Down the River with Major Powell". Powell is one of my heros, I've read his books and Wallace Stegner's "Beyond the Hundredth Meridian". Marvelous stuff.
I've canoed down the same stretch of the Green River from the town of Green River, Utah to Spanish Bottom at the head of Cataract Canyon. Glad that he didn't divulge the location of Mud Hole Canyon, his private find that he describes as "a miniature Eden". Hope that it has remained unvisited since his visit 54 years ago.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of Edward Abbey's essays mainly about the American West first published back in 1977. These essays range from environmental writing to descriptions of places to autobiographical writing. His voice is powerful and evocative and these essays capture that well, in ways that his fiction might not. Even though the essays are more than 40 years old, they do not seem dated and would be a good companion to anyone visiting that area of the country.

[Ray]

Interesting book. He is definitely in favor of preserving the natural wilds. He thinks there can be a compromise between what is currently being allowed by commercial entities in the wilderness and what should be in order to preserve our natural resources. He thinks the wilderness is necessary for survival of all animals, even man. Man needs somewhere to escape civilization to renew themselves and he see the wilderness as a viable place to recharge. I think he is correct.

[Jen Compan (Doucette) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a few of Abbey’s books, but this was my first nonfiction read of his—a collection of essays about the wild. I was drawn to his personal experiences in the works but found myself nodding and exclaiming affirmations to his philosophies about the natural world and the need for its defense.

I would read anything he wrote.