James Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die discussion

Discussion for our first 2021 group reading.

I read this a few months ago, I'll be curious on others' thoughts on it. Personally it was a little mixed for me. I loved the adventures/descriptions of the parks, but felt that (view spoiler)[a bunch of his politics/ideas didn't really feel right to me. I get that he wants to conserve the parks (and I do too), but at the same time, I think we should try and make it available to everyone, not only to people exactly like him who know how to live in such an area.

I also thought he was a bit hypocritical in parts. He hates tourists leaving things/marking walls, etc, but he leaves a mark in a tree, starts a brush fire, and throws a tire down the grand canyon, with it seems no self reflection on his own actions. (hide spoiler)]

I don't know if I'll get to this or not--my January TBR is ridiculous. It may take till March to get it sorted out. Plus I'll have to hunt up a copy of this--if one falls in my lap in the next few weeks, I'll consider it the hand of fate and bump it to the top of the TBR

On order, but not received yet...

I’m not far into the book...but I’m enjoying it. He amuses me with the contrast of his tenderness toward deadly snakes and his contempt for ants - riling them up just for the hell of it. The way he enjoys flowers from a snake’s perspective resonates with me as I am an amateur photographer and often find the most interesting photos of things to be from the back or bottom. As he is describing the multitude of plants, I was tempted to google each one to see what he is describing. I decided against that, preferring to see them through his eyes. I am planning a trip to the area in April and look forward to seeing things first-hand (except for the snakes).

Abbey sets himself the paradoxical task to communicate, write about and describe the American desert wilderness of the canyonlands of Utah using language, metaphor and simile, whilst trying to “see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities”. Although written up and published in 1968, it is mainly based upon the journals he kept from two stints as a seasonal ranger (April to September) for the United States National Park Service at Arches National Monument, near the town of Moab, Utah in 1956 and 1957. Introducing the area by describing his work maintaining trails, greeting visitors who seem to only visit at weekends, and collecting campground fees, Abbey writes with the hindsight of having seen the area developed.
He describes the conflict between the scenic wilderness and the necessarily degrading “civilisation” that “industrial” tourism demands.

After Abbey’s spends chapters describing the Arches rock formations, which remind me of (on a much smaller scale) Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire and the vast barrenness of the deserts (which remind me of inland Iceland), Abbey inserts a “polemic” about industrial tourism, a chapter with a meandering, fictionalised story of uranium prospecting, adultery and murder.

Chapters follow on Cowboys (excellent descriptions of herding cattle from the canyons in June up to summer pastures, helping old timers in debt) and Indians (meandering generalised comments and observations about the Navajo), foreseeing their demise, and advocating birth control, although I suspect this is in general rather than particular to the Navajo.

There is a wonderful long chapter (Down the River) about a seven or eight day trip in rubber boats down the Glen Canyon section of the Colorado River, incorporating a day’s detour on foot up the Escalante “river”, to enter into and absorb the wilderness, before it was dammed and lost forever. This chapter alone makes it worth reading the book. There are other shorter but equally fine chapters about climbing Tukuhnikivats and descending into The Maze.

Abbey writes with an easy and civilised style, referring to the poets with familiarity, Dante’s Paradise and Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. He can describe the plant life in a romantic style: Purple sage: crush the leaves between thumb and finger and you release that characteristic odor, pungent and bittersweet which means canyon country, high lonesome mesaland, the winds that blow from far away. (Page 49)
Or after a recollection of Eliot’s The Waste Land, his dichotomy between civilisation and wilderness:
Here I am, relaxing into memories of ancient books - a surefire sign of spiritual fatigue. That screen of words, that veil of ideas, issuing from the brain like a mental smog that keeps getting between a man and the world, obscuring vision. (Page 227)

Overall the book works very well for me, even though it is full of contradictions in its focus, changing chapter to chapter from descriptive travelogue, political rant, fictionalised anecdote, and ecstatic nature writing. It is the travelogue and nature writing that stand out and make the book; read it for that journey.

On my bookshelves I have Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi, a travelogue of Greece just before the Second World War which I read many years ago, and I am going to have to revisit this, as I recall it having the same rambling energy of Abbey’s book.