This wasn’t Luddism so much as a deep need to preserve a small portion of America as wilderness, kept forever free from development, beginning with precisely those areas of southern Utah attacked by Trump and Zinke.ĭesert Solitaire was published four years after the Wilderness Act was signed into law. Above all, Abbey was an opponent of “that cloud on my horizon” he defined as progress.
The fact that Arches and Canyonlands national monuments would later become national parks was of little comfort to Abbey, who in Desert Solitaire bemoans what he termed the “industrial tourism” that revolves around the automobile.Ĭompared to Abbey’s fierce opposition to modern capitalism, Bernie Sanders comes off as comparatively milquetoast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy.”īy the time Abbey wrote that, his beloved Glen Canyon was “going under fast,” gurgling beneath Lake Powell as the Glen Canyon Dam plugged the Colorado River’s flow.
In the second place most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you’ll see something, maybe. “In the first place, you can’t see anything from a car you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. I have listed some examples below to back up my assertions in the review's title: Psychopathic: - Kills rabbit with a rock just because he wants to see if he can do it - Talks about killing people many times including Nukem (sp?) on several occasions - Has a general disdain for humanity (I kept waiting for an Agent Smith "parasite" speech) Hypocritical: States that industrial tourism is bad and that tourists destroy the environment/experience by using vehicles inside the parks and leaving trash behind.“Do not jump in your automobile next June and rush out to the canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages,” he famously wrote. The narration was fine, except that the way he pronounced "pinion" drove me nuts (pun intended).
If you thought the desert was boring to look at, wait until you hear him drone on ad nauseum about it verbally. Memoir of a Psychopathic & Hypocritical OutdoorsmaĪ generally curmudgeonly portrayal of the "good ol' days" by a "get off my lawn" type as he explored the outdoors in America's West.
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