Going Solo
Sunset|November 2018

A die-hard Edward Abbey reader traces the author’s steps on a camping trip through eastern Utah.

Leath Tonino
Going Solo
”WILDERNESS is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread,” writes Edward Abbey in his 1968 nonfiction classic Desert Solitaire. He’s talking about untamed nature in general but also about the glowing orange slick rock surrounding the town of Moab, Utah. Set mostly in the 1950s, when the then 29-year-old worked as a seasonal ranger at Arches National Monument (now Arches National Park ), the collection of essays teems with rattlesnakes, vultures, petrified dunes, impassible cliffs, rants and raves, and philosophical ruminations.

Though Abbey considered himself primarily a fiction writer —he published three novels before Desert Solitaire, another five after —this was the book that made him famous. It sold almost two million copies (and counting), linking his name with all things parched, dusty, cracked, and prickly. Western environmentalists from Robert Redford to Terry Tempest Williams have deemed it a touchstone, and three generations of backpackers have carried it alongside their ChapStick and gorp.

I first encountered the essays at college in Colorado, and I have to admit, I was initially turned off. Not because of the writing itself so much as the people it attracted: young students (almost always men) reciting from memory their bearded hero’s hikes through canyons and railing against the roads and dams. Their extreme devotion was a bit much for me.

This story is from the November 2018 edition of Sunset.

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This story is from the November 2018 edition of Sunset.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.