But I can tell you where it was. THIS IS YOUR NATIONAL PARK, ESTABLISHED FOR THE PLEASURE OF YOU AND ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. One bird, however, is singing, if you could call it singing. He knows what hes doing; let him savor it to the full. in an old perverted Plymouth came hurtling down the highway, veered suddenly to the right, whizzed through a fence and plunged straight down like helldivers into the Big Cut. But the kicking of niches becomes tiring; an ice axe would be handy now. Still more hundreds and thousands float or paddle each year down the currents of the Salmon, the Snake, the Allagash, the Yampa, the Green, the Rio Grande, the Ozark, the St. Croix and those portions of the Colorado which have not yet been destroyed by the dam builders. Environmentalists -- United States -- Biography. He shouts once more but his words are unintelligible. Floyd Bence is a tall powerful man around thirty years old, an archeologist by training, married, with two children. Something dreamlike and remembered, that sensation called. Here, Abbey introduces the ongoing symbol of roads. Other springs, more surprises. Making sure its a gopher snake and not something less useful, I open the neck of the sack and with a great deal of coaxing and prodding get the snake into it. We tether them to a clump of willows, unload and prepare to camp. No matter, its all one to me and the red dust of Utah. In the late 1950s, author Edward Abbey takes a position as a seasonal park ranger in Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah. I knew how they felt. The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. The view is open and perfect in all directions except to the west where the ground rises and the skyline is only a few hundred yards away. Snorting like a truck he came forward, right at me, bursting through the branches. He backs under it. It is somehow comforting to see, nearby, the yuccas growing from the sand and from joints in the stone. He saw them but was too exhausted to shout, lacked matches to start a fire, and apparently was too frightened or too delirious to stay at one spot and construct some kind of distress signal. Lets not make fools of ourselves.. Once in the Valley they will find the concessioners waiting, ready to supply whatever needs might have been overlooked, or to furnish rooms and meals for those who dont want to camp out. We reach the rim a little before sundown and after a quick supper for its cold and windy up here go early to bed. There was a time and not so very long ago when ranching was a way of life, and a good one. When the sun stands noon-high between the walls we take our lunch, on board and under way, of raisins and oranges and beef jerky and the cool cloudy river water with its rich content of iron and minerals, of radium, uranium, vanadium and who knows what else. True, I agree, and yet and yet Rilke said that things dont truly exist until the poet gives them names. He describes how the desert affects society and more specifically the individual on a multifaceted, sensory level. I mean the society of a friend or friends or a good, friendly woman. The entire expedition required about four months; the trail which they pioneered was never used a second time. Staking out new nesting claims, I understand. Years later, still wandering in circles, I will come back to the Arches and the canyon country and inquire about my old acquaintances. ), Where you keep these here Arches anyway?, What arches? Equally beautiful and not so potent is the blue flax with its pale sky-blue petals veined in violet, and the Sego lily or Mariposa lily, state flower of Utah. In addition, the stick had enabled me to reach a higher section of the S-curved chute, where the angle was more favorable. This much may be essential in attempting a definition but it is not sufficient; something more is involved. ), Talk with the tourists. (General laughter. What else about him? Thought-provoking and mystical. Soon, park superintendent Merle McRae and chief ranger Floyd Bence bring Abbey some supplies. It aint just mud, he said. I reach the end of the road and walk the deserted trail to Landscape Arch and Double-O Arch, picking up a few candy wrappers left from the weekend, straightening a trail sign which somebody had tried to remove, noting another girdled and bleeding pinyon pine, obliterating from a sandstone wall the pathetic scratchings of some imbeciles who had attempted to write their names across the face of the Mesozoic. Whats the gun for? One afternoon two young Indians Navajos? Often far from any spring, these temporary pools attract doves, ravens and other birds, and deer and coyotes; you, too, if you know where to look or find one by luck, can slake your thirst and fill your water gourd. The season is late late summer on the high desert. It drops away rapidly, picking up speed and throwing a spray of snow into the air, turns on edge and rolls and bounds like a clumsy wheel all the way to the bottom, shattering on the rocks below. Thirteen miles more to the end of the road. We drink the last of the spring water in our canteens and, still thirsty, look to the river, that sombre flow the color of burnt sienna, raw umber. From the bar they moved to a table in the corner where Mr. Graham produced a large tectonic map and explained to Husk as well as he could (for Husk had only the dimmest notions of geology) what the prospects were for making fresh uranium discoveries in the Colorado Plateau. The scales of a snake are dry and smooth, quite pleasant to the touch. Whether crude or elegant, representational or abstract, very old or relatively new, all of the work was done in a manner pleasing to contemporary taste, with its vogue for the stylized and primitive. His only request is that they cut their strings first. What happened to Arches Natural Money-mint is, of course, an old story in the Park Service. The ascent of Tukuhnikivats has taken me half the day, the descent from summit to timberline less than half an hour. In one of these I accidentally start a brush fire, and am nearly cooked alive. Fifty thousand? I stayed the first night in the lodge the people keep for tourists, a rambling old bungalow with high ceilings, a screened verandah and large comfortable rooms. As I brush away sticks and stones on the ground, making a place for my sleeping bag, I see a scorpion scuttle off, tail up and stinger ready. Of course its dusty this is Utah! Or brain the little bastard where he is? Experimentally I push a slab onto the snow and let it go. A few big ravens hang around and croak harsh clanking statements of smug satisfaction from the rimrock, lifting their greasy wings now and then to probe for lice. If the water is scummed with algae, crawling with worms, grubs, larvae, spiders and liver flukes, be reassured, drink hearty, youll get nothing worse than dysentery. Im sitting on my doorstep early one morning, facing the sun as usual, drinking coffee, when I happen to look down and see almost between my bare feet, only a couple of inches to the rear of my heels, the very thing I had in mind. He wont be back. When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. We shake hands and the tourist from Ohio goes away pleased, as I am pleased, each of us thinking he has taught the other something new. The datura is sacred (to certain cultists) because of its content of atropine, a powerful narcotic of the alkaloid group capable of inducing visionary hallucinations, as the Indians discovered long before the psychedelic craze began. Still within sight of the housetrailer, I can see the princess plume with its tall golden racemes; the green ephedra or Mormon tea, from which Indians and pioneers extracted a medicinal drink (contains ephedrine), the obnoxious Russian thistle, better known as tumbleweed, an exotic; pepperweed, bladderweed, snakeweed, matchweed, skeleton weed the last-named so delicately formed as to be almost invisible; the scrubby little wavyleaf oak, stabilizer of sand dunes; the Apache plume, poor cousin of the cliffrose; gray blackbrush, most ubiquitous and humble of desert plants, which will grow where all else has given up; more annuals primrose, sourdock, yellow and purple beeplant, rockcress, wild buckwheat, grama grass, and five miles north across the floor of Salt Valley, acres and acres of the coral-colored globemallow. One firefly flickered in and circled my bacon, suspended from the roofbeam on a length of baling wire. This duality ultimately allows him the freedom to prosper, as "love flowers best in openness in freedom."[22]. From there on you could use wings. Already I was having visions of iced drinks, waterfalls, shade trees, clear deep emerald pools. Newcomb. I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Here, the legendary author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road and many other critically acclaimed books vividly captures the essence of his life during three seasons as a park ranger in southeastern Utah. I am on the north face of Tukuhnikivats; blocking the view to the east and northeast are Mounts Peale and Mellenthin but north and west and southwest the world is open and I can see the knobs and domes of the Arches, the gray-blue Roan Cliffs beyond, the town and valley of Moab 7000 feet below, the looming headlands of Hatch Point, Dead Horse Point and Grandview Point, and farther away, farthest of all, wonderfully remote, the Orange Cliffs, Lands End and The Maze, an exhilarating vastness bathed in morning light, room enough for a lifetime of exploration. One of the things that worries me, besides the missing life jackets and the obvious fragility of our Made-in-Japan vessels, is the fact that Ralph has only one good leg. I am not alone. Afterwards I rinsed my mouth with water from my canteen. The rabbit feeds the owl. Naturally I was flattered and at the same time surprised, hurt, a little shocked. We each have another day to spare but no more; I have to return to the Arches, he has to register for the fall term at Colorado University, far over on the eastern slope. Often the sunset is reflected not only on the mountain peaks, standing like islands in a sea of twilight, but also on ranges of clouds to the east, where the changing colors can be seen along with flashes of silent, sudden heat lightning long after they have faded out completely in the west. He thought for a while, then opened a five-gallon jerry can and poured gasoline over Husks body and all over the interior of the cab. Merle the super, the boss, is a slender, graceful man of about fifty years, with a fine, grave, expressive face toughened though not hardened by a life spent mostly out-of-doors. Doesnt want to go back to Aspen. Going farther up-canyon I come to a fork, the first of many branches in the canyon system. Ive decided to write a letter (to myself) before going to bed, and rather than use a candle for light Im going to crank up the old generator. For there are the bad moments, or were, especially at the beginning of my life here, when I would sit down at the table for supper inside the housetrailer and discover with a sudden shock that I was alone. We see a few baldface cows, pass a corral and windmill, meet a rancher coming out in his pickup truck. Activate your 30 day free trialto unlock unlimited reading. Theres a girl back in Denver. Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelope the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, the sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time, now matter how long, somewhere, living things will emerge and join and stand once again, this time perhaps to take a different and better course. Better, in fact. Southwest, toward Grandview Point and The Maze, I can see V-shaped black wings in the lonely sky, soaring higher and higher against a yellow sunset. Naked as Adam in the Bible, Abbey enters a dreamlike existence, almost forgetting that he is distinct from the surrounding trees. For Albert Husk was a man of vision. The serious prospecting was carried out by the technicians of the Atomic Energy Commission. The same thing could be done at Grand Canyon or at Yellowstone or at any of our other shrines to the out-of-doors. And trudged on. We are not far from Grandview Point and the view from near the juniper is equally spectacular. Not entirely, of course. Heeyah! he shouted, lez go man, Jesus Christ! The cow stumbled toward the herd, Viviano pressing it hard. The majority of living things retreat before the stunning glare and heat of midday. The nephew makes a positive identification I cant imagine how. Here, the roads shift from paved to unpaved symbolizes Abbeys step into a more authentic realm than the citya realm where one as get as close as possible to a sense of reality thats unmediated by the trappings of civilization. Disease? This I attribute not to the administrators of the Park Service like administrators everywhere they are distinguished chiefly by their ineffable mediocrity but to the actual working rangers and naturalists in the field, the majority of whom are capable, honest, dedicated men. I looked for a shortcut. Here was a treasure. will be the first of July. According to reputation there are still a few mountain lions in the Sierra La Sal, ranging through from time to time, and possibly even bear, but its not my kind of luck today to find their tracks. A fork in the road, with one branch old, rocky and seldom used, the other freshly bulldozed through the woods. The climb gives me some comprehension of the fact that we are. Too late for arguments now and as usual not enough time for panic. The old people have left no record of disaster on the mural walls of the canyons; we can do no more than make educated guesses based on what is known about climatic changes, tribal warfare and Indian village life in the Southwest. We dont have much time left before sundown. Somnolence a heaviness in the air, a chill in the sunlight, an oppressive stillness in the atmosphere that hints of much but says nothing. But the flood itself did not yet appear. Additionally, he expresses his deep and abiding respect for all forms of life in his philosophy, but describes unflinchingly his contempt for the cattle he herds in the canyons, and in another scene he remorselessly stones a rabbit, angry about rabbits' overabundance in the desert. The wind will not stop. By flashlight I found the bed, unrolled my sleeping bag, pulled off my boots and crawled in and went to sleep at once. I may never in my life go to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it is there. The sun in fact has changed color. Finally he was discovered ten days after the search began near an abandoned miners shack below Dead Horse Point. The midday heat figured in my plan: I believed that in such heat the moon-eyed outlaw would be docile as a plow horse, amenable to reason. Though the murder leaves Husks son Billy-Joe for dead, the young boy spends several telling days in the wilderness, much like Abbey himself, bonding spiritually with nature in a way that his greedy father never could. Absorbed in these thoughts, wind in my eyes, I round a corner of the cliff and theres a doe and her fawn not ten yards away, browsing on the cliffrose. The clash of rock against rock is like a shot abrupt, exaggerated, toneless. Ugly brutes, bound for a summer in the high meadows and then the slaughter house too bloody good for them, I was thinking. I started down. With good reason. His fourth book and his first book-length non-fiction work, it follows three fictional books: Jonathan Troy (1954), The Brave Cowboy (1956), and Fire on the Mountain (1962). Im just starting up to investigate the ridge when Waterman appears, tracking me up the canyon floor. An insane wish? As does the nation as a whole, for that matter. This follows from the interesting fact that a motorized vehicle, when not at rest, requires a volume of space far out of proportion to its size. Floyd Bence bring Abbey some supplies required about four months ; the trail which they was... In the road when ranching was a way of life, and nearly... Let him savor it to the out-of-doors a multifaceted, sensory level Energy Commission addition, the first of branches! An ice axe would be handy now he describes how the desert affects society and specifically. Used, the descent from summit to timberline less than half an hour, Viviano pressing hard... 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