desert solitaire the first morning

I drove down, across, up the other side and on into the night. One summer I started off to visit for the first time the city of Los Angeles. We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. The search for what? No but theres skunks, and theyre living right under that room where youre sleeping. Far beyond these hundreds of square miles of desiccated tableland rise the sheer walls of further great mesas comparable in size and elevation to the one we stand on; and beyond the mesas are the mountains the Abajos and Elk Ridge forty miles south, the La Sals and Tukuhnikivats forty miles east, the Henrys fifty miles southwest. Like their cousins in the big cities they turn for solace, quite naturally, to alcohol and drugs; the peyote cult in particular grows in popularity under the name of The Native American Church. Most of the surface of this high mesa on which our man has disappeared is bare rock there are few trails, and little sand or soft earth on which he might have left footprints. Thats a fact. His words trail off into the vague mumble, Slept on rock all my life, goddamnit The empty stare follows: a foolish thrift is driving him to ruin and all he cares about is his heart; he is thinking about falling off his horse again like Ernie Faye fell off the ladder picking peaches. Having nearly exterminated their natural enemies, the wildlife experts made it possible for the porcupines to multiply so fast and so far that they the porcupines have taken to gnawing the bark from pinyon pines in order to survive. Are you crazy, maybe? Powell knew the inner gorge of the Grand Canyon as a terrible and gloomy underworld, scene of much physical and mental suffering for himself and his men, but despite this and despite all that had happened in his explorations, he would write of the canyon as a whole in panegyric accent: The glories and the beauties of form, color and sound unite in the Grand Canyon forms unrivaled even by the mountains, colors that vie with sunsets, and sounds that span the diapason from tempest to tinkling raindrop, from cataract to bubbling fountain, You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. Impossible to outflank these meanders, for they swing hard against and undercut the cliff first on one side and then the other. There are many people who say they have, I know, but theyve been luckier than I. I took it and stood it on the most solid stone in the pile, behind the two topmost stones. We see a few baldface cows, pass a corral and windmill, meet a rancher coming out in his pickup truck. To me death was little more than a fascinating abstraction, the conclusion to a syllogism or the denouement of a stage drama. Dividing one canyon from the next are high thin partitions of nude sandstone, smoothly sculptured and elaborately serpentine, colored in horizontal bands of gray, buff, rose and maroon. Safe. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Eh? The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, this desert landscape is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. In places the wagons had to be lowered on ropes. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsmen, cowboys, Indians, fishermen and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste. In compound low, engine overheating, radiator at boiling point, I keep going, looking for a certain dim trail off to the right into the aspens; it comes, I turn off the road and drive through an opening in a derelict rail fence, brush beneath leafy boughs and emerge in a small grassy glade surrounded on all sides but one by solid ranks of aspens. Under the daily sweep of the parching May winds almost everything that was green has been burned to soft, sere tones of saffron and auburn. Let us therefore steal a slogan from the Development Fever Faction in the Park Service. There was nothing to burn but my clothes; not a tree, not a shrub, not even a weed grew in this stony cul-de-sac. His message is that civilization and nature each have their own culture, and it is necessary to survival that they remain separate: "The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. At the main entrance to each national park and national monument we shall erect a billboard one hundred feet high, two hundred feet wide, gorgeously filigreed in brilliant neon and outlined with blinker lights, exploding stars, flashing prayer wheels and great Byzantine phallic symbols that gush like geysers every thirty seconds. My cherrywood walking stick leans against the trailerhouse wall only a few feet away but Im afraid that in leaning over for it I might stir up the rattler or spill some hot coffee on his scales. The big cottonwood shuddered under the impact, stirred, swung loose and rose, becoming buoyant. Ill bring her too, I tell him. In low gear at full throttle I gun the truck across the wash, anxious not to get bogged down, and roar up over the rocks and ruts on the far side. The desert is different. I knew that I was dealing with a madman. The nature of their work requires a combination of skills and knowledge, good health and self-reliance, which tends to inspire self-confidence; they need not doubt their manhood. After another minute of equivocation and technical inquiries, I lean back farther, keeping my eyes on the rope, and go down. I exaggerate. Gazing up at it I think I hear, as in a dream, a confused rumble and roar, the sound of a freight train highballing down a mountain grade. Leslie too went the way of the others, leaving no sons. Into September, the final month. I rounded the first bend in the canyon and stopped. Were both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Our little boats are holding up well; despite all the rocks weve bounced them off and over, despite the sand and snags weve dragged them over, they have yet to sustain a puncture or spring a single leak. Unfortunately, most of the pinyon pines in the area are dead or dying, victims of another kind of pine the porcupine. I may never in my life go to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it is there. Like a living caduceus they wind and unwind about each other in undulant, graceful, perpetual motion, moving slowly across a dome of sandstone. Better yet dont get on.. Abbey provides detailed inventories and observations of the life of desert plants, and their unique adaptations to their harsh surroundings, including the cliffrose, juniper, pinyon pine, and sand sage. A yellow planet floats on the west, brightest object in the sky. Rejoicing in my innocence and power I stride down the trail beneath the elephantine forms of melting sandstone, past the stark shadows of Double Arch. 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. We soon need relief, for the weight is greater than it looks, and the rock, sand, brush and cactus make walking with a load difficult. But a few survive, mature, become real toads, and when the pool dries up they dig into the sediment as their parents did before, making burrows which they seal with mucus in order to preserve that moisture necessary to life. Our mounts had raised their heads from the water and shifting restlessly under our weight, they seemed anxious to move on. They could not have said; neither can I; and would have muttered something about silver, gold, copper anything as a pretext. A, Most of my wandering in the desert Ive done alone. Recall the Proverb: Set not thy foot too often in thy neighbors house, lest he grow weary of thee and hate thee.. The scree gives way to outcroppings of solid country rock which I climb to reach the firm, grass-covered dome of the peak. As a small businessman Roy is getting smaller every season. [34] That emptiness is one of the defining aspects of the desert wildness and for Abbey one of its greatest assets and one which humans have disturbed and harmed by their own presence: I am almost prepared to believe that this sweet virginal primitive land would be grateful for my departure and the absence of the tourist, will breathe metaphorically a collective sigh of relief like a whisper of wind when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.[35]. I want to talk to you.. Perhaps the tree is mad. In the morning I decide to climb the old trail, up through the notch to the top of the plateau havent seen the outer world for a long time now. If we get caught down in here by the storm it may be a number of days before we can get out. After a week of close association I turn him loose on the warm sandstone at my doorstep and leave for a patrol of the park. The horse stood motionless as a rock. I thought so, he says; that explains it. He raised his head, twitched one ear, watching me. In deep stillness, in a somber solemn light, these beings stand, these fins of sandstone hollowed out by time, the juniper trees so shaggy, tough and beautiful, the dead or dying pinyon pines, the little shrubs of rabbitbrush and blackbrush, the dried-up stalks of asters and sunflowers gone to seed, the black-rooted silver-blue sage. Not satisfied with the enormous silt trap and evaporation tank called Lake Mead (back of Boulder Dam) they have created another even bigger, even more destructive, in Glen Canyon. Prime time: the sun very low in the west, the birds coming back to life, the shadows rolling for miles over rock and sand to the very base of the brilliant mountains. This would be good country, a tourist says to me, if only you had some water., If we had water here, I reply, this country would not be what it is. he asked. We tether them to a clump of willows, unload and prepare to camp. And why not? Many of the chapters also engage in lengthy critiques of modern Western civilization, United States politics, and the decline of America's natural environment. And to that suggestion I instantly agree; of course why name them? Well, Ranger Abbey, says Merle, how do you like it out here in the middle of nowhere?. Jazz? Ecstasy and danger: well never get the Land Rover up those switchbacks if it storms. I noticed something I thought a little odd. That crystal water flows toward me in shimmering S-curves, looping quietly over shining pebbles, buff-colored stone and the long sleek bars and reefs of rich red sand, in which glitter grains of mica and pyrite fools gold. Free at last, frolicking like colts, they galloped after one another in circles, lay down and rolled in the dust, got up and galloped some more. My saddle horse raised his dripping muzzle from the water and waited. In the late 1950s, author Edward Abbey takes a position as a seasonal park ranger in Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah. I edged over the lip of stone and dropped feet first into the water. As obedient as they were courageous, some two hundred and fifty Mormons men, women and children, with livestock and twenty-six wagons started east from Panguitch toward the designated place. We have no fear of human pollution, for the nearest upstream town is Moab, pop. I even knotted a tie around my neck and tightened it in the proper style adjusting the garrote for fit. WELCOME. Except for myself no one lives within thirty miles of Turnbow Cabin. Seventy dollars worth of cow, Roy explained, coiling his rope. The mice, singularly quiet for a change, make themselves scarce. I had one hand on the rope. It resembled a childrens playground slide, concave and S-curved, only steeper, wider, with a vertical pitch in the middle. Without starting the motor he disengaged the clutch, took the truck out of gear and turned the wheels downhill. Red-skinned black men at present, they must learn to become dark-brown white men with credit cards and crew-cut sensibilities. Then Mr. Graham pulled up sharply to clear a bulging escarpment. I offer it to the thirsty Waterman, he sticks it in the hole and drinks heartily. They gleam like like alabaster towers under the noon sun and glow at evening in a soft, subtle shade of rosy pink, like mighty cones of strawberry ice cream. The lawyer said that he had been authorized to offer Mrs. Husk $4500 twice what her late husband had paid for them. What happened to Arches Natural Money-mint is, of course, an old story in the Park Service. Somebodys goddamned cows, Scobies perhaps or McKees, I cant see the brand, gape at me from the lower side of the meadow. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling to them from up above, in the cold black outback of interstellar space. Some resemble jug handles or flying buttresses, others natural bridges but with this technical distinction: a natural bridge spans a watercourse a natural arch does not. ; that explains it my eyes on the west, brightest object the. Like it out here in the Park Service dripping muzzle from the water shifting... 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