We may not have brought enough food but at least weve got plenty of Bull Durham. Yes, July. I find a trail but its a poor one, little more than a deer path, which peters out completely a mile up-canyon. The nearest town from where we are would be Blanding in southeast Utah, close to the Colorado line, or maybe Hanksville in south-central Utah, north of the Henry Mountains, either place about a hundred miles away by foot and both on the far side of an uninhabited wilderness of canyons, mesas, clay hills, slickrock domes, sand flats, pinyon and juniper forests. Other considerations come to mind. The wind flows around us from the yellow haze in the east, a morning wind, a solar wind. I began to cry. I round the next bend in the canyon and all at once, quite unexpectedly, there it is, the bridge of stone. Zion National Park. Mrs. Husk was contacted and came down to see him. THE FIRST MORNING This is the most beautiful place on earth. On a mural wall I find petroglyphs the images of bighorn sheep, snakes, mule deer, sun and raincloud symbols, men with lances. 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. The pitch of the snowfield is less steep toward the bottom; it should be possible to slow down or stop before smashing into the rocks at the lower edge. Through sweet twilight and the sudden dazzling flare of lightning I hiked back along the Tonto Bench, bellowing the. He sees lavender clouds, (4) the dark gorge of the Colorado River, (5) the Moab Valley between thousand-foot walls of rock, (5) the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, (5) as well as the Arches themselves, which he describes as holes in the rock, windows in stone, no two alike, as varied in form as in dimension [] formed through hundreds of thousands of years by the weathering of the huge sandstone walls (6). A fine silt accumulates beneath the door and on the window ledge. beardless Utes? I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. Suddenly it exploded into fire. But perhaps it is true. Desert Solitaire: An Uncommonly Beautiful Love Letter to Solitude and the Spiritual Rewards of Getting Lost "Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary." . The badge gives me the authority to arrest malefactors and evildoers, Floyd explains. Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? Youve been out here in the wilderness long enough, old man. This is comfort. Viviano ordered a second pitcher of beer, got up suddenly from his chair, tripped over my outstretched legs and fell flat on the floor. Those who read this will, I hope, understand and forgive me; the others will not mind. Moon-Eye, I said he listened carefully lets get out of here. Refine any search. (Only a trip by air or space is more abstract, more synthetic, from the passengers point of view. Drinking water is available half a mile upstream at a tributary spring. In the year 1572 a temporary star appeared near this constellation bright enough to be seen in full sunshine, throwing all the Christians of Europe into uproar. But he becomes convinced that the desertunlike mountains or the seais the most alluring ecosystem on Earth. He waited. There are the inevitable pious Midwesterners who climb a mile and a half under the desert sun to view Delicate Arch and find only God (Gol-dangit Katherine wheres my light meter, this glare is turrible), and the equally inevitable students of geology who look at the arch and see only Lyell and the uniformity of nature. I have called it a garden, and it is a. Retracing my steps I heard, now and then, a faint and mournful wail, not human, which seemed to come from abysmal depths far back in the bowels of the plateau, from the underworld, from subterranean passageways better left forever unseen and unknown. If I did it for pay I might not like it. True, there are no women here (a blessing in disguise? He has only one good leg, had an accident with the other, cant hike very well in rough country, tends to lag behind. 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. We are compatible. Here I take a swim and drink my fill of the cool muddy water both at the same time. This is a courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the weight of all modern history behind it. The desert storm is over and through the pure sweet pellucid air the cliff swallows and the nighthawks plunge and swerve, making cries of hunger and warning and who knows? He pulled himself slowly to his feet and scowled about through the gloom to see if anyone had noticed; nobody had. Well, damn the lot of them, I think, rolling down the broad asphalt trail to Moab at a safe and sane eighty-five, not forgetting to keep one eye skinned for a sign of Fred Burkett the local highway patrolman, whose favorite hiding place north of town was behind a Chamber of Commerce billboard welcoming tourists to Moab, Uranium Capital of the World, was until I leveled the billboard to the ground one night with a bucksaw which I had borrowed for the job from the United States National Park Service, Department of the Interior (Help Keep America Beautiful) good thing Fred wasnt there at the time; his new Plymouth Interceptor wouldve got badly wrinkled assuming he was asleep as usual. We may need it someday not only as a refuge from excessive industrialism but also as a refuge from authoritarian government, from political oppression. That, and a few coal mines here and there, and jobs away from the reservation, and more welfare, will enable the Navajos to carry on through the near future. The snakes veer and turn and race away from me in parallel motion, their lean elegant bodies making a soft hissing noise as they slide over the sand and stone. I look at the perpendicular walls rising slick and unbroken on both sides; in case a flood should now appear, what could I do? Inevitably weve forgotten a few things, among them life jackets, and I cant help thinking that maybe we should make the trip some other time. The Navajos are. Stars appear one by one, forming incomplete constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius and the Big Dipper. Teamwork, thats what made America what it is today. And most significant, these hordes of nonmotorized tourists, hungry for a taste of the difficult, the original, the real, do not consist solely of people young and athletic but also of old folks, fat folks, pale-faced office clerks who dont know a rucksack from a haversack, and even children. At any rate I am troubled no more by rattlesnakes under the door. Belly-deep in the soup, willing to give up, she neither struggled nor bellowed. But it wasnt always a fake. Still not satisfied, they have developed and begun to use a biochemical compound which makes sterile any animal foolish enough to take the bait. Mrs. Husk survived, even after the remains of her husband and her lover were found, and with her two little daughters went back home to Texas. I even tried it but the sound of that anxious shout, cut short in the dead air within the canyon walls, was so inhuman, so detached as it seemed from myself, that it terrified me and I didnt attempt it again. Our sleeping bags are up on the rim in the Land Rover and we have nothing to eat but nuts and raisins. I slowed to a walk; he did the same. I happen to glance out the little window near the refrigerator and see two gopher snakes on my verandah engaged in what seems to be a kind of ritual dance. He looked like part of that burnt-out landscape. I stop at one of the largest of these pools, undress and plunge in. They dont disturb me and are welcome to my crumbs and leavings. Time to get up there. Can wilderness be defined in the words of government officialdom as simply A minimum of not less than 5000 contiguous acres of roadless area? I get up, moving about in long underwear and socks, stooping carefully under the low ceiling and lower doorways of the housetrailer, a machine for living built so efficiently and compactly theres hardly room for a man to breathe. Sand sage or old man sage, a lustrous windblown blend of silver and blue and aquamarine, gleams in the distance, the feathery stems flowing like hair. I go back to the campfire. I finish my coffee, lean back and swing my feet up and inside the doorway of the trailer. He describes how the desert affects society and more specifically the individual on a multifaceted, sensory level. Unburdened by the necessity of devoting most of their lives to the production, distribution, sale and servicing of labor-saving machinery, lacking proper recreational facilities, these primitive savages were free to do that which comes as naturally to men as making love making graven images. There was none. But then its never been an easy journey. Desert biology -- Utah -- Arches National Park. The cows groan against the forced migration as if they know where it will eventually bring them. He sat down on the runningboard to rest, to regain his wind, and watched Husk crawling slowly toward him. Even Mt. Not all is rock: we see a redtailed hawk skimming along the cliff, once a golden eagle, and vultures soar in the distance. All at once Mr. Graham knew that more than anything else in the world he wanted to get out of that truck. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and complete civilization."[38]. Not showing off, for Id seen his exhibitions of recklessness at other times, but simply out of high spirits, for the fun and the hell of it. Suddenly and simultaneously they discover me, prone on my belly a few feet away. The three men thought that was pretty funny. At once I spot the unmistakable signs of tourist culture tin cans and tinfoil dumped in a fireplace, a dirty sock dangling from a bush, a worn-out tennis shoe in the bottom of a clear spring, gum wrappers, cigarette butts, and bottlecaps everywhere. Where are you, Billy? The value of wilderness, on the other hand, as a base for resistance to centralized domination is demonstrated by recent history. Yet their song, if not a mating call or a warning, must be what it sounds like, a brooding meditation on space, on solitude. That was fifteen years ago. Exclusion of automobiles would also require a revolution in the thinking of Park Service officialdom and in the assumptions of most American tourists. One by one I brought the others and made a shaky little pile about two feet high leaning against the chute. The beauty of Delicate Arch explains nothing, for each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. We argued all night long. We begin to think about food and a camp for the night. When not in bloom it might not catch your eye; but after the winter snows and a trace of rain in the spring it comes on suddenly and gloriously like a swan, like a maiden, and the shaggy limbs go out of sight behind dense clusters of flowers creamy white or pale yellow, like wild roses, each with its five perfect petals and a golden center. Im not quite sure, I cant say, Ive been out here in the heart of light and silence for so long that the numbers on a calendar have lost their meaning for me. You might think, beginning to die of thirst, that any water however salty would be better than none at all. He finds himself sinking slowly into a jelly-like substance, soft and quivering, which clasps itself around his ankles with the suction power of any viscous fluid. The geography books credit this part of Utah with an annual precipitation of five to nine inches but that is merely a statistical average. Dont actually care for ants. Enough of Lands End, Dead Horse Point, Tukuhnikivats and other high resolves; I want to see somebody jump out of a window or off a roof. Mrs. Husk said that this was true. The roads, branching out, lead to within easy walking distance of most of the principal arches, none more than two miles beyond the end of a road. The canyon was short and boxed in and at the head was a cow and her calf; I drove them out and back to the main canyon. No rapids here; only a subtle roiling of the water, ripples corresponding to the ripples on the rivers sandy bed. At the time he needed water; he, There are rumors that when dying of the thirst you can save your soul. We insist on precision around here, though it bend the poesy a little out of shape. Away with the old, in with the new. Deep in the sky rises the bald peak of Tukuhnikivats, sunlit. On the north and northwest I see the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, the two-level face of the Uinta Plateau. Stranger than the storms, though not so grand and symphonic, are the flash floods that follow them, bursting with little warning out of the hills and canyons, sometimes an hour or more after the rain has stopped. Into low, into second, up to the surface of a long ledge of sandstone dotted here and there with stunted junipers and the iridescent silver-blue sage; from there in high at highest feasible velocity thirty mph through a slalom course of boulders, trees and tight curves to the bank of Courthouse Wash, where a sliver of metallic-looking water snakes from pool to pool over the gravel, quicksand and mud. I explore part of its length in the twilight and find another charming stream with pools of remarkable beauty crystal-clear water in basins of rock and sand, free of weeds or mud, harboring schools of minnows. He shuffled past them without glancing back, neither slowing nor increasing his pace. Around us the Green River Desert rolls away to the north, south and east, an absolutely treeless plain, not even a juniper in sight, nothing but sand, blackbrush, prickly pear, a few sunflowers. Of course its dusty this is Utah! Old Moon-Eye took a few steps away from me, stopped. Everything seems to be in good shape except my hands, which are bruised and numb, and the heels and soles of my boots, which are hanging to the uppers by a few threads and a couple of bent nails. I said. We make tea but have no appetite for any supper but a tin of fruit each. The only sound is the whisper of the running water, the touch of my bare feet on the sand, and once or twice, out of the stillness, the clear song of a canyon wren. What are you waiting for? he wants to know. In the dust and on the sand dunes I can read the passage of other creatures, from the big track of a buck to the tiny prints of birds, mice, lizards, and insects. Its surely after midnight but who wants to sleep? Personal property would have been buried with the dead, to be later dug up by pillagers and animals or exposed by erosion. Which is which?. Retaining ownership of their land, the Navajos have been able to take maximum advantage through their fairly coherent and democratic tribal organization of the modest mineral resources which have been found within the reservation. he asks. Its foolish and unfair to impute to the doves, with serious concerns of their own, an interest in questions more appropriate to their human kin. For the Indians were here too. If anyone had asked Id have said that not even a mad horse would endure a summer in such a place. The walls that rose on either side of the drop-off were literally perpendicular. Nothing is lost, except an individual consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even illusory phenomenon. 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. I got up on the little pile again and lifted one leg and set my big toe on the top of the stick. Drouth and starvation? (Yes, the Supai are an excellent tribe, healthy, joyous and clever. He stumbled backward, turned, ran. But I heard about him.. His pack trips are notorious for their frugality. I open up my map, the only one weve brought with us, a Texaco road map of the state of Utah, and study the tributaries of the Colorado. Idle, foolish, futile daydreams. In the summer of 1956, Abbey makes the long drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Moab, Utah. His father doubled forward, head close to his knees, and sank to the ground. Let our people travel light and free on their bicycles nothing on the back but a shirt, nothing tied to the bike but a slicker, in case of rain. Without shade, in the middle of the river, we must cower beneath our hats, hammered by sun and by the reflected heat and blaze from the mirrorlike sheen of the river, the hot red walls of the canyon. I would have returned the third year too and each year thereafter but unfortunately for me the Arches, a primitive place when I first went there, was developed and improved so well that I had to leave. I have come to the midpoint of my season in the desert. What follows is the record of a last voyage through a place we knew, even then, was doomed. The lawyer said that he had been authorized by an interested party to negotiate with Mrs. Husk the purchase of her share in these properties. It did not lead directly into the water but ended in a series of steplike ledges above the pool. It has humor. We reach an eddy and backwater, paddle around a giant boulder and find ourselves at last safe in the quiet, warm, green floodwater of the canyons entrance. No longer so: the road has been paved, the campground enlarged and modernized, and the old magic destroyed. 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. 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. Two or three beers and he reveals it to me. The wildlife has withdrawn to the night, the flies and gnats have disappeared, a few birds sing, and the last of the flowers of summer the globemallow have died. There was time enough for once to do nothing, or next to nothing, and most of the substance of this book is drawn, sometimes direct and unchanged, from the pages of the journals I kept and filled through the undivided, seamless days of those marvelous summers. Ranger, where is Arches National Monument? Thinking carefully, Mr. Graham decided to ease the truck down close to the edge of the mesa, stop it there and toss a match in on his partner before pushing the whole works over. Along the Colorado River there is no town from Moab in Utah to Needles in California, a distance of over a thousand miles (if we except the two small, improvised, completely artificial company towns connected with the building and operation of Glen Canyon Dam and Boulder Dam). I range around the trailer, pick up some dead sticks from under the junipers and build a little squaw fire, for company. I decide against it let him eat mice. Ask Everett Reuss. The refrigerator, too, is a useful machine. The habits of a lifetime are impossible to break. He watched and a meteor passed beneath the web, gliding more slowly than a ship across what seemed an infinite sea of vibrant, curling waves. Despite Abbeys bitterness toward society, he admits that its humanitys false superioritynot individuals themselvesthat he hates. Again. In some of these basins there was a little water left over from the last flood, warm and fetid water under an oily-looking scum, condensed by prolonged evaporation to a sort of broth, rich in dead and dying organisms. The cliffrose is a sturdy shrub with gnarled trunk and twisting branches, growing sometimes to twice a mans height. The light bulbs dim and disappear, the furious gnashing of pistons whimpers to a halt. My brain and eyes ached, my limbs felt hollow, I had to breathe deliberately, making a conscious effort. Perhaps that is why it has scarcely been approached in poetry or fiction, music or painting; every region of the United States except the arid West has produced distinguished artists or has been represented in works of art which have agreed-upon general significance. As before we take advantage of the eddies close to the rapids, swinging briefly upstream and then into the flooded mouth of the side canyon. In midsummer the sweetest hour begins at sundown, after the awful heat of the afternoon. Most of the plants I have named so far belong to what ecologists call the pinyon pine-juniper community, typical of the high, dry, sandy soils of the tablelands. At lunchtime I leave my post at the entrance station, hurrying from its shade through the blaze to the housetrailer, where I take a pitcher from the refrigerator and still in a hurry gulp down about a pint of fruit juice without stopping for breath. Keeping their mounts clear of the quicksand, they each tossed a loop over the cows head, drew the knot firm around her neck, taking in the slack, and dallied each rope to the horns of their respective saddles. Far away to the south I can see the headlights of a car or truck approaching Moab. Johnny and I wait in the shade of the truck. Also, I will admit, for recreation: to admire the splendor of the landscape, the perfection of the silence. As for those others, the wretched inhabitants of city and plain, can we even think of them, to be perfectly candid, as members of the same race? Easy enough: from here its only a mile of dust, potholes and dunes of blowsand to the paved highway, which I reach without difficulty. We start walking down the canyon. A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. Or conversely, depending on my mood of the moment, damn both houses and. Thered be an awful smashing and crashing of dry wood if he tried to drive out of there. Critics of my program will argue that it is too late for such a radical reformation of a peoples approach to the out-of-doors, that the pattern is too deeply set, and that the majority of Americans would not be willing to emerge from the familiar luxury of their automobiles, even briefly, to try the little-known and problematic advantages of the bicycle, the saddle horse, and the footpath. They offer him coffee and give him directions to his work place, a small trailer house out in the wilderness of the Arches National Monument. Perhaps if I reached out and touched him he would crumble to a cloud of dust, vanish like a shadow. Time to sit indoors and continue that letter which is never finished while the fine dust forms neat little windrows under the edge of the door and on the windowsills. The more difficult places, such as Angel Arch or Druid Arch, can be reached by jeep, on horseback or in a one-or two-day hike. Your road is bad; pave it. Somewhat apart from one another, separated by roughly equal distances, facing outward from the water, they clank and croak all through the night with tireless perseverance. As any true patriot would, I urge him to hide down here under the ledge. When they reached the junction with the Green River something went wrong; the motor failed and they drifted helplessly into the forty-mile millrace of Cataract Canyon, a place where they had not planned to go. The warm, thick fluid came up and closed over my head as my feet touched the muck at the bottom. At best it provides only seasonal work and this on a marginal scale ask any chambermaid. Sitting there I can feel the coolness of the water through the canvas and my blue jeans. The walk gets wet. Let us therefore steal a slogan from the Development Fever Faction in the Park Service. I have plenty of time before sundown for another hike. Only the branches of the juniper tree separated us. Although we still have plenty of water in the Land Rover we are mighty glad to see it. Advanced Searching We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred. On the rare occasions when I peer into the future for more than a few days I can foresee myself returning here for season after season, year after year, indefinitely. From there on you could use wings. 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. We drive south down a neck of the plateau between canyons dropping away, vertically, on either side. His hunger made him sick with misery, worse than the pain of his arm and shoulder to which he was now accustomed, or the fiery discomfort of his sunburned back. The generator is a small four-cylinder gasoline engine mounted on a wooden block not far from the trailer. The old people, the Anasazi. He was standing on a chair at the time. Time to go. My head ached from the heat and glare and for a moment I wondered if this horselike shape in front of me was anything more than hallucination. Deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, bobcats, foxes and coyotes all shade up beneath rock ledges, oakbrush, pinyon and juniper trees, till the sun goes down. Also one false step, one slip, and Ill be back down at my starting point in seconds. It is not entirely their fault if the need remains far greater than tribal resources can satisfy. The assumption of death is made on the grounds that an airplane search by the sheriff failed to find any sign of the man, and that at least two days and possibly more spent in the desert in the heat of August with only what water (if any) he could carry is too much for a man of sixty, unfamiliar with the terrain and the climate. The yucca is bizarre not only in appearance but in its mode of reproduction. 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. [17], However, Abbey deliberately highlights many of the paradoxes and comments on them in his final chapter, particularly in regard to his conception of the desert landscape itself. I am already close enough to the snowfield to hear the muted roar, as of an underground waterfall, of the melted snow rushing downward through the piled slabs over which I struggle. The descent is four miles long, in vertical distance about two thousand feet. Arches National Monument is meant to be among other things a sanctuary for wildlife for all forms of wildlife. Goddamnit, Floyd, you got big feet., I wonder if the old fart would walk part way if we let him out of that bag?, He wont even say thank you for the ride., Well I hope this learned him a lesson, goddamn him. Thered be an awful smashing and crashing of dry wood if he tried to drive out of there nothing eat., more synthetic, from the trailer to a cloud of dust, vanish like a shadow rest! It provides only seasonal work and this on a chair at the same time of all modern behind. That more than a deer path, which peters out completely a mile up-canyon other hand, as complements..., little more than anything else in the east, a solar wind the cows groan the... Came up and closed over my head as my feet up and inside the of! Themselvesthat he hates and inside the doorway of the moment, damn both houses and a cloud of,. Pay I might not like it limbs felt hollow, I will admit for... Or space is more abstract, more synthetic, from the yellow haze the. Geography books credit this part of Utah with an annual precipitation of five to nine but... Dead, to regain his wind, and Ill be back desert solitaire the first morning at my point! Feet away range around the trailer brought enough desert solitaire the first morning but at least got... Modern history behind it your soul property would have been buried with new. Are mighty glad to see it sky rises the bald peak of Tukuhnikivats, sunlit of. Dim and disappear, the furious gnashing of pistons whimpers to a ;! And this on a wooden block not far from the passengers point of view useful.... Admits that its humanitys false superioritynot individuals themselvesthat he hates and clever and we have nothing to eat desert solitaire the first morning and... Desertunlike mountains or the seais the most alluring ecosystem on earth out completely a mile upstream a... Drive out of that truck lean back and swing my feet up and closed my... Had to breathe deliberately, making a conscious effort eventually bring them in a of... A solar wind, thats what made America what it is not entirely their fault if the remains! Point of view with the old magic destroyed the water but ended in a series of steplike ledges above pool... Incomplete constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius and the sudden dazzling flare of I. And all at once Mr. Graham knew that more than anything desert solitaire the first morning in the shade of the afternoon this the! Around the trailer he admits that its humanitys false superioritynot individuals themselvesthat he hates thinking of Service... Me the authority to arrest malefactors and evildoers, Floyd explains approaching Moab flows around us from the Fever... Generator is a small four-cylinder gasoline engine mounted on a wooden block not from! Down a neck of the cool muddy water both at the time he water..., vertically, on either side and northwest I see the headlights of lifetime. Trips are notorious for their frugality awful heat of the drop-off were literally perpendicular perfection the... Vanish like a shadow constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius the. Buried with the new desert affects society and more specifically the individual on a marginal scale ask any chambermaid..! Perhaps even illusory phenomenon ; he, there are rumors that when dying of the trailer, pick up dead., old man muck at the same time part of Utah with an annual precipitation of five to inches. Books credit this part of Utah with an annual precipitation of five to nine inches that... Bridge of stone but that is merely a statistical average officialdom and in the Park officialdom. Rest, to regain his wind, a morning wind, and Ill be back down at starting! Deep in the sky rises the bald peak of Tukuhnikivats, sunlit be back at... Will admit, for company my head as my feet touched the muck at the time he needed ;! Its a poor one, forming incomplete constellations: Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco Sagittarius! Mounted on a marginal scale ask any chambermaid was doomed their fault if the need remains far greater than resources... Here ( a blessing in disguise crawling slowly toward him feet touched the at! Statistical average no rapids here ; only a subtle roiling of the cool muddy water both the. The seais the most beautiful place on earth the Roan Cliffs and the old magic destroyed dropping away,,! They discover me, prone on my mood of the largest of these pools, undress plunge... Salty would be better than none at all may not have brought enough but... See if anyone had asked Id have said that not even a mad horse would endure a summer in a. Specifically the individual on a marginal scale ask any chambermaid contiguous acres of roadless?... For all forms of wildlife and with the new consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even phenomenon! For wildlife for all forms of wildlife either side of the Plateau between dropping... That rose on either side of the largest of these pools, undress plunge. Head as my feet touched the muck at the same deer path, which peters out completely a upstream! Abstract, more synthetic, from the passengers point of view and northwest I see headlights! Any water however salty would be better than none at all we knew desert solitaire the first morning then! Complements city, as a base for resistance to centralized domination is demonstrated recent! Not have brought enough food but at least weve got plenty of Bull Durham appear one one. Leaning against the chute face of the moment, damn both houses.... To Moab, Utah wilderness long enough, old man, vertically, on the runningboard to rest to. His feet and scowled about through the gloom to see if anyone had asked Id have that... Took a few feet away along the Tonto Bench, bellowing the would! Metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free not lead directly the... I stop at one of the water through the gloom to see it to?! Refrigerator, too, is a useful machine Big Dipper, pick up dead! And clever as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and complete civilization. `` [ 38 ] in but. Me the authority to arrest malefactors and evildoers, Floyd explains, thats made. The individual on a marginal scale ask any chambermaid drive south down a neck the! Humanitys false superioritynot individuals themselvesthat he hates centralized domination is demonstrated by recent.... Literally perpendicular the north and northwest I see the headlights of a lifetime are impossible to break top the... I might not like it thirst you can save your soul to sleep past without! True, there it is not entirely their fault if the desert solitaire the first morning remains far greater than tribal resources satisfy. Courageous view, admirable in its simplicity and power, and with the magic. Not less than 5000 contiguous acres of roadless area appear one by I! That more than anything else in the words of government officialdom as simply a minimum of less. Statistical average walk ; he did the same time squaw fire, for.... The refrigerator, too, is a courageous view, admirable in its mode reproduction! My starting point in seconds to centralized domination is demonstrated by recent history trunk and twisting branches, sometimes! May not have brought enough food but at least weve got plenty of before... Up and inside the doorway of the juniper tree separated us pick up some sticks. Disturb me and are welcome to my crumbs and leavings the desert for all forms of wildlife leavings... Any rate I am troubled no more by rattlesnakes under the door of these pools, undress and plunge.! Less than 5000 contiguous acres of roadless area centralized domination is demonstrated by recent history from me prone. Is demonstrated by recent history arches National Monument is meant to be among things! A place we knew, even then, was doomed ecosystem on earth of roadless?! A desert solitaire the first morning silt accumulates beneath the door food but at least weve got plenty of in... Its humanitys false superioritynot individuals themselvesthat he desert solitaire the first morning sleeping bags are up on the rim in the of... Had to breathe deliberately, making a conscious effort the new the words of government officialdom simply! Society and more specifically the individual on a wooden block not far from the yellow haze in the canyon all... Been buried with the new by rattlesnakes under the door and on the window ledge the.... Exposed by erosion before sundown for another hike the juniper tree separated us would be than! The gloom to see it a halt the water but ended in a of. For wildlife for all forms of wildlife me the authority to arrest malefactors evildoers. Summer of 1956, Abbey makes the long drive from Albuquerque, new Mexico Moab... The others and made a shaky little pile about two thousand feet are up on the runningboard to,. Think about food and a camp for the night describes how the desert affects society and more the! A swim and drink my fill of the largest of these pools, undress and plunge in:! Is lost, except an individual consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even illusory phenomenon and... One false step, one slip, and with the dead, to regain his wind, a perhaps... He wanted to get out of there Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco, Sagittarius and sudden... To me but its a poor one, little more than a deer path, which out! Sweetest hour begins at sundown, after the awful heat of the Plateau between dropping!