Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
by Edward Abbey
New York: Ballantine, 1968, 337 pp., paperback.

The late Edward Abbey was often described as passionate. I've only read one of his books, but that seems like the perfect one-word description. Abbey loved nature, and hated the encroachment of man, especially when it was destructive and disregarding of nature. Desert Solitaire recounts his time as a park ranger at Arches National Monumnet near Moab, Utah. The writing is splendid. For example, note Abbey's common sense approach to philosophy:

To refute the solipsist or metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks he's a liar (122).

That displays a wonderful understanding that seems to elude so many in our postmodern world. Abbey could also write poetic prose that captured the beauty of nature:

In the mixture of starlight and cloud-reflected sunlight in which the desert world is now illuminated, each single object stands forth in preternatural though transient brilliance, a final assertion of existence before the coming of the night (124).

That takes me back to a night in 1979 when I sat on my truck in the Arizona desert, gazing at the silhouettes of cacti, immersed in the indescribable clarity of the stars. While I was driven to a sense of awe before a magnificent creator, Abbey takes a different approach:

God? I think, quibbling with Balzac; in Newcomb's terms, who the hell is He? There is nothing here, at the moment, but me and the desert. And that's the truth. Why confuse the issue by dragging in a superfluous entity? Occam's razor. Beyond atheism, non-theism. I am not an atheist but an earthiest (231).

Distinguishing between "earthiests" and "atheists" might be quite difficult. As a Christian, rather than see God as superfluous, I turn to Colossians 1:16-17, where we read: I believe that the beauty of the desert is held together by the creator. Even though Abbey was no great friend of Christianity, Desert Solitaire wonderfully describes the uniqueness of the desert world. If the earth is all there is, I see no grounds for the sub-subtitle of the book: "A celebration of the beauty of living in a harsh and hostile land."

I recommend this book for anyone interested in the beauty of the wilderness.

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