Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
Book Review: Desert Solitaire was my reason for spending time in Tucson..
Summary: 4 Stars
...but once I got here I found that the desert is the real attraction. After spending many, many hours hiking through the desert around Tucson, I realized Abbey's attraction to it, as well as his warnings about it. Great read and an appropriate introduction to the work of Abbey. If you're at all interested in desert life, look no further than Desert Solitaire.Too bad Tucson is such an terrible city to live in. Tucson doesn't deserve its beautiful surroundings.
Book Review: Desert Solitare - a good read
Summary: 4 Stars
Desert Solitare was recommended by an avid hiker since i was planning a hiking trip in Moab. Though the author has some radical thoughts you take them in stride as they are just personal commentary. He truly explains what it's like out there and teaches you about the desert and what's out there. Fun to read before you go.Book Review: Dessert Solitaire: A must read
Summary: 5 Stars
I have read this book twice now. Abbey does a fantastic job describing the canyonland region. I live about three hours away in Durango,CO and I fell blessed to be able to visit the old stomping grounds of Ed whenvever I want. If you can't visit Moab currently, you can at least get some understanding, from this book, on why this area is so magnificent. If you love the 4-Corners area and want a feel for what it was like before tourism emerged please read this book--it will give you a whole different view point of the desert.Book Review: Difficult man; great writer
Summary: 5 Stars
Well-beloved and much-reviled prophet of the wilderness and of the wild places, Abbey, like his ?uvre, covers a lot of ground. Desert Solitaire is probably his best work -- a statement Cactus Ed would spiritedly deny (right before busting my head with a rock).Conceived mainly while Abbey worked as a ranger in Arches National Monument (now National Park), the book is, in turns, a poetic evocation of the desert, a clownish middle finger upthrust into the face of the cosmos, a tirade against middle-America, and, above all else, an uncompromising voice bawling itself hoarse on behalf of nature.
Do not misunderstand me; Abbey was no environmental activist, nor was he above decorating the Eisenhower Highways with his empty beer cans. Abbey howled for freedom; freedom from the tyranny of roads and universal access, freedom from development, freedom from the encroachment of the city and its ungainly cousin the suburb, freedom from any form of regulation or oversight... up to and including laws against littering.
None of this has ever prevented the old iconoclast from becoming a patron saint of the environmental movement. Nor should it have done. Perhaps he littered the roads, but I love the cranky old bastard all the same. But for Abbey, how would I -- or any other member of my generation -- know what was lost when they flooded Lake Powell? Resist much, obey little.
Check this one out, then drink a toast to Cactus Ed. Out of a can.
Book Review: Enjoyable and entertaining but not much Natural History
Summary: 3 Stars
You've got to admire a man known as the quintessential evironmentalist who writes so gleefully about trashing nearly everyplace he goes. This book is above all humorous and that by itself would make this book enjoyable. Abbey is also a good story-teller. And Abbey is a good naturalist also.
The book chronicles a few seasons Abbey spends as a seasonal ranger in Arches National Monument (now a Park). Abbey describes the environs adequately but in no great depth. What is fascinating is how Abbey relates to the environment and how he interacts with it. Also included are a few other excursions like his float trip down Glen Canyon prior to its flooding by the dam.
My favorite parts are the dumb things Abbey does in the environment. Maybe Abbey is saying that is why we need wilderness. We need someplace to lay naked in the sun, burn down, carve initials into trees, or to get away from tourists. My favorite story is when Abbey lights a wildfire in Glen Canyon with his careless bumbling and runs and jumps on his raft just as the flames roar up to the beach. And Abbey seems to enjoy trashing the environment whenever possible doing stunts like rolling old tires into the Grand Canyon (through a mule train) and continually laying naked out in the boondocks somewhere. He also likes carving his initials in various places. His antics with the tourists who seem to bother him in spite of his job being to help them are priceless. There is also a humorous account of being a part of a search for a missing (and dead and bloated) tourist.
All in all, an amusing read more for the insight into Abbey than into the places he visited. And let me also throw in a quote from Abbey's intro. "The time passed extremely slowly, as time should pass, with the days lingering and long, spacious and free as the summers of childhood. There was time enough for once to do nothing...". Anyone who can think and write like that deserves to be read.