January 29: Edward Abbey, the American essayist, novelist, and environmentalist,
was born on this day in 1927. Larry McMurtry's description of Abbey as
"the Thoreau of the American West" alludes to the prickly manner in
which Abbey spoke out on the disappearance and commercialization of public
lands, or on our dwindling concern over this process. There was no cabin
reclusion in Abbey's life, but his time as a Park Ranger in what is now Arches
National Park, near Moab, Utah, produced Desert
Solitaire, often described as his Walden book:
There are several ways of
looking at Delicate Arch. Depending on your preconceptions you may see the
eroded remnant of a sandstone fin, a giant engagement ring cemented in rock, a
bow-legged pair of petrified cowboy chaps, a triumphal arch for a procession of
angels, an illogical geological freak, a happening—a something that happened
and will never happen quite that way again, a frame more significant than its
picture, a simple monolith eaten away by weather and time and soon to
disintegrate into a chaos of falling rock.... 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 ("Goldangit Katherine, where's 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. You may
therefore find proof for or against His existence. Suit yourself.... If
Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the
odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of its ruts
of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful—that which
is full of wonder.
Abbey took on pedestrian
topics as well. The following is from "Walking," one of the essays in
The Journey Home:
Life is already too short
to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets
anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You
have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future
for us in which distance is annihilated. To be everywhere at once is to be
nowhere forever, if you ask me.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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