Far better to have stayed at home with the TV and a case of beer. No rapids here; only a subtle roiling of the water, ripples corresponding to the ripples on the rivers sandy bed. The photographs, Before & After, prove it. It is now late in the afternoon. But soon, he discovers the rich animal life around his trailer, even domesticating a friendly gopher snake. He loses patience first, as I felt sure he would, gets into a sling, hooks up his carabiners, runs the doubled rope around a brake bar, backs over the edge and slides out of sight. Cheerfully waving back, we drift past him and beyond his ken without the faintest intimation of regret. Rude and sensitive. One hiked up a side canyon and struck off west across-country toward the hamlet of Hanksville, some forty miles away by airline. 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. He walks down to the creek once a day for a drink. As we proceed we mark our route with pointer stones; this will be known hereafter, for a thousand years, as the Abbey-Waterman Trail. I drink some more coffee and study the dormant reptile at my heels. Have failed. The two prospectors never got through at all. When I take him outside into the wind and sunshine his favorite place seems to be inside my shirt, where he wraps himself around my waist and rests on my belt. 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. Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Moon-Eye, I said, approaching slowly, one short step, a pause, another step, how long since youve stuck that ugly face of yours into a bucket of barley and bran? At last were ready. Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelope the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, the sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time, now matter how long, somewhere, living things will emerge and join and stand once again, this time perhaps to take a different and better course. It has some, I insist. Nobody could have cared less. In the light of the stars I walk through tall, dewy grass past a stone fireplace which I remember well, for I am the one who built it, to the edge of a brook. I cut two stalks, a fat one and a thin one, and punch the pith out of the joints of the bigger one by using the smaller as a ramrod. The small-time prospector, grinding in by jeep, would arrive in time to see the helicopters of some big mining company rising skyward and the land neatly staked out in acres and acres of identical claims. They must learn the automatic smile. He sat down on the runningboard to rest, to regain his wind, and watched Husk crawling slowly toward him. He also concludes that its inherent emptiness and meaninglessness serve as the ideal canvas for human philosophy absent the distractions of human contrivances and natural complexities. A few hours later the bulk of the flood was past and gone. Thus we meditate upon the strangers death. Assuming, however, that population growth will be halted at a tolerable level before catastrophe does it for us, it remains permissible to talk about such things as the national parks. Occasionally we lay a paddle over the side, drop the blade in the water and with the slightest, most infinitesimal of exertions turn the double boat for a view in a different direction, saving ourselves the trouble somewhat greater of turning our heads or craning our necks. Words, words the problem makes me thirsty. If I could only wait, only be patient, I might yet sweettalk him into surrender. Here I stop, turn off the lights, let the motor idle for a minute and then shut it off. Industrial Tourism is a threat to the national parks. that a man can never find or need better companionship than that of himself. In my book a pioneer is a man who comes to virgin country, traps off all the fur, kills off all the wild meat, cuts down all the trees, grazes off all the grass, plows the roots up and strings ten million miles of wire. Until now. A few red ants crawled over my belly; I didnt care. Not very interesting, perhaps, but good to know, good to have as friends and neighbors. or human life in general. The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I choose to test their belief by experiment. Parallel to the highway north of Moab is a railway, a spur line to the potash mines. We rode steadily up the canyon, now and then splashing through the water, passing under the high red walls, the hanging gardens of poison ivy and panicgrass, the flowing sky. Silently I dedicate the flower to a girl I know and in honor both of her and the columbine open my knife and carve something appropriate in the soft white bark of the nearest aspen. Some of them in translucent obsidian volcanic glass, Apache tears., Lying within the bounds of a national monument, these rocks and artifacts are protected by law. A bottle of. A cairn of stones over the brass-headed benchmark of the Geodetic Survey marks the highest point and there I sit to eat my lunch, shielded from the wind by the cairn and drenched in warmth from a sun that has never seemed so close, so dazzling, in such a dark and violet sky. I had a tiny notebook in my hip pocket and a stub of pencil. Some like to live as much in accord with nature as possible, and others want to have both manmade comforts and a marvelous encounter with nature simultaneously: "Hard work. When the A.E.C.s ten-year guarantee ran out most of the independents went out with it out of business. But then its never been an easy journey. How should I know? There are times in this hot and arid place when my thirst becomes so intense I cannot seem to drink any liquid fast enough to quench it. Which is also for that matter a little bit higher, according to the surveyors. Under a wine-dark sky I walk through light reflected and re-reflected from the walls and floor of the canyon, a radiant golden light that glows on rock and stream, sand and leaf in varied hues of amber, honey, whiskey the light that never was is here, now, in the storm-sculptured gorge of the Escalante. As I sit there drinking water from cupped hands, I happen to look up and see on the opposite wall, a hundred feet above the floor of the canyon, the ruins of three tiny stone houses in a shallow cave. Because they need us. Sand becomes a part of our existence which, like breathing, we take for granted. Concealed by the flowers at this time are the leaves, small, tough, wax-coated, bitter on the tongue thus the name quinine bush but popular just the same among the deer as browse when nothing better is available buckbrush. He sleeps again., The horse is a gregarious beast, I said, a herd animal, like the cow, like the human. I range around the trailer, pick up some dead sticks from under the junipers and build a little squaw fire, for company. They propose schemes of inspiring proportions for diverting water by the damful from the Columbia River, or even from the Yukon River, and channeling it overland down into Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Only the slow swing of the canyon walls overhead and the illusory upstream flow of willows, tamarisk and boulders on the shore reveal and indicate the sureness of our progress to the sea. Furthermore we are lazy, indolent animals, Newcomb and I, half-mesmerized by the idyllic ease of our voyage; neither of us can seriously believe that very soon the beauty we are passing through will be lost. A, Most of my wandering in the desert Ive done alone. I think weve about said it all we communicate less in words and more in direct denotation, the glance, the pointing hand, the subtle nuances of pipe smoke, the tilt of a wilted hat brim. Or only teamwork again good sportsmanship? 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. The sun is rising through a yellow, howling wind. Still without a stroke the vulture rises higher, higher, in ever wider circles, until nothing can be seen of this gaunt, arrogant, repellent bird but the coal-dark V-sign of his wings against the blue dome of heaven. It has its share of nerve-tingling adventuresset down in a lean, racing prose, in a close-knit style of power and beauty.". [15] In Episodes and Visions, Abbey meditates on religion, philosophy, and literature and their intersections with desert life, as well as collects various thoughts on the tension between culture and civilization, espousing many tenets in support of environmentalism. Through sweet twilight and the sudden dazzling flare of lightning I hiked back along the Tonto Bench, bellowing the. Even if I burned my clothing the chances of the smoke being seen by some Hualapai Indian high on the south rim were very small; and if he did see the smoke, what then? Its surely after midnight but who wants to sleep? He was standing on a chair at the time. It wasnt bad. Words fail. Waiting for the fire to settle down to exactly where I want it, I spread a tarp on the ground close to the fire and place my bedroll on it for a cushion, sitting like a tailor. We finally reach the road, which I had begun to fear we would never see the death march seemed everlasting and shove stretcher and burden into the undertakers ambulance, a white Cadillac glittering with chrome and powdered with the red dust of Utah. filling my canteen. Hardly the outdoor type, that fellow much too elegant, symmetrical, formally perfect. We even supply the firewood, in the form of pinyon pine logs and old fence posts of cedar, which it will be my task to find and haul to the campgrounds. Whats up? Perhaps the tree is mad. They are in full bloom today, clusters of waxy, creamy flowers on tall stalks, supported and nourished by the rosettes of daggerlike leaves that form the base of the plant. Periodic attempts are made, therefore, by false friends of the Navajos, to have the reservation broken up under the guise of granting the Indians property rights so that they will be free to sell their only tangible possession the land to outsiders. 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