Desert Solitaire and Why I Hate It
Lately in conjunction with out new podcast coming out I have been reading up on some of the big names in naturalism. I’ve read a few modern authors who I some bones to pick with and I’ve been working my way through biographies about and works by more historic figures. The OG influencers of the outdoor and sportsman communities if you will. Now if you were privy to my scathing report on “Walden” you will know that I have some feelings about colonialism, capitalism, and the genocide of Native peoples.
“Dessert Solitaire” is written by Edward Abbey. It is a series of essays and journal entries from his time with the National Parks Service around 1958 and was published in 1968. It is set in and around the area of Arches National Park in south eastern Utah near Moab. Abbey is part of the resurgence in naturalist and conservation that happened in the 50s and 60s, that created a new fervor for America’s wild spaces. And after reading Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac” I was excited to enter a world of literature that focused more on the preservation of beauty. The book starts off as your average “get away from civilization” “the society is evil” manifesto that so many of its ilk do. Abbey talks long about his rustic living situations as a park ranger, his mice roommate, and an in-depth opinion on types of snake. He even discusses the novelty of having water trucked into him for the summer, which as a long-time water hauler of 20 years I can tell you that stops being fun about the first time your set up freezes solid and your out in sub zero weather with a heat gun trying to fill a cistern so you can shower the hypothermia away.
We were off to a decent start. I’m vibing with what he’s laying down, tourists do suck, and the desert is hot. Granted I’m reading this 60 years after publication its sentiments that are shared among many in the mountain west. Now there are some spots in the first half of the book that left me a little “ehhh”. His lack of true understanding of the flora around him for starters. Claiming various medicinal plants as worthless and calling BS on being able to sustain water from barrel cactus. I have grown used to these types of problems as an adult where ancestral knowledge I’ve had passed down is by and large discredited by the colonizing force. In fact, I read another book about Ethnobotany by Robin Wall Kimmerer that touched on all those points so well I cried. (Review of that book coming soon as well.) So, I could not fault Abbey too much for that, after all he was a temporary transplant. Overall, his depictions of the Arches come across beautifully and he paints marvelously with words the serenity of the desert. Then things took a hard turn.
This is the longest I have spent listening to an audio book since I started listening to them a couple years ago. “Why?” You ask, “did it take you the better part of 4 days to make it through a 9-hour audiobook?” Well, the answer is simple, trauma. The whole book is very ableist and very much pro-colonialism, as you expect from its era. This should have prepared me; I should have seen the fore shadowing from the prologue. But I was woefully unprepared for the two-part essay Cowboys and Indians. “Is it the false framing of these two parties as mortal enemies that bothers you?” Yes, but also shockingly no. It is the nearly 2 hours of audio where Abbey explains that the genocide of the Navajo (and by extension all Natives) is both in the best interest of the American economy and of the Natives themselves! And we are not talking about the already horrific cultural genocide that is forced assimilation. No, we’re also discussing COMPULSARY BIRTH CONTROL. To say I was not prepared for a post-Civil Rights pro-genocide manifesto is putting it lightly. I had to pause my reader every 20 minutes to deal with the sheer amount trauma. Abbey’s stance on this matter is mentioned nowhere! I’ve heard many sources recommend his work to me and nobody brought up “By the way, he thinks you should be wiped from the face of the earth.” In the following essays or chapters, he brings up visits to several other tribes and while describing them as hospitable he also continues shit on them. Calling more assimilated youth, or those who live traditionally but support themselves via tourism “fake.” The racism is strong, and it is heady. To Abbey the only real Indians are ones in a John Wayne film, and we would better off lost to annals of history. There is no good way to be a modern Native, other than to perish. In fact, the only people he speaks of with anything other than malevolence are the Anasazi.
Do not put yourself through reading this trash. Go ahead and add Abbey to the list of canceled voices in conservation. We can do better as a movement and that includes uplifting past and present figures who were not for wiping whole civilizations off the planet just so they could pretend they knew better how to appreciate the view.