I first read Desert Solitaire as a college student. Bored with my term paper on the thematic concerns of the Victorian poets (memo to Matthew Arnold: it couldn't hurt to do some partying every now and then!), I longed for spring break and the possibility of libertine landscapes. The front cover of Desert Solitaire, with its wild canyonland panorama, caught my eye. Turning the pages, I found myself engrossed in a narrative that appealed to my incipient literary ambitions. Because of course English majors fancy themselves as writers, I thought that I could begin my own career in a fashion similar to Abbey--work for the BLM, live in a cabin, and write about adventures with my off-the-grid acquaintances. Like a heat mirage shimmering on a desert road, the idea dissipated when subjected to close scrutiny. Did I really want to uproot my L.A. life for the dust and loneliness of desert mesas? I had a band, I had a girlfriend, I had the beach with its delicious prospect of summertime south swells. The strings on our hearts. . .
Now, over two decades later, I find myself once again enchanted by the scenes, sentiments, and descriptions which Abbey brands with poetic fire upon the page. A Whitman of the desert, Abbey presents a narrative that calls to the soul like a barbaric yop echoing through the canyon of the Colorado. Consider the following imagistic indulgence:
"We shove our boats once again into the water, climb aboard and paddle slowly out of the Escalante's womb, back to the greater world of Glen canyon. . .Keeping to the shady side, we drift down the splendid river, deeper and deeper in to the fantastic. The sandstone walls rise higher than ever before, a thousand, two thousand feet above the water, rounding off on top as half domes and capitols, golden and glowing in the sunlight, a deep radiant red in the shade. . .beyond these mighty forms we catch occasional glimpses of eroded remnant--tapering spires, balanced rocks on pillars, mushroom rocks,, rocks like piles of melted pies. . .arches, grottoes, all the infinite variety of hill and hole and hollow to which sandstone lends itself. . ."
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Abbey Country, July 2016. Photo: S. Jacques Stratton
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A compelling element of Desert Solitaire is the way the landscape serves a dual role, providing both springboard for Abbey's philosophical musings and emerging as one of the book's principal characters. Since the idea of nature as both setting and character helped guide the crafting of my own travel memoir, I readily recognize the motif in the work of others--though I admit Abbey takes it to a more polished and poetic level than I accomplish in Islands on the Fringe.
If desert splendor provides Abbey's primary muse, the BLM policy (in particular its plan to usher in a new era of industrial tourism) provides the primary antagonist, threatening to bring roads, dams, and the internal combustion (to Abbey, the "infernal combustion") engine into the sublime wonder of the canyonlands. Sadly, Abbey's vision of doom proved prescient; the Glen Canyon grottoes Abbey once marveled at now lie underwater, buried by Lake Powell and its attendant houseboat flotillas. Much like Abbey's poetic prose, Abbey's lamentations for lost nature resonate with me, and pique my nostalgia for once-empty waves now trammeled by commercial surf tourism. Of course, two decades into the 21st century, an uncritical sentimentalism for "the way it was" ranks among the most cliched forms of nostalgia. But consider that as recently as the eve of the millennium, one could spend a season surfing a wave now regarded as the world's best right and share it with only one or two others (I know because I lived it). Or consider that as recently as ten years ago, the perfect reefs of Blue Lagoon in Norther Luzon spun their typhoon swell magic for only a handful of seekers. It took only the dollar dreams of a Filipino and his government connection to bring, in just a few short years, a post-apocalyptic vision of tourist hell to the once-sleepy coves.
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| One Filipino's vision of "development." Blue Lagoon, Northern Luzon in 2019. Photo: S. Jacques Stratton |
Thankfully, I know a few places that, like the more isolated corners of Abbey's canyonlands, still offer the consolation of nature. It's still a big ocean for the surf traveler. . .for now.
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Sumatra Solitaire, July 2014. To the money-minded, that's some prime beachfront real estate. . .Photo : S. Jacques Stratton
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