Some comments on Ed Abbey:

“I was amazed and a little embarrassed as a strange emotion welled up from the heart, obstructing the larynx and troubling my eyes… a wave of homesickness and loneliness, yet more than that – an immense and inordinate and tearful tragic pride in my land, my country, America, sweet land of liberty; immense and inordinate with a profound and swelling love of the physical land, of the towns and farms, of the many folks I know – tragic with a sense of America as a promise yet far from complete, far from complete, far from realization, and as a dream menaced by ugliness and by mean little enemies masquerading as defenders of that dream and armed now with the most awful POWER the world has ever known.”

December 15, 1951 - Edinburgh
Confessions of a Barbarian, Journal IV

It seems to me that Abbey’s experiences with his favorite topics of discussion, from wilderness and literature to money, property and power, while certainly gathered to some degree by his travels throughout the world, are nevertheless rooted in how he perceived their manifestations in America. It is the land in which Abbey cultivated much of his character, as a vibrant blend of wilderness man, writer, father, and audacious social commentator. While Abbey’s perspective of America was certainly polarized between pride and revulsion, it was far less contradictory than it may seem at first. Edward Abbey understood, or more likely felt, a terrible incongruity between America’s potential for true equality, justice, and beauty, and its failure to achieve these aspirations in the way he imagined.

The relentless march of development in America was clearly one of the focal points for Abbey’s criticisms. It was more than just a direct threat to the landscapes he so appreciated; it seemed a nearly omnipotent force, driven by a non-negotiable pursuit of profit that implied the eventual and total annihilation of the land’s resources. This central object of his derision is not so difficult to discern. His recognition of the human influence that drove the paving of the American southwest was however far more subtle, and seemingly more difficult for him to approach. His mention of this at the end of the passage above, in such colorful language, exhibits his early puzzlement in regards to it. Who, he must have once wondered, was responsible for driving the dagger of industry into the heart of the wilderness? The unfortunate answer, it seems, is everyone: from politicians to bulldozer operators to the more implicit actors, like the tourists in national parks and others who failed to notice what exactly was being irretrievably lost. This led Abby further, to consider the grand scheme of development within the sphere of capitalism, of modern politics, of technological progression and of rapid and unprecedented change in the world, the swirling concoction of habitual exploitation he described in Down the River as the “expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – the crackpot machine – that the specialist cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage”. I believe that Abbey was deeply angered and deeply saddened by a vision of America’s future, bound to the blindly spinning gears of a grand and sturdy contrivance, threatening to roll itself and the world he cherished into oblivion.

Abbey was not discouraged by the sprawling juggernaut, but chose instead to thrash his entire being against it, as waves against a cliff, to begin the process of disintegration, and to protect the things he loved. America, though the source of great disappointment to Abbey, was also the font of all things worth defending. America, the home too of those still honest bright-eyed sons and daughters, of marvelous and heavenly vistas, and of the sacred animals who tread upon the earth’s soil long before steel was struck from flame. Abbey saw, looming far greater than the machine he hated, a future in which these things prevailed. He saw also in America the all-important promise of hope, the hope of a future that, if there were any equality, justice, and beauty to be had at all, must inevitably triumph. And so, Edward Abbey, though he hated the America he saw emerging, still urged us to “enjoy our great American west – climb those mountains, explore those forests, and share in the bounty of wilderness, friendship, love, and the common effort to save what we love”, perhaps in the ultimate faith that it might be enough.

“Fond of America, proud of her, curious and hopeful about her future, I nevertheless renounce America… I pledge my allegiance to the human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.”

June 9th, 1952 – Dorchester
Confessions of a Barbarian, Journal VI