Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
Robert MacFarlane

Edward Abbey

‘My favourite book about the wilderness’ Cheryl Strayed, author of WildIn this shimmering masterpiece of American nature writing, Edward Abbey ventures alone into the canyonlands of Moab, Utah, to work as a seasonal ranger for the United States National Park Service.Living out of a trailer, Abbey captures in rapt, poetic prose the landscape of the desert; a world of terracotta earth, empty skies, arching rock formations, cliffrose, juniper, pinyon pine and sand sage. His summers become spirit quests, taking him in search of wild horses and Ancient Puebloan petroglyphs, up mountains and across tribal lands, and down the Glen Canyon by river. He experiences both sides of his new home; its incredible beauty and its promise of liberation, but also its isolating, cruel side, at one point discovering a dead tourist at an isolated area of the Grand Canyon.In his own irascible style, Abbey uses his time in the desert to meditate on the tension between nature and civilisation, and outlines a personal philosophy that would come to heavily influence the environmentalist movement. Now published in a special edition to celebrate its 50th Anniversary, this classic seems remarkably prescient, and has lost none of its power.

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Copyright (#ue7f565cc-933c-5fdd-ba01-2a3ade79b073)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018

First published in the United States by McGraw-Hill in 1968

Copyright © 1968 by Edward Abbey, renewed 1996 by Clarke Abbey

Introduction copyright © Robert Macfarlane 2018

The Estate of Edward Abbey on behalf of the Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Cover design by Ben Gardiner

Cover photograph by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Frontispiece image © Wikimedia Commons/Nikater (2002)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008283315

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008283322

Version: 2018-09-14

Dedication (#ue7f565cc-933c-5fdd-ba01-2a3ade79b073)

for Josh and Aaron

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Contents

Cover (#uf6c91eaa-b916-50f1-9243-459f32c7e37a)

Title Page (#uc980af6a-2f22-5143-a71f-aec01c13820d)

Copyright (#u8c95c185-5197-5b42-894e-7156d54df380)

Dedication (#u1ca6a20c-c8d5-5ea3-b4c7-bde4ac86ef86)

Frontispiece (#ua443d9ac-4613-5095-944b-17b7a7ed81a0)

Introduction by Robert Macfarlane (#u8fa4435d-f7da-54b9-b2b6-e470a67a1333)

Author’s Introduction (#ubd108c9f-af87-53ee-b932-57222c323873)

Epigraph (#u936f4d74-d667-5f1a-a511-faf60fe3d685)

The First Morning (#ub485ecec-bd93-5913-a012-1bfe71cd6694)

Solitaire (#u74e4c8cc-1216-52f8-90a7-20148e09a373)

The Serpents of Paradise (#ue6dc4979-e94b-5ac1-aa50-3980b24c0e28)

Cliffrose and Bayonets (#ud3596045-9df5-5f45-a0da-96bbf406f920)

Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks (#u4660971f-a168-5f50-be57-897c6eae7417)

Rocks (#litres_trial_promo)

Cowboys and Indians (#litres_trial_promo)

Cowboys and Indians Part II (#litres_trial_promo)

Water (#litres_trial_promo)

The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud (#litres_trial_promo)

The Moon-Eyed Horse (#litres_trial_promo)

Down the River (#litres_trial_promo)

Havasu (#litres_trial_promo)

The Dead Man at Grandview Point (#litres_trial_promo)

Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert (#litres_trial_promo)