Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Robert MacFarlane

      

      

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      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

      for Josh and Aaron

      

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Frontispiece

       Introduction by Robert Macfarlane

       Author’s Introduction

Epigraph

The First Morning

Solitaire

The Serpents of Paradise

Cliffrose and Bayonets

Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks

       Rocks

       Cowboys and Indians

       Cowboys and Indians Part II

       Water

       The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud

       The Moon-Eyed Horse

       Down the River

       Havasu

       The Dead Man at Grandview Point

       Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert

       Episodes and Visions

       Terra Incognita: Into The Maze

       Bedrock and Paradox

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       Introduction by Robert Macfarlane

      Midway through this magnificent, maddening, abrasive, lyrical, lackadaisical kick-ass manifesto and dream-vision of a book, Edward Abbey describes climbing a switchback trail up from the banks of the Colorado to the high rock desert through which the river has cut its vast course. The trail is steep, the day hot and Abbey becomes so thirsty that he sucks damp sand in an attempt to extract its moisture. Nevertheless, he persists in his ascent – and at last emerges on the surface of a rolling plain of cross-bedded sandstone, where he is rewarded with the view for which he has been hoping. To the north-west he can see the island-mesa of the Kaiparowits Plateau and the descending levels of Grand Staircase-Escalante; away to his east are the salmon-pink buttes and hidden canyons of Bears Ears.

      Abbey revels in what is concealed as well as what is revealed: he walks out to an isolated point, realises he can see no evidence of human presence bar his own sweating body, and stands there – listening to the immense silence, watching the ‘heat waves rising from the naked rock’. It is one of the many scenes in the book where Abbey ritually