I read Edward Abbey in my 20s, and he deepened my love for both the southwest deserts and nature writing. In fact, Abbey’s nonfiction is one of the biggest influences on my own writing style, not that I am anywhere near Abbey! But that’s the challenge. Painters want to be a D’Vinci or Picasso, composers a Mozart, rappers a Tupac. I want to be an Abbey.

However, my love for Abbey is deeper than that. He takes me back….way back. Abbey lived in the Southwest, as I did, and he writes about terrain I still love. He died in Tucson, where I spent a decade and his friends buried him far out in the desert. I read “Monkey Wrench Gang” again with my son while he was a teenager, in the late 90s, early 2000s.  I was teaching him to love the outdoors and to care about conservation. One time on a road trip we pretended we were the “gang”. Considering that the “gang” was the inspiration for modern-day eco-terrorists, perhaps I could have been deemed an unfit parent at the time. What kind of mother would pretend with her son that they were monkey-wrenching costly equipment-all the tools of development and destruction like earth movers and graders?  It was just a game, I swear; it is hard to entertain and educate a teenager without enlisting creativity.  Extreme challenges call for extreme solutions like role-playing Edward Abbey’s Hayduke character.  I hope to do the same role play with any future grandchildren.

That was then, but now my love for Abbey’s writing has passionately reignited after reading the “Best of Edward Abbey.”  this past spring and “All the Wild that Remains” last year ( an analysis of several great western writers and their lasting impact, if any). So, now that my love is reignited,  I will spend the rest of the summer rereading all of Abbey. Nonfiction, novels, poetry. Everything. I already have one on Kindle and ordered used copies of two others that are not on Kindle yet. By the way, if you have not read the story about Abbey’s death and burial, read this and/or read this.

Edward Abbey Quotes:

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. 

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. 

Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

Abbey the Elder