Showing posts with label Edward Abbey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward Abbey. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Edward Abbey - The Bard of Moab, Utah - 2009

 


Book jacket for hardcover edition of Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)

Edward Abbey - The Bard of Moab, Utah

As I first read author Edward Abbey's book, "Desert Solitaire - A Season in the Wilderness”, I loved both his writing style and his subject matter. In that book, his style was simple, direct and observational; yet personal, all at once. His subject was the old Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah.
 
With rye humor, he wrote about the animals, plants, hoodoos and summer tourists that populated the area around Devils Garden campground. It was there, as a mid 1950’s park ranger that Abbey lived for part of two seasons. His second season ended with a train trip home to the east coast that started at “Thompson” (Springs). Can one think of a more ignominious way to leave Canyonlands than at a railroad whistle-stop on a cold, rainy night?
 
That night, one Jeep with 4-wheels spinning, drove north of Moab on Valley City Road. With the heavy rain, mud flying from the wheels and the engine floored-out, the wipers swept across the windshield just fast enough to smear the red mud away. They were late to the station and flagging down a cross-country passenger train at Thompson was rare and dangerous. With no time to take the paved road, they continued northeast, their wheels barely touching the muddy ground.
The Book Cliffs, near Thompson Springs, in Grand Valley, Utah - Click for larger image 
The driver, squinting through the muddy glass, was sad to see his friend go. The other was heading east to a promised job and money. That need drove the man back home. At Arches, he had experienced the secrets of God’s creation. Later, he was to live in Oracle, Arizona. Between his birth and death, he liked to say that his life took him from Home to Oracle. Now he paid the stationmaster to stop the Zephyr and get him onboard.
 
Thompson Springs had no Fred Harvey restaurant or luxury hotel. It had one diner, one motel and one eternal wellspring of water, which accounts for half its name. Few passengers ever boarded a Union Pacific passenger train at Thompson Springs. The small stop was used mostly to ship cattle or Fruit to market. Situated half way between Green River, Utah and Grand Junction, Colorado, Thompson Springs could just as well have been half way to nowhere.
 
While the bearded man pressed five dollars into the stationmaster’s hand, the eastbound California Zephyr had already passed both sets of green lights. At that moment, no one on the train expected to stop at Thompson Springs.
Front entrance, the former Edward Abbey House, Moab, Utah - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.cxom) 
With throttles wide open, the eastbound Zephyr pulled the grade on approach to the old station. The thrum of the engine and the glare of the headlight shot through the night sky. With a touch of W.C. Fields ringing in his voice, the stationmaster declared, “Sir, there is no time to waste. You are leaving here on that train”. As a powerful wavering light filled the depot, the stationmaster realized that the train was about to pass them by. With one hand he shoved the five dollars deep into his pocket, and with the other he threw a lever, activating the red lights on the station platform.
 
Seeing red, the engineer of the Zephyr had no choice but to shut down the throttles and actuate the air-brakes in full emergency mode. As massive brake shoes applied friction to each steel wheel, the engine of the aluminum-clad streamliner shot past the passenger platform. Grinding, creaking, and then shuddering, the engine came to a halt in a cottonwood grove beyond the station. “Peace at last, peace at last”, was all that the U.P. engineer managed to say. Luckily, the train was comprised of ten cars, so Abbey could board the last car, which by then stood creaking at the far end of the platform. 
The Moab Rim, from the former Edward Abbey House on Spanish Valley Drive, Moab, UT - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) 
As a town, Thompson Springs survives to this day for only one reason, which is water. As strange as it may seem, at Thompson Springs there is free flowing water in the desert. Even now, residents can pull up to the town's water dispensing station and fill truck-mounted water tanks as needed. "Be sure to shut off the valve when you are done", reads a nearby sign. First used to support cattle and sheep ranching, the springs later made a reliable water-stop for steam locomotives. As Abbey so eloquently decried in Desert Solitaire, the West was changing. When his train departed Thompson Springs that rainy, autumn night, its gleaming silver locomotive no longer required water-stops. The diesel-electric motors powering its drive-wheels made Thompson Springs obsolete.
 
In Edward Abbey’s early writings, a prescient reader may spot evidence of both his inconsistencies and his growing discontent. A serial monogamist, Abbey married often and spent money freely on such icons of consumption as a red 1975 Eldorado Cadillac convertible. Like the pamphleteers of our early union, Abbey used his wit and his pen to wage metaphorical war against despoilers of the desert he loved.
Book Jacket from the hardcover edition of Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) 
First published in 1968, Desert Solitaire elevated Edward Abbey to celebrity status, especially in Moab and the Spanish Valley. In 1974, drawing on his proceeds, Abbey bought a home at 2260 Spanish Valley Drive. There, he reputedly wrote his breakthrough novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang. I use the word “reputedly”, but not to impugn or malign the memories of Abbey’s family, friends and neighbors. Publication of The Monkey Wrench Gang occurred in 1975. Is it reasonable to assume that Edward Abbey could write, then have edited and published his opus in one year’s time?
 
Thirty years after his death, if we were to poll current Moab residents regarding Edward Abbey’s legacy, half would love him and half would revile him. If Abbey were to return today, his spirit might align more closely with those who hate him than with those who love him. Abbey was never one to take himself too seriously. His style of self-deprecating humor compares well to Will Rogers or Mark Twain.
 
The Abbey House, as locals call it, is currently on the market for under $300,000. Although the house and grounds need some repair, the current owner has done what she can to maintain a mid-century home with style and grace. The day I visited Abbey's Shrine, there were candles lit upon the mantle. The grounds and outbuildings may look like a Tennessee Williams stage set transported to the desert, but then again, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.
Living room fireplace, the former Edward Abbey House, Moab, Utah - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) 
Whether new owners repair the house or tear it down, we hope that all future custodians of the property will conserve and retain its large stone fireplace. Local stone, chosen for its pattern, texture and color dominates the outdoor wall of the front entry. Inside, the opposite face of the same structure makes up the fireplace and living room wall. Hearkening back to a time when firewood heated most local homes, stone vents above the hearth circulate warm air into the room.
 
That hearth, as its heart, architecturally defines the Abbey House. If tomorrow, a tornado carried away every stick of the Abbey House, that stone fireplace would stand. Saving the heart of his former home would be monument enough to Edward Abbey, the iconoclastic author and onetime Bard of Moab.
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By James McGillis at 12:02 AM | | Comments (0) | Link

Monday, November 25, 2019

Navajo National Monument - Harmony With the Natural World - 2008


The author's rig at Sunset Campground, Navajo National Monument, Arizona - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)

The Magic Gate - Part 5

Living in Harmony With the Natural World

 
Navajo National Monument
 
In Northeastern Arizona, fifty miles south of Kayenta, we stopped at the lightly visited Navajo National Monument.  Even today, with the lure of free camping, it rarely draws a crowd.  Leaving Highway 160 during our 1965 visit, we encountered a newly paved road covering the thirteen miles to the monument.  Like most National Park Service (NPS) roads of the era, the engineers designed it for minimum impact on its environment and for speeds of less than forty-five miles per hour.  Upon arrival at the monument, we found a new visitors’ center and a campground with about thirty spaces.  The older, more rustic campground remained unimproved.
 
Navajo National Monument is a misnomer, honoring the fact that early Anglo-American visitors associated its ruins with the Navajo Nation, within which its boundaries lie.  Craig Childs, in his 2007 book, House of Rain, identifies the area’s early occupants as the “Kayenta Anasazi”.  By 1300 CE, after only fifty Wild stallion at Navajo National Monument, Arizona - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)years of occupation, the Kayenta Anasazi abandoned these, among the last of their alcove dwelling sites.  Thus, the monument’s Betatakin and Keet Seel ruins rank with Mesa Verde and Hovenweep as the last redoubts of a vanished culture.  The spring-fed, relict forests in the monument’s canyons attest to the relatively recent drying of a once abundant environment.
 
In 2008, I again visited Navajo National Monument.  While camped there, I reflected on Edward Abbey’s words about the place, as written in, Desert Solitaire.  At the time, Abbey decried what he identified as the destruction of primitive areas throughout the Southwest.  This he blamed on the U.S. Department of the Interior, which had opened many new areas to automotive visitation.  Here are his words:
 
“Navajo National Monument.  A small, fragile, hidden place containing two of the most beautiful cliff dwellings in the Southwest – Keet Seel and Betatakin.  This park will be difficult to protect under heavy visitation, and for years it was understood that it would be preserved in a primitive way so as to screen out those tourists unwilling to drive their cars over some twenty miles of dirt road.  No longer so: the road has been paved, the campground enlarged and modernized and the old magic destroyed.”
 
Edward Abbey, author, anarchistTimes change, people change, but after his death in 1989 at age 62, Abbey's consciousness on earth evolved no further.  Abbey was both a naturalist and a sometimes naturist.  His gift was an ability to describe for his readers the natural wonders of America’s deserts and the Colorado River.  As a self-proclaimed anarchist, he waxed poetic in his fight with the federal government, which he saw as either disinterested or incapable of conserving those unique and unspoiled natural resources. 
 
Although his only documented anarchistic act was to pull up some road survey stakes at Arches, Edward Abbey often receives credit for inspiring such troglodytic and destructive groups as the Earth Liberation Front.  The counterculture energies of the 1960s coalesced around protest, as exemplified by the movement against the Vietnam War and “tree-spikers” in the Northern California Redwoods.  It was an age of “pushing against”, whose legacy is with us still.  Our “wars” on poverty, terror, drugs and teenage pregnancy are but a few examples of our vain attempts to fight against that which is intangible.
View of a golden sunset, Sunset Campground, Navajo National Monument, Arizona - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) 
That morning, I sat quietly in the campground that Abbey decried as a modern abomination.  There, I opened a channel to Abbey’s non-physical consciousness.  Feeling that angst and anger at the time of his death may have trapped him in the near-earth realms, I asked his spirit to accompany me on a tour of the area.  Although there was no verbal or visual communication between us, I like to think that I allowed his spirit to see Navajo National Monument as I knew and loved it.
 
Bypassing the visitors’ center, we walked along the pathway towards the Betatakin (ledge house) Ruin, about a mile away.  In an attempt to protect these fragile alcove dwellings, the NPS placed its only Betatakin viewpoint on the rim of the canyon opposite the ruins.  If you visit, remember to take your field glasses.  Since Betatakin’s natural amphitheater amplifies sound energy, signs admonish visitors not to make loud noises.  As with the Walls of Jericho, a single loud noise could weaken or destroy this well-preserved pre-Puebloan settlement.
 
Returning on foot to Abbey’s despised campground, we found its thirty spaces artfully sited near the western edge of Sunset Mesa.  From its 7500-foot elevation, the terrain falls away gently for fifty miles, all the way to Lake Powell, Arizona.  The aptly named Sunset Campground provides among the longest views in the Four Corners.
Author Jim McGillis,  while traveling in the High Southwest, Colorado Plateau - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) 
Even today, the campsites accommodate rigs no longer than thirty feet, so the larger RVs must go elsewhere.  Tap water is available, but there is no store, public shower or RV sanitary dump.  During his two summers at the old Arches National Monument, Abbey lived in a thirty-foot house trailer.  I smiled in disbelief that his spirit might wish to deny others a brief but similar physical experience in this beautiful place.
 
Later, as I drove away from Navajo National Monument, I reflected on the term “arrested decay”, coined to describe preservation activities at Bodie, a ghost town in California.  By limiting direct access to these sites, the NPS has done what it can to arrest the decay of ruins at Navajo National Monument.  From its visitors’ center to the roads, trails and campground, the NPS seems to have listened to Edward Abbey’s spirit.  After its 1960s improvements, the monument has changed very little over the past forty-five years.
 
As I departed Navajo National Monument, I found myself in agreement with Abbey on one thing.  Despite its supposed ruination in his time, I hoped that this serene and beautiful place would enjoy its current state of arrested decay long into the future.  Thank you, Edward Abbey for the true spirit of your work
 
 The Santa Fe Railroad, old Route 66 Magic Gate, Flagstaff, Arizona - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)
In 1965, after two weeks in the Four Corners, my father and I again crossed through the magic gate, represented by the Santa Fe Railroad grade crossing at Flagstaff.  From there, we retraced our route back to Los Angeles.  After returning home, I entered my senior year in high school, then on to college and work life.  For the next forty years, as did our old snapshots, memories of the Four Corners faded from my mind.
 
Each year since 2004, I have made it a point to travel and live for a time somewhere in the Four Corners.  While writing this personal history at my home, near Los Angeles, I could feel the Four Corners calling to me.  Three months from now, I shall pack my belongings and enter again through the magic gate to what some call Indian Country and others call the Four Corners.

By James McGillis at 01:05 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Friday, November 22, 2019

The Spirit of Edward Abbey Returns to Navajo National Monument - 2008


Author Edward Abbey (Photo, Terrence Moore)

The Spirit of Edward Abbey Returns to Navajo National Monument

On June 1, 2008, I decamped from the idyllic Navajo National Monument in Northeast Arizona and headed for Simi Valley, California.  Before leaving the monument, I reflected on Edward Abbey’s words in his classic book about Arches National Monument, Desert Solitaire, first published in 1968. At the time, Abbey decried what he saw as the destruction of primitive areas throughout the Southwest, as many of them opened to automobile tourism. Here are his words:

"Navajo National Monument. A small, fragile, hidden place containing two of the most beautiful cliff dwellings in the Southwest – Keet Seel and Betatakin. This park will be difficult to protect under heavy visitation, and for years it was understood that it would be preserved in a primitive way so as to screen out those tourists unwilling to drive their cars over some twenty miles of dirt road. No longer so: the road has been paved, the campground The Campground at Navajo National Monument accommodates travel trailers up to nineteen feet in length - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)enlarged and modernized and the old magic destroyed."

Times change, people change, but upon his death in 1989 at the age of 62, Abbey’s consciousness on earth evolved no more. Abbey was primarily a naturalist, with a gift for description of our North American deserts and woodlands. Secondarily, as an anarchist and anarcho-communist, he waxed poetic on fighting the federal government, as exemplified by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), The National Park Service (NPS) and the Department of Interior (DOI) in general. Although his greatest anarchistic act up to that point was to pull up some road survey stakes at Arches National Park in Utah, Abbey often gets credit as the inspiration for such troglodytic and destructive groups as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

Sunset at Sunset Campground, Navajo National Monument - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)The dominant energies of the 1960s coalesced around protest, as exemplified by the movement against the Vietnam War and the "tree-spikers" in the Northern California Redwoods. It was an age of "pushing against", whose legacy haunts us still. Self-righteous and well-meaning protesters may burn an animal science laboratory only to find that that they burned the wrong laboratory. Extreme "Right to Lifers" see no irony in their active support for a "Death Penalty".   

I sat quietly that morning in the campground that Abbey saw as a modern abomination and opened up a channel to his non-physical consciousness. Feeling that he was stuck in a near-Earth realm by the angst and anger he still felt at the time of his death, I asked him to accompany me in a tour of the area. Although there was no verbal or visible communication between us, Sunset at Sunset Campground, Navajo National Monument, Arizona - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)I allowed him to see the place as I saw and loved it.

Bypassing the small visitors’ center, we walked along the crudely paved pathway towards the Betatakin (ledge house) Ruin, less than a mile away. In a desire to protect these fragile cliff dwellings, the NPS placed its only Betatakin viewpoint several hundred yards away on the opposite side of the canyon. Signs admonish visitors not to make loud noises, as Betatakin’s natural amphitheater amplifies sound waves. The loud voice of a careless visitor could weaken or destroy parts of the well-preserved pre-Puebloan settlement.

Navajo National Monument is a misnomer, honoring the fact that early non-natives who studied it associated its ruins with the Navajo Nation, within which its boundaries lie. There are, however, no Navajo ruins at Navajo National Monument. Craig Childs, in his book House of Rain identifies the Canyon near Betatakin Ruin, Navajo National Monumentearly occupants as the "Kayenta Anasazi". Abandoned as these sites were, around 1300 CE, after as little as fifty years of occupation, Betatakin and Keet Seel rank with Mesa Verde and Hovenweep as last redoubts of a vanishing culture. The spring-fed relict forests in the monument’s canyons attest to the general drying of a once abundant environment, thus contributing to the brevity of human occupation in the area.

Returning on foot to what Abbey denigrated as a modern campground, we found its thirty spaces nicely sited on a 7300 ft. elevation mesa that offers spectacular sunset views. The spaces accommodate trailers of up to thirty feet, but the larger fifth-wheel and Class-A RVs must go elsewhere. There was water available, but no store, showers or sanitary dump. Having lived in a trailer home less than thirty feet in length for his two summer seasons in Arches National Park, I smiled at the thought that Abbey might wish to deny others a brief but similar pleasure in this beautiful place.

As I drove away from the campground, I reflected on the term "arrested decay", first coined to describe the preservation activities at Bodie, a ghost town in the high desert of California. The NPS has arrested the decay of the ruins at Navajo National Monument largely by limiting direct access to the sites. From the visitors’ center to the roads, trails and campgrounds at Inside Keet Seel Ruin, Navajo National MonumentNavajo National Monument, the NPS seems to have listened to Edward Abbey’s ghost. Once established in the 1960s, these improvements have changed little, if at all in the past forty years.

I find myself in agreement with Abbey on one thing. Despite its supposed ruination in his time, as I departed I secretly hoped that this serene and beautiful place would enjoy its current state of arrested decay long into the future.

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By James McGillis at 04:51 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link