Edward Abbey and the Desert Worth Protecting

Edward Abbey had a gift for making the Utah desert feel alive on the page. He also had a gift for making people uncomfortable. Both are part of his legacy.

Abbey spent the summers of 1956 and 1957 working as a ranger at what was then Arches National Monument. Those seasons became the foundation for Desert Solitaire, published in 1968. The book is a treasure: part memoir, part love letter to canyon country, and part warning about what can happen when we make wild places too easy to consume.

Writing about Delicate Arch, Abbey captured something that visitors still feel when they see it for the first time:

The beauty of Delicate Arch explains nothing, for each thing in its own way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the sense and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful — that which is full of wonder.

Abbey worried that roads, development, and what he called “industrial tourism” would change the places people came to experience. He helped give generations of readers a language for defending desert wilderness, even as Arches grew from a quiet monument into a world-famous park. His impact was not a single protected acre we can point to; it was the conviction he helped inspire that these landscapes deserve care.

We can value that contribution without pretending Abbey got everything right. His writing about women could be sexist and objectifying. It is fair to wonder whether he would have lasted long in today’s culture of public accountability; his misogynistic views would rightly draw criticism. That criticism need not keep us from reading Desert Solitaire. It asks us to read with our eyes open.

For those of us lucky enough to live in or visit Utah’s canyon country, Abbey’s most useful challenge remains close at hand: slow down, pay attention, and leave the land worthy of the next person’s sense of wonder.