It is not enough to fight for the land it is even more important to enjoy it. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast.a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. “Better a cruel truth,” he said, “than a comfortable delusion .“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top,” “Freedom begins between the ears,” and “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” Refusing to be linked with either the Left or the Right, he enjoyed fighting what he considered the good fight. The novel inspired the formation of the militant group Earth First!, and such sabotage in defense of the environment became known as ‘monkey-wrenching.’Ībbey, uncomfortable with his image as a counterculture environmentalist, often angered his antagonists with statements like “Society is like a stew.

The author called his book a satire others saw it as a how-to guide for destroying property. The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), the most famous of Abbey’s 20+ books, tells the story of four ecological saboteurs whose dream is to blow up Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam. His fifth novel, however, soon distanced him from the establishment. Publishers like the Sierra Club and Time-Life Books were eager for more of Abbey’s work, and (along with a fourth novel) he next wrote three non-fiction coffee table books ( Appalachian Wilderness, 1970 Slickrock, 1971 Cactus Country, 1973), filled with beautiful photography. Desert Solitaire (1968), his fourth book, made Abbey’s reputation as someone who, as Robert Redford later wrote, “positively influenced many to not only treasure our natural heritage but to fight for its preservation as well.” This non-fiction account of life as a backcountry ranger in Utah, subtitled “A Season in the Wilderness,” is a masterpiece of nature writing and philosophy. Through the 1950s and 1960s Abbey worked as a seasonal park ranger and fire lookout, and wrote three novels that attracted minor attention. (His Master’s thesis discussed “Anarchism and the Morality of Violence.”) Before long, he had moved to the Southwest, where he earned several degrees from the University of New Mexico. Edward Abbey left his family home in Home, Pennsylvania at age 17 and headed west across America, on a hitchhiking journey through the desert that, in his heart and mind, would never really end.

Edward abbey desert