“A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, power lines, and right-angled surfaces. There are other vignettes about his work as a seasonal ranger - a search and rescue mission, river-running, his view about cowboys, Indians and Mormons, an escape from quicksand, even the limited social thrill of escaping Arches for a few days, to the environs of Moab.Ībbey believed that modern man needed wilderness: The Developers, the dominant faction, place their emphasis on the words ‘provide for the enjoyment.’ The Preservers, a minority but also strong, emphasize the words ‘leave them unimpaired.’ It is apparent then, that we cannot decide the question of development versus preservation by a simple referral to holy write or an attempt to guess the intention of the founding fathers we must make up our own minds and decide for ourselves what the national parks should be and what purpose they should serve.” The Park Service, like any other big organization, includes factions and factions. “The Park Service, established by Congress in 1916, was directed not only to administer the parks but also to ‘provide for the enjoyment of same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.’ This appropriately ambiguous language, employed long before the onslaught of the automobile, has been understood in various and often opposing ways ever since. Long before there were controversies about snowmobiles in Yellowstone, Abbey asked the key question: what are the national parks for?

That experience led to “Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness,” an extended essay of eloquence, anger, provocation and wit as dry as the slickrock country he loved.Ībbey evokes the stark beauty and grandeur of red-rock country, champions the cause of wilderness and howls like a banshee about the unrestrained commercialization of the outdoors by what he termed “industrial tourism.”Īnd this was decades before the explosive growth of motorized recreation, or monster traffic jams that clogged iconic national parks like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and yes, Zion.Ībbey decried the tendency of tourists at Arches to never, ever leave the comfort of their cars, to hike out into the slickrock country and experience something wild, something primitive, something real and unmediated by commerce. For three summers in the 1950s, Edward Abbey (1927-89) was a seasonal ranger at Arches National Monument, in southeastern Utah.

The Bach Reader by Hans T. David