Edward Abbey

(October, 1967--San Francisco) Yes--even after my death you shall not escape me. Reincarnate, I'll follow you in the eyes of every hawk, every falcon, vulture, eagle that soars in whatever sky you walk beneath, all the earth over, everywhere.

In this age of Kindle and iPad and e-books, I write by hand, on little notepads, in my car. I have written in my car since I was 22 and working on my first novel. Then, the car was a broken-down pale green Fiat. I sat in the driver's seat while my then-husband worked on it in our gravel driveway, yelling at me to pump the brakes or start the engine. Now I write in my 2009 Honda CRV while waiting in the high school parking lot for my youngest, or even at the curb in front of my house - the way Raymond Carver used to - before I go inside.

Give me silence, water, hope. Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes. -- PABLO NERUDA * Strange to think of him now hiding out in the mysterious canyons of the Colorado Plateau like some solitary prospector from a B. Traven novel.

The Grand Canyon Reader Edited by Lance Newman University of California Press: 256 pages, $50, $19.95 (paper) The vicarious pleasure of armchair travel is a well-explored genre for books, transporting the reader without ever opening a door. What such books do, when they are thoughtfully presented, is to share the excitement and immediacy of exploration while sparing the reader the discomfort. In "The Grand Canyon Reader," Lance Newman's editing challenge was to illuminate an iconic place while offering a glimpse of something new. There is no lack for musings on the subject.

Regarding the value of wilderness ("Finding Wilderness," by Frank Clifford, Nov. 30), perhaps Henry David Thoreau and Edward Abbey expressed it best. Abbey said: "I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving." He also said: "Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so." William E. Mooz Santa Monica

Edward Abbey, the irreverent writer and impassioned environmentalist whose popular books perpetuated their author's dream of seeing "the whole American West made into a wilderness," has died in Tucson. The man dubbed "the Thoreau of the American West" by "Lonesome Dove" author Larry McMurtry died Tuesday at his home at age 62 of internal bleeding caused by a circulatory disorder, said Jack Macrae, a friend who also is editor-in-chief of Henry Holt & Co., Abbey's publisher.

Edward Abbey lives in the Sonoran desert, surrounded by things he loves--and, increasingly, by things he hates. When the 60-year-old author of such cult classics as "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and "Desert Solitaire" moved to this 4 1/2-acre lot 10 years ago, the city of Tucson hovered in the distance like a brick-and-steel mirage. Now civilization is closing in on Abbey, whose latest collection of essays, "One Life at a Time Please," is due out this month.

THE SAND SUCKS ME IN to my knees where I step, my boots dropping deeply into some kangaroo rat's living room. The scent of blooming primrose and verbena burdens an evening breeze, rose-sweet and heady, a contradiction in this desert place where El Camino del Diablo -- the Devil's Highway -- slashes across the underbelly of Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

"There are two kinds of poisonous lizards out West," Edward Abbey once wrote. "Gila monsters and real estate speculators." In a writing style that has been compared to both Thoreau and Twain, Abbey aimed barbs at any number of folks, from Western cattlemen grazing their herds on public land ("nothing more than welfare parasites") to fellow "nature" writers who were, to Abbey's mind, too mystically inclined ("gushing about finding God in every bush").

Finally, after 15 long years, the Monkey Wrench Gang's all here. Doc Sarvis, he's a pediatrician up in Salt Lake City; Bonnie Abbzug, she's his wife now, a mother too, and pregnant with a second child; Seldom Seen Smith, he's working as a guide, still got three wives; George Washington Hayduke, well, some say he's dead, but actually he's the bag lady right over there at that table in the cheap cafe.

EDWARD ABBEY never took half measures. A champion of personal freedom over the tyranny of corporate perfidy and group-think, a lover and vocal defender of the unspoiled Western landscape, the novelist and essayist, who died in 1989 at age 62, was a full-bore insurrectionary in his life and art. That zealousness produced a rather large corpus of books, some of them better than others.

THE SAND SUCKS ME IN to my knees where I step, my boots dropping deeply into some kangaroo rat's living room. The scent of blooming primrose and verbena burdens an evening breeze, rose-sweet and heady, a contradiction in this desert place where El Camino del Diablo -- the Devil's Highway -- slashes across the underbelly of Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Re "Wild Man" (May 18): It's been far too long since I've pored through "Desert Solitaire." It's good to be reminded that we should stand up for something that's right, something we believe in. Andrew Haystead Ventura In Edward Abbey's writings, I found a compadre in ideals and attitudes -- a brother-in-arms against environmental terrorism by government, industry and greed. J. B. Litvak Costa Mesa

An empty chair threw its shadow across the meadow: a tall-backed, scuffed, swivel writing chair, looming in its emptiness. The writing chair was one that Edward Abbey used. And when you know that, you can understand how long and how broad the shadow was. Only rarely, once every few generations or so, a figure rises to stand above others as inspirational guardian of America's defining heritage -- its raw, open outdoors.

For ME, DISCOVERING Ed Abbey was the spiritual equivalent of having Moby Dick breach in my living room, sloshing a shock of cold water into my sleepy eyes and sending big cresting waves rolling out and out in endlessly widening rings of people and epiphany and connection that continue to oxygenate and invigorate my life 15 years after the writer's death. "What was Abbey really like?" As a friend of the cigar-puffing, wolf-grinning, infamous "Cactus Ed," I get asked that question a lot.

Regarding the value of wilderness ("Finding Wilderness," by Frank Clifford, Nov. 30), perhaps Henry David Thoreau and Edward Abbey expressed it best. Abbey said: "I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving." He also said: "Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so." William E. Mooz Santa Monica

EDWARD ABBEY never took half measures. A champion of personal freedom over the tyranny of corporate perfidy and group-think, a lover and vocal defender of the unspoiled Western landscape, the novelist and essayist, who died in 1989 at age 62, was a full-bore insurrectionary in his life and art. That zealousness produced a rather large corpus of books, some of them better than others.

Between Edward Abbey's precise words describing his journeys into the wilderness, you can hear the wind careening off canyon walls, the lonely cry of a bird, a brook bubbling over rocks. There is stillness here; moments of exquisite solitude recorded with a photographer's clean, clear sense of place. Unfortunately, many of these fine moments are sandwiched inbetween repetitious kvetching and posturing, some of which can't be taken very seriously and some of which is just plain silly.

Re "Earth Could Use Friends Like Abbey," Commentary, April 21: I usually enjoy and agree with John Balzar. However, this time I couldn't understand what he was trying to say, other than he liked some guy named Edward Abbey. Out of respect for Balzar's past writing I stuck with the commentary to discover in the last paragraph what I thought was obvious to all. Balzar says the reason to be concerned about the environment is that it is good for humans to have a clean, sustainable place to live.

This is Abbey country. And Ed is on my mind. Edward Abbey died 13 years ago this spring. It's no coincidence that since his passing, the American conservation movement lost some of its grit. During Abbey's lifetime, environmentalism was an ideal broadly claimed, including by many who had no right to. Today, environmentalists are a special-interest group. The very word "environmentalism" has, by the repetitious accusation of its enemies and the aloofness of its friends, come to signify class and culture conflict.