The two Edward Abbeys
By Christian Probasco, 12-21-08
“I’m not going to bombard you with graphs and statistics, which don’t make much of an impression on intelligent people anyway.”
--Edward Abbey, One Life at a Time, Please, pp14
“In 1984 the Bureau of Land Management…confessed that 31 percent of the land it administered was in ‘good condition’ and 60 percent in ‘poor condition.’ And it reported that only 18 percent of the rangelands were improving, while 68 percent were ‘stable’ and 14 percent were getting worse.”
--Edward Abbey, One Life at a Time, Please, pp15
A father of five and a supposed anarchist who admired Thoreau’s dictum, “That government is best which governs not at all,” an implacable enemy of the “Anthill State” which was a “technocratic despotism…the enemy of personal liberty, family independence, and community sovereignty,” Abbey was also an advocate for state-imposed birth control.
The protagonist of his book Brave Cowboy, Jack Burns, was an archetypical old-fashioned, freedom-loving, authority-hating, barbed-wire loathing cowboy. Abbey grew up idolizing cowboys. For a brief time, he cowboyed. But he hated cowboys. He hated the ranchers who employed them. And he once quipped that if he had enough money, he’d run off and buy a ranch.
He also hated cows but loved steak. He personally didn’t like walking. He avoided it when possible. He tore up the desert and ran down closed roads in his famously decrepit pickup truck. But when it came to the approaches of the southwest desert’s natural wonders, he wanted everybody else to walk in. He advised visitors to crawl.
He was a “hard-nosed empiricist” who believed in what he could “hear, see, smell, grab, bite into.” And he thought that the whole earth was a living being and that rocks had rights.
Abbey advocated extremism. He advocated the middle way. He was a redneck. He hated redneck values.
Abbey wasn’t a naturalist. He wasn’t an environmentalist. He didn’t know, and didn’t care to know, the meaning of the word “ecology.” He wasn’t concerned with “nature as a living museum.” Yet his writing contributed greatly to the success of the modern environmental movement.
Prolific author Wendell Berry had this to say about Abbey:
“The problem, evidently, is that he will not stay in line. No sooner has a label been stuck to his back by a somewhat hesitant well-wisher than he runs beneath a low limb and scrapes it off.”
Abbey was a complex character. He contained multitudes. He was schizoid. He was trying to speak to several audiences who had conflicting values and interests, with a heavy emphasis on two in particular: neo-Luddite environmentalists (some would say anarcho-primitivists/green anarchist) and “classical liberal” freedom-lovers. The two could only be joined together in his own soul and so his legacy heavily favors one and downplays the other.
Which vexes me, because I only seem to encounter references to Edward Abbey whenever some crusader wants to limit my access to what I’d once been told was my land. Wilderness advocates, for the most part, who have a very narrow definition of wilderness.
Take this passage of Ray Wheeler’s from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) website as an example:
“No one has better explained this highest value of the La Sals wilderness than Edward Abbey. If a piece of this region should ever become part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, it will be in some measure a tribute to his wisdom and passion and poetry, which so beautifully complements and completes the canyon country of southern Utah. For those who have read and loved Abbey’s books, some part of these mountains, this desert, will always be the Edward Abbey Wilderness.”
On another page, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, of all people, confirms Abbey’s famous “Wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders” quote, adding, “We can’t allow our wild places to become nothing more than memories.”
And on a Sierra Club page about the “Colorado Plateau Ecoregion”:
“For many, the first name that comes to mind is Edward Abbey. With Desert Solitaire, the irascible iconoclast left such an indelible literary mark that many now refer to the region as “Abbey country."” (Sic)
That’s “Abbey’s Country,” dammit! And what does the Sierra Club want to do with it? Among other things:
• Confer federal wild-and-scenic protection on remaining free-flowing rivers.
• Shift the region’s economy away from resource exploitation to sustainable development.
• Reform the Mining Law of 1872 to prevent the proliferation of new mines and reclaim abandoned mines.
• Eliminate timber sales that threaten old-growth ponderosa pine stands; do away with subsidized timber sales in all national forests.
• Require federal and state agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of all proposed development activities.
• Protect riparian areas from livestock by requiring herd rotations, fencing, and temporary range closures.
The Sierra Club and SUWA are to property rights, freedom of travel, grazing, logging, mining, four-wheeling, two-wheeling or any kind of wheeling what Ted Nugent is to animal rights, what Richard Nixon was to open government, what the Exxon Valdez was to Prince William Sound and what Dick Durbin is to the Second Amendment. What I read in the above bulleted points is: federal control of the population through water ownership, cost-prohibitive or time-prohibitive permitting processes for mining, grazing and timber harvests, prohibition of vehicular travel beyond paved roads or outside designated recreation areas, and federal permits for rural property owners to clear brush, cut trees, build additions, sink wells or plant a garden.
Abbey had another use in mind for the wilderness: a refuge from civilization. “Every man needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace,” he wrote, “Every Boy Scout troop deserves a forest to get lost, miserable and starving in. Even the maddest murderer of the sweetest wife should get a chance to run to the sanctuary of the hills.”
This is the Abbey most folks would like to forget. And he goes even further:
“…there will inevitably be a tendency on the part of the authoritarian element—always present in our history—to suppress individual freedoms, to utilize the refined techniques of police surveillance…in order to preserve—not wilderness!—but the status quo, the privileged positions of those who now so largely control the economic and governmental institutions of the United States.
“If this fantasy should become reality…then some of us may need what little wilderness remains as a place of refuge, as a hideout, as a base from which to carry on guerilla warfare against the totalitarianism of my nightmares.”
If you wanted to preserve biodiversity or open space or scenic vistas, or if you wanted to ignore or cherry-stem the roads which run everywhere through supposed “wilderness” areas or ignore the substantial imprint of man on just about every acre in the lower 48, and preserve a region which is wilderness only in the legal sense, then it might make sense from your point-of-view to use the government to separate the land from its owners. But asking the state to create and enforce the borders of the sort of wilderness Abbey is contemplating would be nonsensical. In effect, it’s asking an organization whose legitimacy you don’t recognize to limit its own authority on your behalf.
The best a criminal, scofflaw or anarchist who anticipates an armed struggle with the state could hope for would be for the government to keep “wilderness” clear of officially recognized settlements. Incorporated towns, in other words. He wouldn’t have an objection to mining, grazing or logging as long as the land itself remained in common ownership. Resource extraction can only support so many people, and once it becomes uneconomic to mine or drill, the mines and the derricks shut down and the workers leave.
An anarchist would want the wilderness and the backwoods and the tule under the authority of a weak government ruling from a distant capitol. He wouldn’t want to keep off-road vehicles out, unless they were government vehicles. He wouldn’t want to keep people out either, unless they were rangers or other law enforcement types.
Abbey would have been a perfect spokesman for the Minutemen monitoring the southern border. He was a certified gun nut and a member of the National Rifle Association; he might have had something good to say about that organization as well. If he was more of a joiner, he might have joined a militia. Or started one. But I don’t see his name mentioned very often in defense of the Minutemen, the NRA or organized militias. I do, however, often see him quoted by environmental groups co-opted by representatives of the industrial interests he despised, whose dual purpose is rent-seeking for their donors and restricting vehicular access on public lands to nothing.
Ed Abbey epitomized, and articulated, the childish "me-and-mine-only-and-nobody-and-nothing-else" mentality of environmentalism. Anyone who idolizes, or quotes, the esteemed gentleman is a few cookies short of a full box.
Comment By traildog, 12-21-08well...Dave Skinner didn't get you point, Chrstian, and to be honest...I'm not totally sure I do either...
Do you read Jim Stiles' Canyon Country Zephyr? How about Charles Bowden? I wouldn't dream of applying Abbey to any movement other than Anarcho-Syndicalism--and even that would be treacherous ground, as you imply youself: Abbey hated purity movements. You criticize people who do apply Abbey, then go on to do so yourself, claiming to know what a "real" anarchist would want.
To label an ideology is risky.
To identify one with an individual is purely a fool's game...
...And Chrstian, just have to say: if you really think Abbey would support your muddled thinking on vehicle access and if you really think Abbey hated to walk, I would suggest you restrict yourself to the continual self-victimization of "wise" users and leave Ed Abbey out of it.
Comment By Christian Probasco, 12-22-08Traildog;
I've read Charles Bowden. Follow the last link to my interview of Stiles.
That's what Abbey wrote: he didn't like to walk. He said it, not me. What I'm saying is that Abbey has been used to support ideologies he (supposedly!) didn't want to have anything to do with. He called himself an anarchist but he is being used by corporate environmentalists to further the ends of the state. Maybe, deep down, he was really a statist. That's where I can't seem to follow him.
Which part of the essay was muddled for you? I'll try to explain. And I'm not a 'wise' user, so why would I prefer their brand of victimization?
Well, Christian, Abbey did an awful lot of walking. Must have really pissed him off. The muddled part of your essay is reflected in your response to my comments. You say that Abbey is being used by corporate enviromentalists, but go on to suggest that the "real" Abbey may be reflected in those applications. That is muddled.
Comment By traildog, 12-22-08And: that was an interview?
Comment By Christian Probasco, 12-22-08Traildog;
That ain't what I said. Not even close. I never went "on to suggest," I never said the "real" Edward Abbey. Go back and read closely, please.
The Journey Home, Chapter 18, "Walking," pp203: "Whenever possible, I avoid the practice myself. If God had meant us to walk, he would have kept us down on all fours, with well-padded paws."
That's what Abbey said. ABBEY. Maybe he was pissed off, but he's dead, so we can't ask him. Don't try to make me responsible for the things that Abbey said which you don't agree with!
Abbey was a complex man. He is also a dead man. Much has changed since he took that stroll along the Milky Way (sorry that's just me using him to fit my after life desires). Which I believe is the problem here. Christ, Abbey has become like the bible. Everyone, seems to pick and choose what they want and need. I don't know what he would say about the West today. I believe it would be funny, angry, and interesting and that I would heartily agree and angrily dismiss much of it while enjoying the whole wild ride. But, I do know that when we use him to make a narrow point, we are on dangerous ground. What would Abbey do when his backcountry camp is shaken by the arrival of ATV's? I don't know. But, I'm thinking he would be sorely tempted to use that gun. Kinda like the Ranger in Glacier shooting the snow machine dead center in the metal brain pan. Course, I could be wrong.
Michael
I have read closely, Christian. Your point, your thesis, whatever it is you are trying to get across is unclear. It appears contradictory. If I read your piece closely one more time I may become ill.
I think, Christian, your writing might improve if your reading improves. You appear to plucking snippets of Abbey out of context in order to further your muddled point. Read page 205 of the piece entitled "Walking" in The Journey Home. Apparently, you don't understand that in Walking, Abbey is writing facetiously and a little satirically.
The opening quotes of your piece are also used to suggest some immediate literary "dishonesty" on the part of Abbey. If one reads the entire piece, then one understands the context the relevance of the quote. Either you did not understand it--or any of his writing, for that matter--or you are intentional misrepresenting what Abbey wrote in order to further ....what, exactly? We still are not illuminated...
If Abbey was being facetious, when was he being serious? Ever? That's what I am trying to tease out. Does he just blow himself up or did he actually try to make a point that he didn't destroy somewhere else?
Bearbait, you continue to read a whole lot into the piece that I didn't "suggest." Want the thesis? Read the title. If it appears contradictory, you are finally starting to understand what I've been saying about Abbey. I will now pluck my eyeballs out and boil them into soup. Then I have to go to work.
your writing is poor and you misrepresent what Abbey wrote. Hopefully, others who make the mistake of reading you will read Abbey for themselves. He's complicated, but he isn't difficult: there really isn't anything to tease out. i hope you aren't paid to do this.
Comment By john, 12-22-08hey traildog, you're alittle myopic about old Ed. He certainly wrote differently at different times and places. Try re-reading more slowly and open mindedly. I love his work but he was an instigator, not a saint or a prophet.
Comment By Nate Schweber, 12-22-08Hi Christian,
Thanks for your article. I don't agree with anything you say.
SO What?
Abbey was a complex character. He contained multitudes.
That is the point after all.
Hey john---I'm not being myopic, nor do I think Abbey was a saint or prophet (as far as I know, he was mostly interested in chasing girls who were drawn to his writing). Christian's article presented a literalist, MYOPIC, and, possibly, dishonest interpretation of Abbey. I've read everything Abbey published--some of it multiple times & I know plenty of people who have read it as open-minded as me, but have not yet met someone who wasn't hung up about some aspect of his writing. If Christian chose to quote Mark Twain or some other author whose writing I'm fairly familiar with out of context, or misrepresent their writing is some manner, I'd be making similar comments. Christian's claim that Abbey hated walking because he wrote it is just plain silly--especially when one reads the whole piece. Having studied all sorts of anarchal theories, I also take issue with Christian's interpretation of anarchy and what Abbey would approve of presently.
Christian should stick with updating folks on Utah media and non-profits reports--he is much better at that.
I think Ed would be thrilled that he's still stirring up $hit nearly twenty years after his death. Wonder if anyone will remember your writing twenty years after you're dead. Probably not.
Ed saw anarchism as ultimately the best way for humans to organize themselves, but also realized we have to use all the tools available to us under the current system to protect wilderness.
I always appreciated Ed's often brutal honesty. As he said "Follow the truth no matter where it leads you."
He wasn't perfect. Far from it, but who the hell is? He put it all out there, even the ugliness, and I appreciate a guy with the balls to do that. He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't.
And it's not Ed's fault militias aren't quoting him. It's probably because a lot of them haven't moved far beyond Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. Maybe the Unibomber.
Next time you go to a militia meeting, bring some Ed and have a reading!
Back from work. Obviously the elves have been busy. Let me get this straight, Twinkydog. This is what you wrote: "Christian's claim that Abbey hated walking because he wrote it is just plain silly."
What kind of reasoning is that? Am I supposed to conduct a seance to see what he really meant? I started with what the man said, in what I believe was the actual spirit of his words, as far as I could ascertain it. When you scoffed at the possibility that Abbey hated walking, I provided a direct quote proving that claim, and now you're calling me a "literalist" because I took him at face value and "possibly, dishonest" because I didn't include the whole damn chapter.
On page 205, Abbey discusses the advantages of walking despite the fact that it is, in truth, a true and unremitting pain in the ass. And I've done enough walking to know. That doesn't mean he didn't write what he, in fact, wrote. It doesn't imply he didn't mean it, either, which I'm pretty sure he did.
Abbey has a chapter on anarchy in "One Life at a Time, Please." He doesn't say anything about the government's obligation to keep the public from traveling over the land it supposedly owns.
Jack Burns--speak for yourself when you wonder whether anybody will remember your writing after you're dead. What would you know about writing anyway? You are a cutter of fences.
Christian:
Obviously New West is living up to standards of civil participation on the part of one of its own bloggers. <--That is sarcasm...get it? You must be a right-winger because when you can't argue a point you start to belittle or attack the arguer.
Since New West will let anyone who can type "write" a blog, I'm not sure there is any point in arguing with you because you are too stupid to even understand my point (or maybe too defensive?).
Abbey advocated that everyone walk more often. THAT is point of that piece: its sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, facetiousness, maybe satire, but it is not literally a diatribe against walking.
You have a fine point about Abbey's name being invoked inappropriately, but YOU take it a step further by misquoting him to further your own muddled understanding of western issues as well as western writers.
Jack Burns is right: no one will be arguing over what you meant years from now, because everyone will agree that you didn't know what you were writing about.
Traildog;
"You must be a right-winger because when you can't argue a point you start to belittle or attack the arguer."
And you must be a left-wing nut because you accuse me of what you've been doing all along. I'm being facetious, get it?
"Abbey advocates that everyone walk more often. THAT is the point of the piece." Where did I say that the piece was a diatribe against walking? Where did I imply that wasn't his point? I stand by my belief that Abbey hated walking but did it anyway and argued that we should do the same.
And, having read all of Abbey's non-fiction and some of his fiction, I would also advise readers to read Abbey for themselves. Read the early Abbey and the late Abbey. You'll find a lot of contradictions, some of which he was aware of and some of which he wasn't.
So, Traildog, go stew in your Kropotikin.
"Kropotkin" you pathetic twerp. Read your piece and your previous posts and decided if you are changing your tune a bit. You have no idea of what contradictions Abbey was aware of or not. Nor are you a readable or worthy writer.
I'll say it again: stick with regurgitating news stories and leave the critical thinking to people who know what it is.
Traildog;
Krapotkin, then.
O.K., done. I've reread it all. I haven't changed my tune but you have, every time I've answered one of your objections. And just because you have figured out how to push the little keys with letters and numbers on them doesn't make you capable of critical thinking or having any understanding of what on earth you're talking about.
Now I've got to work again. Feel free to keep fishing for some right-wing tell from me, you fruit-loop.
I haven't changed my tune at all. You're a half-assed writer who cherry-picks quotes to back up half-assed ideas.
Bozos like you are why I stopped reading New West a few months ago. But I see the standards have not changed so I will stop looking at the site once again.
It's too bad you possess such a strong sense of denial about your abilities and lack a sense of humor--made evident by your inability to grasp Abbey's.
I do, however, get a kick at how you throw my comments right back at me: come up with YOUR OWN, sport. You're out of your league.
Definitely stick with your day job.
At least Christian is right with Ed Abbey as an advocate of the Minutemen. Here is Abbey's anti-immigrant rant "Immigration and Liberal Taboos": http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2005/12/edward-abbey-immigration-and-liberal.html
Quote: "The United States has been fully settled, and more than full, for at least a century. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by allowing the old boat to be swamped. How many of us, truthfully, would prefer to be submerged in the Caribbean-Latin version of civilization?"
But even though Abbey didn't trust the government, he asked it to stop immigration and prevent wilderness areas. If you don't believe the latter, just read this interview, Abbey is pretty clear: http://www.abbeyweb.net/articles/etemple/index.html
He also advocates making driving and other gadgets of civilization more expensive, and how else but through taxes would one do that?
Typo or Freudian slip? I obviously meant to write "preserve wilderness areas" instead of "prevent wilderness areas"...
Comment By traildog, 12-23-08Abbey is dead and we can't say that he was advocate of the minutemen. He was of the World War II generation and held the general racist and sexist views of that generation. His world view was limited. He had no concept of the economic, political or societal relations between Mexicans, Indians, and North Americans.
I personally do believe he held contradictory views, and I agree with Christian that his name is inappropriately invoked to further corporate environmental causes, but my point is that Christian has invoked Abbey to further HIS cause (which--my other point--is unclear) and which is the same thing he decries. He also overlays Abbey onto his own issues like vehicle access.
"Jack Burns" in an earlier post said succinctly: "Ed saw anarchism as ultimately the best way for humans to organize themselves, but also realized we have to use all the tools available to us under the current system to protect wilderness." And, I would add, Abbey's version (or view) of civilization--not mine or Christian's or any particular environmental group. "We" can only speculate.
Also, it is really galling to read poor writing holding good writing to some warped personal standard of the perpetrator of poor writing.
I'm going to leave New West to its business of selling real estate and read my online "western" information elsewhere.
Chrstian Probasco
I think you willfully misunderstand Ed to erect strawmen to demolish..I for one ( a genuine Utah redneck anarchist) ain't buyin' it...
You wrote in the article" ... I only seem to encounter references to Edward Abbey whenever some crusader wants to limit my access to what I’d once been told was my land. Wilderness advocates, for the most part, who have a very narrow definition of wilderness...."
Allow me to clarify a few points you've glossed over...
1.No one wants to limit YOUR access to your land (also- its not your land as the concept of land ownership is a legal fiction, not a law of nature- but that's beside the point....) we want to limit destructive elements like cattle , motor vehicles, radioactive waste (and most republicans)-because they all- by definition, are destructive to the reality and ideal of wilderness....use "your" land all you like- just leave your garbage and ironmongery in whatever nasty polluted anthill of civilization it belongs in....
2.wilderness is - ultimately, defined as a WILD place- not domesticated.... does one truck make it unwild?...I dunno.. But I do know that more than a few trucks, or any house, or a lack of native plants or animals certainly diminishes wildness and at some level destroys wilderness. Motor vehicles are wilderness removing machines. Abbey may in fact hate walking but he liked wilderness and recognized that motor machines destroyed that which he loved...So- even though your one OHV might not damage much permanently- Who follows the track you made?- And are THEY damaging anything permanently?...and is the vehicles obtrusiveness and noise reducing another persons experience of wilderness, and is the souvenir stand that pops up next week enhancing the wilderness?...The "narrow definition of wilderness" is narrow because the properties of wilderness are absolute- its wild or it ain't...
I also take issue with this one..."He also hated cows but loved steak..."...I personally do too- and I see it this way: steak is good, but steak comes from cows which don't belong in the arid west. (... beef production in the western states would be commercially impossible without all of the corporate welfare that is showered on the ranchers by their pet legislators- so if we are to have steak - let it be produced in places favorable to beef production and not where beef cattle destroy wilderness...)
"... He personally didn’t like walking..."(see above...)
"...when it came to the approaches of the southwest desert’s natural wonders, he wanted everybody else to walk in. He advised visitors to crawl..."... I think you know that Ed often made tongue in cheek comments like this to emphasize that though he valued the wild, he was selfish about it and wanted others to stay out...this isn't a description of what he expected others to do as much as a humorous way to say that the desert is best when others are as far away and reverend as possible about its wild beauty...
Mr. Probasco, I am dead certain that you know that what you implied about Abbey is the result of wishful thinking and guilt over your misuse of wilderness - with at least a pinch of insincere sophistry...Yes, Abbey was a man of many opinions and many of them were contradictory, but to imply that wilderness advocates have unfairly twisted his work and love of wild places into an argument for overgrazing and OHV abuse( any use of OHV's on public land is abuse...) does not fit with his stated beliefs nor justify your desire to see the world from the back of a stinking, noisy, plant and animal crushing, human enslaving, freedom killing, greenhouse gas emitting,tool of your corporate masters is not only disingenuous- but staggeringly self serving and boorish....
and while I'm at it..Dave Skinner- if you can baselessly call people names, I am want to say you are a "nutcake"....ask Brother Orrin what that means....
Comment By Dave Skinner, 12-25-08Brett,
I baselessly called Ed Abbey an esteemed gentleman. I apologize.
Are you a rural Utah native, or SLC, or from elsewhere? And if you are from elsewhere, did you read Ed before you came to Utah?
Brett;
That sounds like a reasoned argument. I'd like to answer your objections but I'm still drowsy from the roast beast. I'm trying to decide whether to keep up this thread or start over with a whole new post.
Abbey is a better read than the Bible for christ sake.
At least Abbey tells the truth once in a while. I found none in the bible...
Thus I reply to Brett Tiedemann;
Part one
I was going to write another post on the subject but I don’t feel like staying up all night again, so I’ll try to answer your objections here. I quote because I don’t want anybody to accuse me of making up what they’ve said.
You write, in parenthesis, that “it’s not your land, as the concept of land ownership is a legal fiction” but then you accuse me of glossing over a few points. Either you’re one of the six communist anarchists left on the planet or you’ve received a personal revelation from God. Either way, that was a much bigger gloss than anything I committed.
Refer back to the above quotes from Abbey’s “Freedom and Wilderness.” Abbey wanted a wilderness for people. “We need wilderness because we are wild animals,” he says. As for a wilderness ecology, he admits he doesn’t even know what that is. And no, he isn’t being facetious, and if you think I’ve taken what he’s said out of context, go and read it yourself; The Journey Home, pp227. Now, if you’re talking about the official definition of wilderness, I can see your point, as I’ve said, but that makes wilderness a rare thing—far more rare than SUWA or the Sierra Club would like you to believe. According to the act:
“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions…”
Furthermore, you’ve got to come up w/ about 5,000 acres that meet the above description. Much of the land SUWA is putting up for adoption as wilderness has perfectly legal roads running all over it. SUWA doesn’t like to think of them as roads but they look like roads, people travel them as if they were roads, and they were cut or bladed by pioneers or even prospectors, long before 1976. SUWA is hoping that if they keep prospective wilderness areas off limits to off-road vehicles long enough, those roads and other “imprints of man’s work” will fade away. They are succeeding to the degree that folks don’t continually drive on them with Jeeps, ATVs or other OHVs, and reopen and repair them.
But even without those roads, SUWA often carves out its “wilderness” areas by cherry stemming whatever legal roads it is forced to recognize. That means you could have a “wilderness area” with a road and a loud Jeep jamboree running right through the middle of it.
Finally, the act makes mention of the wilderness area’s “natural condition.” But what is the natural condition? Is it the condition the government found it in when the act was passed? Was it the condition before Native Americans “trammeled” all over it? Or is it the condition the land finds itself in when nobody is actively trying to rid it of invasive species?
If “the properties of wilderness are absolute” and if you reject Abbey’s (and my) definition, then there isn’t any wilderness left. It has all been significantly altered in one way or another by man.
Thus I reply to Brett Tiedemann;
Part two
As for the stuff about “pet legislators,” SUWA and the Sierra Club have them too. And ranchers and cowboys exert about a thousandth the political influence they once had. There’s been a lot of talk about “corporate welfare” for ranchers, but when you look at the numbers, it’s a bunch of B.S. Animal Unit Month (AUM) costs for public lands ranchers are almost always compared unfavorably to fees for grazing on private land. But private fees usually come with range improvements like fences, stock tanks and wells included, where the public lands rancher has to provide them for himself, at his cost. That’s one of the reasons public lands ranching is such a chancy business. The other reason is the market. Western ranchers are selling out in record numbers, and it isn’t because of all the “corporate welfare” they have received.
On to the next point: “I think you know that Ed often made tongue-in-cheek comments like this to emphasize that though he valued the wild, he was selfish about it and wanted others to stay out…” Hell yes! You are making my point for me.
Very sleepy but must…press…on. Next: you say best for the desert when “others are far away and reverent as possible about its wild beauty.” Well put, but I disagree. I say, forget reverence. I encourage others to go out into the desert, spend time in it, listen to it, and make up their own minds about what it means to them and whether it will or should become the birthplace of a new society based on anarchosyndicalism, as Abbey outlined in his Theory of Anarchy.
Next: you’re dead certain I know what I implied about Abbey is wishful thinking and guilt over misuse of wilderness…to imply that wilderness advocates have unfairly twisted his work and love of wild places…into an argument for overgrazing and OHV abuse (any use of OHVs on public lands is abuse) does not fit his stated beliefs…and so on and so forth.
There’s a lot to answer here. First, I get the picture: you’re an extremist’s extremist. But even so, “Any use of OHVs on public lands is abuse”—are you serious? I mean, I can see how the rest would follow from this one statement. As far as I know Abbey never went that far. But I could be wrong on that point. Do you, Brett, use products manufactured by the industrial society you despise? Such as a computer, a car or a bike? Is your computer powered by a coal-burning plant? If it’s powered by solar cells, how do you think those cells were manufactured?
Onward. Let see, you’re accusing me of twisting Abbey’s words. Not true. I quoted him verbatim, in the spirit he meant his words to convey. And what he said wasn’t negated by the rhetorical device he was using at the time. If you say, “getting old sucks, but it sure beats the alternative,” it doesn’t negate the fact that getting old does suck.
Final point: if you’re dead certain about my motives and guilt, Brett, you’re also dead wrong, because I don’t feel guilty and I don’t even know what you mean by “misuse” of wilderness.
Now please don’t reply about me trying to use Abbey’s words to support OHV “abuse” or overgrazing. Everybody knows that Abbey didn’t support carving anybody’s definition of wilderness or desert into tiny shards of former wildness with their industrial death-machines, or trampling it to dust clouds beneath cow hooves. I wasn’t writing an introduction to Edward Abbey! I was noting that one of Abbey’s incarnations had a lot more sympathy for cowboys, rednecks and irascible nutcases who enjoy freedom from their government’s dictates. And it ran smack-dab into the other Abbey. I think he adjusted his sights because, as Jack Burns said, “we have to use all the tools available to us under the current system to protect wilderness.” In other words, because it was politically expedient.
Now why should I, a four-wheeler and scofflaw and why should any miner, rancher or logger, be satisfied with remaining a scapegoat because it is politically expedient?
simply put- edward "crabby" was a idiot....and now a dead idiot. i read one book of his...waste of my time and burned it- ashes to the landfill with the reset of the garbage he spewed forth!
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