Review of DESERT SOLITAIRE
Southern Utah before it became a tourist destination
The Utah desert is a special place. It’s one of the most remote places in the country, especially if you venture down to south central Utah. It’s wildly inhospitable and demanding. But it is awe inspiringly beautiful. The canyonlands and entrada sandstone make for a unique landscape not found anywhere else.
But in recent years the desert is becoming more crowded, especially Moab, which has become a destination for outdoor enthusiasts. And Arches National Park, the crown jewel of the area, is so full you can’t even get in most days. This is definitively a new problem, however. And in Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey, you can time travel back to the 1960s and get a feel for how things used to be.
The first time I (tried) to go to arches to see its most famous arch, the park was closed due to being too full of people. The next time I went, we woke up at 4am to get into the park and watch the sunrise over the arch with about 50 other people (and a steady stream of 100s more on their way up). But when Abbey was a park ranger at Arches (at the time) National Monument, the park never filled. In fact, the road through the park wasn’t even paved, keeping the tourists at bay.
Desert Solitaire is a unique collection of stories of Abbey’s time as a ranger for a season in the 1960s. His experience of the desert was not that of clogged roadways, filled parking lots, and endless streams of people trying to see the sights. Rather he spent most days not interacting with people at all.
He recounts adventures and near death experiences in the surrounding canyonlands wrangling cattle, searching for missing hikers, and going on explorations of some of the most remote (even today) areas of the region (the maze district if you’re curious). Reading of some of these adventures was stressful to be honest. Having hiked the unforgiving land of the Utah desert a few times, it was terrifying to read how little water he traveled with on nearly every outing. But it was fascinating to witness a different era of a land I just recently came to know.
This is a unique book and Abbey has a writing style all his own. It’s a very popular book here in Utah, and I came across it at the bookstore since it was featured on the “locals” table. Overall I enjoyed the book, but you may not love it if you have no reference point or have little interest in outdoor adventure memoirs.
Published: original 1968; this edition 1990
Publisher: Touchstone
Format: Paperback
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Grinnell: America's Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West by John Taliaferro (2019)
Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Connor Knighton (2020)
This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West by Christopher Ketcham (2019)
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I'm newer to Utah and have been wondering what books there are to help me get more acquainted with the state. This looks like a great read. Arches is beautiful.