Beyond the Wall, Edward Abbey

Beyond The Wall, Edward Abbey,  1984

I have not read Edward Abbey in a long time, but I found this publication that collected 10 of his essays that were published in magazines and it was one I had missed.  What a pleasure to find new Abbey materials.

For the most part this is about Abbey’s love of the desert, but it also includes two river trips – Grand Canyon and in Alaska which are nice additions to the book since they break up the theme of no water.

However, it is Abbey the iconoclastic curmudgeon who entertains and shares his love of sparse and rugged.  These are the essays that put you in his backpack and let you wander the hot and dry.  I recommend a good cold drink in hand while you read.

My favorite excerpt, the one that captures the flavor of the collection is:

“There is something more in the desert, something that has no name.  I might call it a mystery – or simply Mystery itself, with an emphatically capital M.  Unlike forest or seashore, mountain or city, plain or swamp, the desert, any desert, suggests always the promise of something unforeseeable, unknown but desirable, waiting around the next turn in the canyon wall, over the next ridge or mesa, somewhere within the wrinkled hills.  What, exactly?  Well … a sort of treasure.  A kind of delight.  God?  Perhaps.  Gold?  Maybe. Grace?  Possibly.  But something a little more, a litter different, even from these.

“So there you are.  The secret revealed, the essence uncovered, we come right back to where we started.  The desert rat loves the desert because there is something about it that he cannot explain of even name.”