The Journey Home: Some Words in the Defense of the American West

That claim may seem a little rash in the face of Abbey's great prose work, Desert Solitaire, but this book in my view offers a more intimate and personal look at Abbey himself and provides some great insights into his formation as writing placed withi the context of the American west. One of the strengths of this work, as opposed to Desert Solitaire, is the broadness of subject matter covered. Abbey begins by recounting his life changing hitch-hiking, train jumping tour across america to the west in the summer of 1944. His style, however, is like Kerouac, but without the without the self consciousness and pretension. Through Abbey's it is nature that is the subject, his personal exploits are merely secondary/accidental; Abbey is just along for the ride. He tells of his first glimpse of the mesa's of Hopi country on the fringes of the Painted Desert as viewed from the side door of the Pullman as he drifted down the tracks towards New Mexico. Throughout, he describes his love of the desert and the creatures that live there with a vitality and gentleness uncommon in today's environmental discourse. This sensitivity is even more pronounced when compared with his verbal protests against what he sees as the destroyers of his desert paradise, such as, the miners, developers, dammers, trappers and, yes, even the tourists. "The Journey Home" closes with a surrealistic celebration of the desert as seen through the detached lens of an anonymous camera, which I consider some of his most beautiful and original writing. For all those who have read Desert Solitaire, read this to get a more intimate look of the man behind the ideas. Abbey's contradictions are what makes him so great as an American writer. He is at once an anarchist, environmentalist, desert rat, river-runner, essayist and novelist, but above all a man from pennsylvania who became entraptured by the mysteries of the desert and dedicated his life to celebrating its beauty.

Reading Abbey reminds me of lines from the Scottish poet, Hugh MacDiarmid:I'll have no half-way house, but aye be where/ Extremes meet; it's the only way I ken/ To dodge the cursed conceit of bein' rich/ That damns the vast majority of men.That's Abbey for you, and he has a helluva great time out there where extremes meet. Is there any other way to live?

This was my first Eddward Abbey book, but it certainly will not be my last. The book allows the reader to view many parts of "the West" from his authentic perspective. From his time in a firetower in Montana to retelling and following John Wesley Powell's story of exploration, Edward Abbey will have you hooked on each subject and adventure that he eperienced on his Journey. I think there is a part in all of us to want to live this type of life, but only a few of us have the courage to follow our heart and dreams the way Abbey did.

How can I describe this book. I found it in the balcony of the renovated Bookstop on Alabama about ten year's ago. When I picked it up, I started reading chapter 3, "No Road, Disorder and Early Sorrow". I was howling. I couldn't regain composure. I had to have it. We reread it out loud every year that we take our pilgrimage to Big Bend at Thanksgiving.