Walking It Off: A Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness

Hayduke... I mean Doug Peacock has a few things he wants to get off his chest in his book "Walking It Off." (I love the title of this book!) And like most deep, emotional scars they take the combination of time and solitude to focus light on. Peacock is drawn - more like pulled - into wild places around the world. His journey is less about protraying the surrounding wilderness, but instead using it like a mirror. A mirror onto himself - a mirror to reflect on the tradegy of the Vietnam War, the loss of his companion and teacher, Ed Abbey, and the fragments of a broken marriage. Certainly not easy stuff to grapple with, much less commit to the pages of a book. But you sense in this book, that Peacock is a warrior. Not the same warrior he started as, but a transformed sort of warrior. Much of his transformation happened while he got to know Abbey. Peacock shares his memories of Abbey. I got the sense that Abbey's portrayal of Peacock as the character Hayduke in both The Monkey Wrench Gang and Hayduke Lives proved to be a mixed blessing to the author. On the one hand, there's extreme pride in being the first, Eco-warrior, poster-boy. On the other, the popularity of this take-no-prisoner, accept-no-compromise Hayduke character only served to paint Peacock into a much smaller corner. He wanted to be something more than this inspirational character for the new enivronmental movement. What exactly that "something" is for Peacock, he doesn't always know. But he knows what will get him closer -- shoulder a backpack and start walking. We see Peacock's image of himself steadily change while he shares his encounters with the forces which shaped his life. It's an honest self-portrait softened by time and contrasted against a wonderful and rugged landscape.

Peacock's account of his life and times with Abbey is far more than simply a memoir of their friendship. This book stands as the next Earth-Sutra, following those of Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, Lao Tzu and others, in revealing the "land ethic" (to use Leopold's term) that might possibly save us from self-destruction, or worse, self-mechanization. Peacock's message is direct, visceral, hard-edged, and yet, authentically beautiful. He's been to the summit and back, and he knows what the hell he's talking about, as in my favorite line from the book: "Walk on. The feet will inform the soul."

The book is long awaited and worth the wait. Chapters alternate between the Hell of Viet Nam and the beauty of nature. The book provides a window into the souls of two very fascinating men. Peacock seems, finally, to have come to terms with himself and, with this book, moves farther from the shadow of Edward Abbey.

Doug Peacock was friends with Ed Abbey, and Abbey made him a character, as George Washington Hayduke, in his books, THE MONKEY WRENCH GANG and HAYDUKE LIVES! Doug Peacock was with Edward Abbey when he died. This worthy book is about the author coming to terms with his friendship with Ed Abbey, the death of Ed Abbey, and there is a chronicle of their adventures and philosophy. Peacock distances himself from the one-dimensional Hayduke, and says that while the celebrity of it opened some doors for him, it was also an embarrassment. Peacock says that Abbey was the real Hayduke. Be that as it may, Doug Peacock is the real Doug Peacock, and in some 200 pages of easy-to-read words of prose he tells a human story worth telling. At turns, this memoir is profound, remorseful, insightful, wistful, and poetic. For example, toward the end of this book, there is this, from Ed Abbey's journal: "...my life seems to me a dismal failure. Good Christ! 58 years old and I've never learned to do anything practical, useful, sociable. I am becoming a cranky bitter embittered dyspeptic old fart,,,I feel so goddamn inadequate, weak, helpless, inepts, slobbish." "GLOOM...and DOOM. Consumed in self-loathing. Bitterness. Disgust with the world of literature, politics, art. Makes a fella want to walk away over the horizon, find a comfortable canyon, lie down, curl up, fade out..." My thought is, the way this resonates with me is, that Ed Tom Bell, Cormac McCarthy's protagonist in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, is also 58 and just seems older somehow, the way Ed Abbey here seems older. It means nothing, of course, except for the way it resonates personally to me. Peacock continues down Growler Valley, dreams of a jaguar, sees signs of fox and a coyote den dug into a thick of wolfberry: "By afternoon, a number of ancient paths converge toward Charlie Bell. . .I see white animals against the black of the Growlers. I take out Clarke Abbey's binoculars and squat behind a leafed-out ocotillo plant. The long-legged animals look like some exotic species of domestic goat except that they are pronghorn antelope." "Ten antelopes, six of which are males, browse fresh green ocotillo leaves...The pronghorn haven't seen me yet. I'm hoping I can drop down a gully to Charlie Bell without disturbing them. I have to get water before dark." "At my first move, the antelope look up at me. Sh-t. They begin to mill and move east, finally breaking and running among the rugged hillside boulders as gracefully and smoothly as the red-tailed hawk soaring above. . ." "Out of ancient habit, I approach the well cautiously. I listen to the birds and crickets. No one else around. Charlie Bell Well pumps water into a tank and then into a cement trough." "A wave of deja vu sweeps over me. I am haunted by landscapes, the recoccuring images of places that drift through my dreams and startle my daydreaming. One of those is right here, the sacred desert. Sometimes magical wild animals live in the dream and

Well I'm honored to be the first person to review Walking It Off. As a lifelong fan of Ed Abbey I of course knew a lot about Doug Peacock's friendship with him. We all "knew" that Doug was Ed's real-life model for Hayduke. What we didn't know, until this new book came out (finally!), was how Doug felt about it. Hayduke may be one of our mythical heroes (I have a Hayduke Lives! bumper sticker on my car), but Doug Peacock is a true real-life hero to me. Doug survived the Vietnam War and then found a way to survive the aftermath when he began his work with Grizzly Bears. He does not "report" on these things; he lives the experiences and then writes about them with great care and passion. Even though Ed Abbey was a much more famous writer, and was older than Doug by 15 years, I'm pretty sure he nonetheless looked up to Doug for his courageous work. Doug's been out there in the trenches, putting out the fires, trying to save the bears, save the world. Heartbreakingly difficult work that most of us find little success in. Doug's work gives me courage and a renewed determination to keep at it. Thanks for all you've done, Doug! And thank you for finally publishing THE Abbey memoir we've all been wating for.