"Down the River" is the longest chapter in Edward Abbey's famous semi-autobiographical, philosophical treatment of the desert, Desert Solitaire. Abbey remains a divisive figure, even within the minds of commentators on his work. Generally people admire his poetic and philosophical approach to the wilderness, and his ability to appreciate its wonders. People generally dislike his disagreeable temperament, his relationships with his five wives, and his inconsistent virtues when dealing with the wild -- killing wild animals, for example, not only for food or out of necessity but apparently for pleasure.
Ideally philosophers demonstrate their virtues in life and not only in thought, but frankly that is more of a beloved rarity than a normal fact. (The Stoics had a particularly good run, I notice.) Abbey died well, and served honorably in the military right at the end of and just after the Second World War. His writing is often insightful and valuable. Each of those things is not nothing, and together they are more than most people manage.
"Down the River" is a striking piece because it captures the last days of a beautiful river that was about to be destroyed by the flooding attendant to the construction of a dam. Those of us who have grown up around the Appalachians, where the TVA operated on one side and Duke Power on the other, have sympathy for what was lost in the destruction associated with such things. Here it was homes, farms, communities, as well as waterfalls and blessed rivers; there no one lived, not since the ancient natives abandoned the valley for reasons unknown, but the treasures he describes are irreplaceable: cathedral-like caves in the canyons, petroglyphs and homes of the Anasazi (as he calls them, following the Navajo, but N.B. the current objection of some of their descendants mentioned at the link), a land of springs and birds and catfish that grilled up beautifully with the bacon grease they wisely reserved on their trip.
As a travelogue it is a very nice piece; I spent the week making in sequence the breakfasts he describes them cooking over campfires by the river. Anyone who has spent time on a raft on a river will find that it brings back the best of those memories. The philosophical turns he takes are interesting, with en passant mentions of Socrates and Aristotle; so too is his musing on what he never describes as his longing for an absent but somehow ever-present God, against whom Abbey bears clear anger for being so evident but inaccessible. He keeps trying to talk himself out of God, but keeps returning to him.
In the end his companion and himself reach the place where government authority commands that they leave the river, leave it forever. There will be and can be no return, no second chance to find the cavern they missed, no second visit to the wonders. All the places seen are condemned to be destroyed. We cannot believe this is possible, he tells the reader; we know it but cannot entertain it. To do so would be to give ourselves over to "helpless rage, helpless outrage."
It's all gone now.
7 comments:
Looks like a good read.
Speaking of the TVA, there were several towns along Hazel Creek flooded out when Fontana Lake was dammed up. The Park Service provides boat transport once a year for decoration day so people can visit ancestors at the several cemeteries that weren't flooded.
And way back around 1989 or so, camped on the back side of Bear Lake when they drained the lake down to work on the dam, several years before it was developed and closed down the trail to the point across from the dam. You could still see foundation walls from spring houses as well as fence lines and wagon trails.
Those caves weren't going to last forever, someday one way or another, they would collapse, or erode away. We're really only upset that they go away while we are here to see it. There's a profound selfishness and self-centeredness in much of the environmentalists world view.
Desert solitaire is in my tsundoku though.
I added it to my reading list as well. Looks interesting. Although, reading his biography, his connections with Earth First! might also fall under the controversial aspects of his life.
Last year I read quite a bit of environmental history, and this kind of concern for preserving the wilderness in America began near the end of the 19th century. Teddy Roosevelt's "strenuous life" and the end of the mythical American frontier (myth in the sense of identity-forming narrative) were significant parts of it, as was middle class urbanites' concern for their lost vigor in urban jobs.
Before that, destroying the wilderness was seen as a positive sign of the advance of civilization. Cutting down forests, slaughtering the buffalo herds, and erecting buildings, roads, railroads, etc., were all seen as necessary and good to tame the wilderness.
It's an interesting history.
When Ed Abbey was writing this, the US population was 200 million. It is 330 million now.
They all need water. Externally sourced water if they live in a historic desert, like LA.
Abbey... I love his writing style. I groan at some of his politics, and his creation of the idea of "monkeywrenching." The term comes from his book, _The Monkey Wrench Gang_" and means sabotage and destruction for the good of the environment. Things like spiking trees, burning down almost-finished buildings, things like that. As long as no one is hurt or killed, it's OK. Or so Abbey and some of his followers maintained. I had a prof call him the "anarcho-preservationist" branch of environmentalism.
LittleRed1
Yeah, I definitely understand at least the urge to quietly sabotage heavy equipment that is engaged in destroying a beautiful forest or mountainside. Writing a fictional book about it is, for my money, well within the lines. If other people took it upon themselves to actually do it, well, that's not Abbey's fault.
Frankly, too, I'd have to think about it on a case by case basis to decide how I felt about each incident. I definitely don't have a principle in favor of leaving corporations free to do whatever they have the resources to do, whatever the cost to the natural beauty of the world. Sometimes they have adequate resources to capture regulatory agencies and bribe politicians into compliance, making many forms of ordinary lawful resistance out of range. As in many cases where the powerful or wealthy are using their wealth or power in ways that disable the little guy's voice or ability to have input into the system that governs his or her life, I often have sympathy for outlaw ways.
There was a small amount of sabotage attempted when the state started construction on the 107 bypass around Cullowhee and WCU. It was mostly just nuisance stuff like shooting arrows through the radiators of the bull dozers and pouring sugar or other stuff into fuel tanks of other construction vehicles. I don't recall if they ever caught anyone, but it didn't slow them down at all.
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