CHAPTER 8: DOWN THE RIVER WITH ED AND WALLY
Abbey’s line about “sitting out back on my 33,000 acre terrace” comes from Desert Solitaire. Stegner’s sentence about “the primary unity of the West is the shortage of water” comes from “Thoughts in a Dry Land” in Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs.
Most of the quotations spoken by people in this book were taped, but in this chapter, with water all around, I resorted instead to scribbling down what I heard in my journal as soon as I could. This is also the only chapter where I have chosen to replace a person’s real name with a fictitious one. I did not think it fair for “Ralph,” lead guide on his very first trip, to be singled out, but on the other hand, it was important to include his story to get across the tension between him and Jordan, and, to a lesser extent, him and me. I’m sure that Ralph has already developed into a fine guide, with that amazing river runner’s combination of easy-goingness and the toughness to shoulder life-or-death responsibility, but beginning is always hard.
The many quotations from the story of how Abbey almost died come from the “Havasu” chapter of Desert Solitaire, which I think is one of that book’s high points. I hope that the field notes from my own trip into the canyon enhance my descriptions of the place.
The controversial essay “Immigration and Liberal Taboos” appears in the essay collection One Life at a Time, Please. Luis Urrea’s essay in response is in the collection of pieces about Abbey, Resist Much, Obey Little: Remembering Ed Abbey, edited by James R. Hepworth and Gregory McNamee. Wendell Berry wrestles with the topic, too, in “A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey,” in his collection What Are People For?
Though Abbey is more of a lightning rod for criticism, Stegner has not escape unscathed. Perhaps the most well-known example is Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a Native American feminist intellectual. While it is easy enough to see how Stegner could be painted as patriarchal or even colonial, many of his ideas about cooperation and knowledge of place—and his holding up the example of how native people interacted with the land—can just as easily be taken in the opposite direction. I mention Patricia Nelson Limerick, who in her work, and especially in her great book The Legacy of Conquest, seems influenced in this more positive way.
CHAPTER 9: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MONKEYWRENCHING
The majority of the material in this chapter comes from a taped interview on July 31, 2012, with Jane Quimby, who was an FBI agent in the Grand Junction, Colorado, office for twenty-five years.
It is supplemented by a taped interview with Tim DeChristopher that I conducted on September 29, 2013, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Tim was attending Harvard Divinity School after being released from prison. I also draw from my aforementioned interviews with Page Stegner.
Copies of Edward Abbey’s FBI files can be found in the special collections at the University of Arizona.
CHAPTER 10: PROPERLY WILD
The letters from Abbey’s sons, Josh and Aaron, are in the special collections of Abbey’s papers at the University of Arizona.
The quotations from Page Stegner came from our interviews in Greensboro, Vermont, in June 2012.
The quotations about Astrid and Joe and Ruth Allston all come from Stegner’s The Spectator Bird.
Emily Hammond gave me a long guided tour of the fire damage in the hills above Fort Collins, and her husband, Steven Schwartz, sat down for a taped interview about his time in Abbey’s first graduate class. Some of Abbey’s syllabi for his writing classes are in the special collections at the University of Arizona.
A New York Times article, “Experts See New Normal as a Hotter, Drier West Faces More Huge Fires” by Felicity Barringer and Kenneth Chang, not only helped me organize my thoughts on fires but pointed me toward the work of two University of Arizona professors, Gregg Garfin and Stephen J. Pyne.
The friend from whom I learned about pronghorns was the writer and eco-critic Michael Branch, who wrote a beautiful essay, “Ghosts Chasing Ghosts: Pronghorn and the Long Shadow of Evolution,” for the magazine I founded, Ecotone. Obviously, the rest of my writing on pronghorns leans heavily on Emilene Ostlind’s wonderful article “The Perilous Journey of Wyoming’s Migrating Pronghorn,” which was published on December 26, 2011, in High Country News.
Dave Foreman’s Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century was my main source for the section on connectivity between parks. The sections about anticipating climate change and “pre-storing” habitat grew out of an article I wrote for the Environmental Defense Fund that included interviews with Sam Pearsall and other EDF scientists.
For the history of Yellowstone I read George Black’s comprehensive Empire of Shadows: The Epic Story of Yellowstone.
Doug Peacock was the only person I encountered who wouldn’t let me tape-record our conversation, so whenever one of us went to the bathroom I did a lot of furious scribbling in my journal. If you want a quick immersion course in all things Peacock, you can do worse than to watch a video from the classic TV series from the 1960s and ’70s The American Sportsman. The episode chronicles a week that Peacock spent in the backcountry of Yellowstone looking for grizzly bears with none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a younger, more innocent Arnold, pre-superstardom and politics and scandal, fresh off his early Pumping Iron and Conan fame, and one of the pleasures of the clip is the odd-couple factor. There is Peacock in archetypal wild-man mode, spouting his radical enviro-philosophy—including some great lines about his goal of “preserving an element of risk in wilderness” by spending time around an animal that can kill humans—and there is Arnold, kind of stiff and silly at first, but gradually getting more and more into it. To add yet another surreal element to the video, you slowly notice that the show is being narrated by a voice you have known forever: Curt Gowdy’s. Arnold and Doug see no bears, only tracks, on the first day, but that evening they stand in the smoke of the fire to disguise what Peacock calls their “foul human scent,” after which Arnold says: “I hope the whole week is going to be as strange as the first night.” The next day Peacock pontificates while Arnold trots behind, wearing a camo jacket and chewing gum. When they finally do see grizzlies, a sow and its yearling, Arnold’s whole face lights up with a goofy enthusiasm and he begins to mutter things—in an accent you can likely imitate—like “This is fantastic” and “This is unbelievable, Doug.” Peacock is clearly pleased, though he tries not to show it. In a way the not-yet Terminator perfectly embodies Peacock’s main point: that we feel more alive when the threat of death is near.
This confluence of wildness and celebrity has few matches in ourcountry’s history, topped perhaps only by the three nights that another toothy political megastar, Teddy Roosevelt, spent camping in the Yosemite backcountry (while in office!) with that most arch of druids, John Muir. It reminds us of the truly wild streak that has always, until recently at least, been such a part of this country’s character.
CHAPTER 11: GOING HOME AGAIN
Stegner’s memories of Eastend, and his return there, are drawn primarily from his unpublished autobiography and Wolf Willow. My interview with Bryson LaBoissiere of Eastend was a great help in getting a local perspective.
The letter to the Grays that I quote from is in the Special Collections Department of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah.
The trip that Philip Fradkin made to Eastend is reported near the end of his biography of Stegner, Wallace Stegner and the American West.
My summary of Abbey’s trip back home with Dick Kirkpatrick comes from a telephone interview with Dick but also from James Cahalan’s Edward Abbey: A Life. In fact, much of my knowledge of Home, Pennsylvania, and its environs comes from Cahalan, either in person or on his pages.
CHAPTER 12: TEACHERS
Lynn and Allison Stegner were kind enough to give me a tour of the Stanford campus and to drive me up to the home where the Stegners had lived for most of their liv
es, all the while sharing stories about the family.
For my impressions of Stegner as a teacher I drew on my interviews with Wendell Berry and Ed McClanahan, and for his teaching philosophy I focused on his book On Teaching and Writing Fiction. Some of the material on the tension Stegner felt between teaching and writing originally appeared in an essay I wrote, “Those Who Write, Teach,” for the September 19, 2008, issue of the New York Times Magazine.
My interview with Steven Schwartz helped me get a sense of Abbey the teacher. I conducted a phone interview, and had a subsequent e-mail exchange, with the teacher and writer Dick Shelton, who recruited Abbey to teach at the University of Arizona.
The analysis of Stegner’s evolving use of chronology comes from a close rereading of All the Little Live Things, Wolf Willow, The Spectator Bird, Angle of Repose, and Crossing to Safety, but also relies on Stegner’s own analysis of DeVoto’s writing in The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto. To see DeVoto’s own dazzling use of time and synecdoche, you can turn to his prize-winning and ground-breaking histories Across the Wide Missouri, The Course of Empire and The Year of Decision: 1846.
Stegner’s correspondence with the family of Mary Hallock Foote can be found at the Special Collections Library at the University of Utah, as can his quotes about “the search for a usable past” and “Biography cannot reform the truth,” both appearing in the small notebook mentioned in the text. For a much fuller discussion of the controversy surrounding Angle of Repose, see Philip Fradkin’s Wallace Stegner and the American West.
The writer who responded to my queries about Abbey with “I’m not much into hero worship” was Gary Nabhan in a personal e-mail dated May 28, 2012.
Walter Jackson Bate, in his biography of Samuel Johnson, emphasizes the importance of material that can be “put to use.” Once again, Bate’s ideas about biography were formative for me and no doubt permeate this final chapter.
Stegner’s comments on a “poisoner’s prose” are taken from On Teaching and Writing Fiction.
I found Abbey’s long journal quote about “early morning snow” in Confessions of a Barbarian and his “Zen bullshit” line in Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast, both books edited by David Petersen.
My account of Abbey’s death draws on interviews with Doug Peacock and Jack Loeffler, as well as Loeffler’s written account in Adventures with Ed and Peacock’s in Walking It Off. Doug Peacock read through an earlier draft of this scene and made corrections.
Wallace Stegner’s final to-do list appears on page 420 of Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work by Jackson J. Benson, and was provided to Mr. Benson by Mary Stegner.
IMAGE CREDITS
Wallace Stegner, portrait at Stanford. Chuck Painter /Stanford News Service.
Edward Abbey © Susan Lapides 1987. All rights reserved.
The view west from the writing shack. Photograph by David Gessner.
Abbey with his parents, Paul and Mildred. Photograph by Dick Kirkpatrick.
Wallace Stegner on the tennis team at the University of Utah. Courtesy of the Special Collections Department at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah.
Wendell and Tanya Berry at their home. Photograph by David Gessner.
Two versions of Abbey at Arches, solitaire and with family. Photographs courtesy of Clarke Cartwright Abbey.
The Oil Progress Parade in Vernal, Utah, 1953. Used by permission, Uintah County Library Regional History Center, The Vernal Express Collection, all rights reserved.
Abbey with the TV he shot. Photograph by Terrence Moore.
Wallace Stegner in the Black Rock Desert. Photograph by David E. Miller, courtesy of Page Stegner.
George Stegner, Wallace Stegner, and an unidentified man. Photograph courtesy of Page Stegner.
Portrait of Bernard DeVoto. Photograph courtesy of Mark DeVoto.
The Glen Canyon Dam. Photograph by David Gessner.
Abbey in a characteristic pose. Photograph by Dick Kirkpatrick.
The datura ceremony. Photograph by David Gessner.
Wallace and Mary Stegner. Photograph by Jenna Calk, courtesy of The Los Altos Town Crier.
Doug Peacock’s doormat. Photograph by David Gessner.
Stegner in the Los Altos hills near his home. Chuck Painter / Stanford News Service.
Wallace Stegner in the 1960s. Jose Mercado / Stanford News Service.
Edward Abbey in the desert in Southeast Utah. Photograph courtesy of Ed Marston and High Country News.
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Page numbers starting at 299 refer to source notes.
Abbey, Aaron, 227, 316
Abbey, Ben, 227, 228
Abbey, Clarke Cartwright, 227, 228, 288
Abbey, Edward, 7, 8–9, 14, 20, 31, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53–54, 64–65, 68, 75, 77-83, 97, 104, 121, 128, 133, 135, 135, 140, 148, 150, 159, 164, 171, 174, 177, 179, 184, 185, 222, 244, 276, 280, 282, 286, 299, 302, 311
“adolescent” tendencies of, 79, 83, 191, 195–96, 220, 231, 277, 285
anarchism of, 35, 68–69, 121, 187, 195, 220–21, 314
as antagonizing and combative, 6–7, 10, 22, 98, 121–22, 156, 173, 182, 205, 206, 220
anti-immigration beliefs of, 72, 195, 205–6, 315
anxieties of, 78, 83
as avid reader, 6, 21, 169, 171
cattle ranching opposed by, 98, 121–22, 172
childhood of, 10, 15, 18–22, 51, 265, 301
contradictory and hypocritical persona of, 7, 8, 77, 82, 99, 102, 105, 156, 165, 186, 191, 194–95, 267, 287
counterculturalism of, 12, 35, 68–69, 101, 102, 103, 164, 180, 187, 221, 231, 254–56, 285, 287
cultish following of, 6, 9, 35, 149, 150–51, 237, 254, 284, 299–300
death of, 6, 151, 188, 249, 287, 288, 306, 320
depression and moodiness of, 6, 24, 76, 79, 103, 106, 186, 195, 279, 303
desert burial and wake services of, 6, 11, 64, 151, 152, 186, 305, 312
divorces of, 24, 78, 106
drinking by, 194–95
environmental activism of, 9, 11, 12–13, 58, 69, 97-98, 121–22, 166, 169–70, 172, 186–88, 213, 220, 221, 223
“false deaths” of, 287–88
as father, 69, 76, 106, 226–27, 228
FBI file of, 219–20, 221, 315
as figure of rebellion and resistance, 35, 68–69, 180, 186–88, 220–21, 226, 285, 287
first trips out West by, 10, 16–17, 22–24, 25, 49, 305
gun rights advocated by, 72, 187, 194, 195, 220
Havasu Canyon sojourn of, 201–4
Home, Pa. homecoming visits by, 265–67, 318
as husband, 76, 106, 227–28
inner realist of, 202–3
kindness and generosity of, 98, 227
marriages of, 24, 69, 72, 77, 79, 106, 227–28
as mellowing with age, 228
military service of, 24, 219
odd-jobs of, 23, 79
park ranger jobs of, 8, 66, 75, 76, 79, 81, 97, 102, 105–7, 139, 265
Peacock’s relationship with, 248–49
physical appearance and personal style of, 12, 21, 69
racist streaks in, 206, 207, 208, 284
restless nature of, 64–65, 195, 266–67
river rafting trips of, 169, 189, 191, 226
as shy and taciturn in person, 7, 21, 98, 104, 233, 234, 271, 304
on Stegner, 11–12, 174
Stegner’s personality and beliefs vs., 12–13, 68, 71–72, 78, 174, 195–96
in Stegner’s writing class, 11–12, 69, 266, 304–5, 312
as student, 11, 21, 24, 304, 312
Tempest Williams’s “koan” on Stegner vs., 68, 72, 231, 247, 308–9
at University of New Mexico, 24, 219, 220
“wildness” of, 68, 69, 164, 174, 191,
194, 195, 231, 253–54, 255–56, 271, 279, 285, 286–87, 301
womanizing and lust of, 69, 79, 103, 195, 227–28, 287
writing ambitions of, 79–81, 83, 152, 266
as writing teacher, 79, 233–34, 271, 309, 316, 319
Abbey, Edward, writing of, 3, 35, 41, 54, 64, 65, 98, 100, 103–7, 139, 149–50, 171–73, 188, 195–96, 200–201, 202–4, 221, 227-28, 237-38, 243, 276–79, 281, 285–87, 299, 303, 310, 319–20
anger and passion in, 8, 9, 12–13, 69, 81, 100, 103, 169, 171–72, 179, 183, 279, 287, 313
anti-damming stance in, 97–98, 166, 169–70, 172, 179–80, 182, 184, 213, 313–14
“art of lounging” and slothfulness portrayed in, 8, 190, 191, 195, 197, 202
author as coming to life in, 80, 104, 278, 279, 285
autobiographical elements in, 54, 71, 72, 77–78, 105, 201, 266, 267
automobiles railed against in, 35, 75, 76, 101, 106, 165, 172
blunt, unapologetic tone in, 6–7, 22, 69, 98, 103, 121, 170, 172, 205–6, 207, 219, 220, 221, 223, 287, 309, 312
complex and inconsistent voice in, 8, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 99, 100, 102–5, 165, 172, 191, 195, 202–3, 278, 279, 301, 303
controversial ideas in, 22, 69, 72, 195, 205–7, 219–21, 315
“counterlife” exemplified in, 8, 35, 101, 102, 190, 191, 196, 202, 231, 253, 254–56, 285, 286–87
in early years, 24, 78–83, 219–20, 287, 309
eco-sabotage inspired by, 9–10, 35, 69, 180–82
environmentalist themes in, 9–10, 13, 59–60, 69, 96, 148, 169–70, 172, 179–83, 184, 205, 312, 313–14
essays in, 7, 9, 54, 105, 149, 184, 189, 205–6, 226, 253–54, 255, 278, 302, 303, 305, 313–14, 315
evolution and development of style in, 24, 81–83, 100, 101
film adaptations of, 81, 83, 249, 309
honesty about own faults in, 103–4, 105, 287
humor in, 9, 78, 79, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105–6, 266, 277–78
journals in, 6, 8, 10, 12, 21, 24, 33, 69, 76, 78, 79–80, 81–83, 101, 151, 152, 159, 189, 202, 227, 285, 300–301, 303, 309, 319–20
landscape and nature descriptions in, 8, 16–17, 19, 23, 32, 60, 78, 81–83, 103, 105, 148, 171–72, 189, 285
All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West Page 32
