I wandered into Back of Beyond Books a few days after Christmas. We’d just arrived in Moab and I was looking for something to read. Should you ever find yourself headed to Arches National Park, don’t miss this book store or its spectacular selection of books by regional authors. I asked the clerk for a recommendation, admitting rather sheepishly that I’d never read Desert Solitaire but expecting her to suggest some lesser known author. Then you must read it, she said.

I haven’t mentioned a word about the book since then, because it was so good that I was scared I might somehow break it by writing about it. Never before have I underlined a paragraph in an author’s introduction, but Abbey comes out guns blazing and I was stunned and entranced and immediately taking notes.

The book is about a season that Abbey spent as a park ranger in what is now Arches National Park. But what the book is really about is, well, this (from page xii):

Do not jump in your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not. In the second place most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot -- throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?

When asked why it took her so long to write Wild, Cheryl Strayed replied, “I didn't write Wild because I took a hike; I wrote Wild because I'm a writer. By which I mean until I had something to say about the experience, I didn't have any reason to write about it.”

It made me think of Abbey. He had something to say about the experience.

And you? What do you have to say?

(Photo by Anthony Chiado on Unsplash)