tion id="u63f00378-2512-560f-9874-ba76d9e92dcd">
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018
First published in the United States by McGraw-Hill in 1968
Copyright © 1968 by Edward Abbey, renewed 1996 by Clarke Abbey
Introduction copyright © Robert Macfarlane 2018
The Estate of Edward Abbey on behalf of the Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Cover design by Ben Gardiner
Cover photograph by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Frontispiece image © Wikimedia Commons/Nikater (2002)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008283315
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008283322
Version: 2018-09-14
for Josh and Aaron
Contents
Introduction by Robert Macfarlane
Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks
The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud
The Dead Man at Grandview Point
Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert
Terra Incognita: Into The Maze
Introduction by Robert Macfarlane
Midway through this magnificent, maddening, abrasive, lyrical, lackadaisical kick-ass manifesto and dream-vision of a book, Edward Abbey describes climbing a switchback trail up from the banks of the Colorado to the high rock desert through which the river has cut its vast course. The trail is steep, the day hot and Abbey becomes so thirsty that he sucks damp sand in an attempt to extract its moisture. Nevertheless, he persists in his ascent – and at last emerges on the surface of a rolling plain of cross-bedded sandstone, where he is rewarded with the view for which he has been hoping. To the north-west he can see the island-mesa of the Kaiparowits Plateau and the descending levels of Grand Staircase-Escalante; away to his east are the salmon-pink buttes and hidden canyons of Bears Ears.
Abbey revels in what is concealed as well as what is revealed: he walks out to an isolated point, realises he can see no evidence of human presence bar his own sweating body, and stands there – listening to the immense silence, watching the ‘heat waves rising from the naked rock’. It is one of the many scenes in the book where Abbey ritually