Nature Reading - Desert Solitaire

(did you know that I was always spelling that 'Solitare'?)

Wilderness. The word itself is music.

Desert Solitaire is a story that only concerns itself with passion - passion for the world around it, passion for a dislike of the things that it dislikes, and a passion for the story it has to tell. At many points in the novel, Abbey is faced with the ongoing struggle between civilization and wilderness. Abbey has an undying love for the natural world around him, and thus tends to reject the civilized world that so many other people chose to live in. However, the life in the wilderness is also a refreshing break from this civilization, so there is no doubt that Abbey begins to struggle between the choice of what he loves and what he loathes and fears.

Abbey has a love for the wilderness that is unrequited and endless in its bounds. He feels that nature is peaceful and should be left in peace, left so that people in the years to come can appreciate its beauty and elements for what it really is, instead of what it has been molded to be. During his stay in Moab, Utah, watching over the Arches National Monument, Abbey bonds with nature in a way that not many people would even consider. He becomes a part of it through a theory which he tests by - of all things - throwing a rock at and killing a rabbit. What makes it worse is that this was merely an experiment he performed to try and determine his place in the world that was around him, to find a place of belonging in a world of solitude.

I try but I cannot feel any sense of guilt. I examine my soul: white as snow. Check my hands: not a trace of blood. No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!
Rejoicing in my innocence and power I stride down the trail beneath the elephantine forms of melting sandstone, past the stark shadows of Double Arch. The experiment was a complete success; it will never be necessary to perform it again.
-Page 34