The Serpents of Paradise

If certain ideas and emotions are expressed in these pages with what seems an extreme intransigence, it is not merely because I love an argument and wish to provoke (though I do), but because I am—really am—an extremist, one who lives and loves by choice far out on the very verge of things, on the edge of the abyss, where this world falls off into the depths of another. That’s the way I like it.

—E.A.

(From the Introduction to The Journey Home)

Contents

Editor’s Note

I. Ned: The Early Years

1927–37: Stump Creek, West Virginia

Hallelujah on the Bum

How It Was

Drunk in the Afternoon

Journal IV: November 10, 1951—Edinburgh, Scotland

II. Ed: The Early Years

From The Fool’s Progress

From The Brave Cowboy

Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night

Author’s Introduction to Desert Solitaire

The First Morning

The Serpents of Paradise

Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks

Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert

Appalachian Pictures

Appalachia, Good-bye

My Life as a P.I.G., or The True Adventures of Smokey the Cop

III. Ed Moves On

From Black Sun

1971–77: Henry in Love—An Interlude

The Wooden Shoe Conspiracy

The Raid at Comb Wash

Death Valley Junk

Meeting the Bear

Aravaipa Canyon

IV. Postlude

A Colorado River Journal

From Good News

Desert Images

The Damnation of a Canyon

Gather at the River

River Solitaire: A Daybook

Free Speech: The Cowboy and His Cow

Theory of Anarchy

Eco-Defense

A Writer’s Credo

Immigration and Liberal Taboos

Postlude to The Fool’s Progress

“A Few Words in Memory of Edward Abbey” by Wendell Berry

A Selected Bibliography of Works by Edward Abbey

Acknowledgments

Editor’s Note

THIS BOOK is different from any other Edward Abbey book. It includes essays, travel pieces and fictions to reveal Ed’s life directly, in his own words.

The selections gathered here are arranged chronologically by incident, not by date of publication, to offer Edward Abbey’s life from the time he was the boy called Ned in Home, Pennsylvania, until his death in Tucson at age 62. A short note introduces each of the four parts of the book and attempts to identify what’s happening in the author’s life at the time. When relevant, some details of publishing history are provided.

“Abbey was an autobiographer: whether writing fact or fiction, he remains Edward Abbey,” declares the farmer-poet Wendell Berry, “speaking as and for himself, fighting, literally, for dear life. He understands that to defend and conserve oneself as a human being in the fullest, truest sense, one must defend and conserve many others and much else.” Berry believes that Abbey “is fighting for the survival not only of nature, but of human nature, of culture, as only our heritage of works and hopes can define it.”

One of Abbey’s friends, the poet Richard Shelton, has worried publicly that when the underground (read subversive) tag is applied to Abbey’s work, his enemies, especially the boomers and the serpents—those bent on destroying the remnant paradise—are given leave to dismiss it. Shelton writes: “Abbey’s very specific suggestions are aimed at conserving, not destroying. And if, when he makes them, his tone at times is somewhat strident and abrasive, beneath it I always hear the voice of a lover trying desperately to protect the thing he loves.”^* Fact is Abbey knew what he was writing about: the details checked out. To confound his vehemence with inaccuracy is a mistake.