Today I saw the ghost of Ed Abbey.
He played his flute, lifted one leg, and planted it on the brick wall which rested his back. A hobo. A drunkard. A vagabond. Delightfully nomadic. His long, graying beard barely exposed his lips. The brim of his hat nearly touched his nose. He carried a pack, most likely with cans of beans and Old Crow, Jerky and Old Milwaukee, placed upon a bony shoulder.
I walked past him, nodded, and threw my tithe into his cup. An airy, ancient tune faded with each step. I imagined him naked on the edge of a Utah cliff, longing to join the bears below him.
It must have been a ghost, an apparition, some illusion. Abbey wouldn’t beg cup-in-hand, pride-in-pocket. He’d starve peacefully in the desert. Alone. Forgotten. Blissful. On his terms.
He’d have the guts to face a dark hour without remorse. He would not risk dying on the street in some damned city, where his flesh would rot for no purpose, where concrete smothers soil full of decomposers waiting for a ripe, raw meal. He would never be the punchline of jokes from collegiate blockheads, sons and daughters of hippies and lawyers. “May they all burn in hell!” He would scream to the wolves, or anyone that would listen.
No, Abbey was not there and regretfully never was.
There is no excuse not to know this man and his work. Everyone has heroes. Abbey is mine.
Rebelliousness does not run in my family. They are a content brood. I look to Abbey for courage in my work and life. He was not perfect. He was pig-headed, conservative, volatile, dangerous, and bellicose. He was also an American prophet. Most of all, he cared when few did.
The academic world thrives on conformity. By choice–by my white-trash heritage–I cannot conform. While some rising scholars seek acceptance by many, I feel comfort when I’ve pissed someone off. History should challenge things as they are, with an immutable amount of quality evidence, of course. I am wise enough not to seek a fight but to not evade one either.
Some of the words Abbey conjured while lost in American deserts bear more truth to me than Tennyson, Whitman, or any of the great minds taught more often than he in our dilapidated school system. Only eccentrics, niche groups of “radical” environmentalists, teach and preach Abbeian principles. And even then, I had to wait until a college environmental history course to meet him. What a shame.
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” ― Edward Abbey
Anthony Sadler 