Abbey and Thoreau Parallels:

Edward Abbey although living almost a century after Henry David Thoreau was seemed to share many common thoughts. Although Abbeys writing is more straightforward and humorous and less confusing than Thoreau’s, their ideas on how life should be lived and problems regarding nature and society are similar. When examining the writings of Edward Abbey we read a section of his novel Desert Solitaire. Abbey is a known environmentalist writer and in this section he focuses on his time as a National Parks Service ranger and how parks are being destroyed by having roads built in them to make them become for ‘accessible’. When reading Abbey I found myself agreeing with a lot of his statements and I enjoyed how he opened with a personal narrative and when he went on his long rant I was carried away and swept up in his passion. I was surprised at the end when he tied it back to his personal narrative and basically stating there wasn’t much he could do, but he did a little by pulling up all the stakes.

One of the quotes that stood out to the most in his work and that I could directly relate back to Thoreau was when he stated “ They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of those urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.” This for me connected back to when Thoreau stated “I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a foot.” Both writers point out that to truly experience the journey and to get the most out of it, you have to walk. That way you can take it all in, breath the air, feel the sun, truly admire and experience what is around you. They both allude to the fact that we spend too much time trying to be efficient and get places faster as when Abbey says “We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.” that we forget its not about getting there but the journey to arriving. Abbey points out that few people experience parks because they are trying to be too efficient, and their lives at home are efficient, so experiencing the outdoors can only be therapeutic if one is actually outside and not worried about time.

I enjoyed Abbeys writing a lot and I appreciated his use of humor to help get across the direness of these trends. He like Thoreau had many comments on how we live our lives, as well as the importance of nature and I found relatable.

Arches National Park