Zero

Greetings from Moab, Utah. A place I have wanted to visit for 30 years or so.

I first read a book called Desert Solitaire when I was in college back in

upstate New York in the early 80s. The book blew my mind. It's blown a lot of

minds. It's written by a guy named Edward Abbey who was from Pennsylvania, found

himself studying philosophy, I think. He was doing a PhD in philosophy here in the

Southwest somewhere, University of New Mexico, I believe, maybe Arizona. And this

was in the 60s and he got a job for a summer working in Arches National

Monument, I think. And he fell in love with the desert, fell in love with this

part of the world and ended up spending the rest of his life here writing a

bunch of books. Desert Solitaire was is a collection of essays. It was published

by a small publisher out of New Jersey, I think. This is all from memory, so

forgive me if I get things wrong. But he, the book had like a 2000 print run or

something like that. And there was just released and disappeared as so many books

are and do. But what happened was people started reading it and giving it to

their friends and talking about it. And next thing, you know, the book became this

massive word of mouth bestseller. And it's still selling today. Pick it up if

you want to, if you want to read something unlike anything else you've ever read.

It's, he's a funny guy Edward Abbey's, he's dead now. But he, if you imagine sort

of Hunter S Thompson, if you, if Hunter S Thompson had been an environmentalist,

that's sort of where Edward Abbey is. He's like kind of like a red neck

intellectual gun-toting pickup truck driving, philosophy spouting, defender of

...