ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Philosophical Books
"In God's wilderness lies the hope of the world--
the great fresh, unblighted,
unredeemed wilderness.
The galling harness of civilization
drops off,
and the wounds heal
before
we are aware."
--John Muir--
"Nature is, after all, the only
book that offers important content on every page."
--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- Beyond the Wall by Edward Abbey:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984, 203
pages.
Abbey, called the Thoreau of the West, compiled
all his essays which deal with the desert into this volume. The deserts
range from Alaska's Arctic desert to Mexico, and include deserts in California,
Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The title refers to escaping beyond the
walls which trap civilization, the walls of unreality, asphalt, cement,
poison air, and mutilated rivers, and finding self, solitude, peace, and
nature in the "old true world of the desert." With his usual
droll humor, sarcasm, and disdain for most things human, Abbey revels in
desert world life, often waxing poetic as he describes his experiences,
philosophy, and inner feelings while in the areas he most loves. Numerous
listings of the desert flora and fauna he encounters are included, and
comparisons between the creatures of the desert and Man abound, with the
former being praised and the latter being disparaged, both with good cause.
- Desert Solitaire:A Season in the Wilderness:
A Celebration of the Beauty of Living in a Harsh and Hostile Land by Edward Abbey: Ballantine Books, New York, 1968, 303 pages.
Written in his trademark poetic prose, rich in imagery and vocabulary,
this spellbinding book recounts episodes, great thoughts, and observations
during his two 6 month tenures as a National Park Service backcountry ranger
in Arches National Monument, Utah. One chapter details his raft trip through
Glen Canyon just before the dam flooded the canyon, creating Lake Powell.
Reverence is shown to the canyon and all it contains, and disdain is heaped
upon the Government which would so blithely destroy it just to create electricity
for cities which he felt should not even be where they were. He glorifies
his desert and all it represents and all the multifarious life it supports,
and in response to comments regarding the lack of water in his desert,
he replies that it has no such shortage. Rather, it has just the right
amount, else there would not be the "generous spacing among plants
and animals, homes and towns and cities."
- Down the River by Edward Abbey: Penguin Books, New York, 1982, 242 pages.
Yet another compilation of Abbey's wonderful essays which had appeared
in various big-name periodicals. Their purpose, he claims, is "to
serve as antidotes to despair, [for] despair leads to boredom, electronic
games, computer hacking, poetry, and other bad habits." The self-proclaimed
agrarian anarchist rereads and responds to Thoureau, philosophizes while
atop Aztec Peak firetower in Arizona with his wife, condemns the MX missile
program and protests at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, but most of
the essays revere river water trips, from the Canadian Yukon to the San
Juan, and on to the granddaddy of them all, the Colorado River through
the Grand Canyon.
- The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the
American West by Edward Abbey: Penguin Books,
New York, 1977, 242 pages.
This series of essays begins with Abbey's first adventure at the age of
17 (by bus, hitchhiking, and "riding the rails" hobo fashion)
in 1944, when he traveled for 3 months from his home in Pennsylvania to
Seattle and San Francisco and then back home through Arizona and New Mexico,
beginning his love affair with mountains and desert. The essays range geographically
from Utah to Hoboken, New Jersey, and include a car trip through Big Bend
National Park on a road not fit for cars, summer stints atop fire lookout
towers in Glacier National Park and on the Grand Canyon's North Rim, death
and life in Death Valley, and a reenactment of Major Powell's raft trip
down the Green River. As always, humanity is the aggressor and nature the
victim as he delineates the rape of the land and the ultimate lure of the
mountains and desert.
- The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in
the Wilderness of Colorado by Rick Bass:
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,1995, 241 pages.
Do grizzlies still live in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado?
The author and friends made three separate backpacks/bushwacks into these
mountains in search of confirming evidence, all the while trumpeting the
mystery and extolling the spirit of the mountains and its predators. Images,
allusions, metaphors, and similes predominate in his riveting poetry-prose
as he transforms his observations and philosophy into spirtualism. Wilderness,
mountains, flora, wildlife, and especially bears are treated reverentially.
Mankind and his inventions are not.
- The Forests: A Celebration of Nature, in
Word and Image compiled by
Michelle Lovric: Courage Books/Running Press, Philadelphia; 1996; 62 pages.
This handsome book combines artwork and photography
with excerpts from works by the world's most renowned authors, all dealing
with trees, woods, wilderness, and things natural.
- The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher: Vintage Books/Random House, New York; 1967;
248 pages.
Colin Fletcher is the spiritual guru of backpacking, interspersing great
thoughts with his remarkable experiences. In this book, he details his
two-month long1967 walk through the entire length of the Grand Canyon,
a walk never repeated because construction of the Glen Canyon dam precludes
a repeat of the feat. The author had to battle heat, lack of water, and
inaccessibility for resupply. He cached food and water and relied on three
parachute drops of supplies. But the book is far more than a chronicle
of a hiker. Rather, "It became a pilgrimage, a stunning spiritual
odyssey during which one man began to understand mankind's singular place
in the vastness of nature."
- The Ragged Mountain Portable Wilderness
Anthology edited by Jan Adkins:
Ragged Mountain Press, Camden, Maine; 1993; 138 pages.
This compendium of excerpts from poetry and essays is arranged in categories
such as Setting Out, The Land, Fellow Creatures, Adversity, and The Nature
of Things. A nice feature is a brief biography for each quoted author.
The selections are designed to provoke thought and perhaps entice you to
locate the original and read more by the 69 authors included in the book.
- The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher by Colin Fletcher: Vintage Books/Random House, New York; 1989;
268 pages.
This book celebrates the joy of solo backpacking as the author describes
8 different backpack and day trips and how they healed his soul and nourished
his spirit. "A literary feat bordering on magic.... He shows us all
how to break free in our minds by trail-blazing through the wilderness."
- Sacred Paths and Muddy Places: Rediscovering
Spirit in Nature by Stephen Altschuler: Stillpoint
Publishing, Walpole, NH; 1993; 241 pages.
A compilation of essays written as the author discovers nature -- both
Mother Nature and his own inner nature -- and learns how both can heal
emotional pain, reaffirm values, and touch one's inner being, first during
a four year sojourn in a shack in the New Hampshire woods, and later in
California's Bay area.
- The Wilderness Companion: Reflections for
the Back-Country Traveler
by David Backes: NorthWord Press, Inc., Minocqua, WI; 1882; 112 pages.
This thought-provoking book is a compilation of excerpts from poetry and
essays designed to stimulate thought, and through such reflection, to broaden
one's self. The quotations are arranged into categories, such as Silence,
Solitude, Beauty, Mystery, Harmony, Self-Knowledge, Truth, Life, Humility,
Adversity, etc.
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.