Tag: Ed Abbey

Arches’ Vintage Wooden Signs (Gone but Not Forgotten) — Jim Stiles (ZX#99)

For decades, the iconic routed wooden signs, in national parks across America, were a familiar sight to tourists. They were works of art…

But leave it to the government to find one. Someone in the Department of Transportation, his/her identity lost to history, decided to take a look at the park signs and saw red flags everywhere…

“These signs! These signs are NOT in compliance with federal highway safety standards!!!”

EDWARD ABBEY: 34 YEARS LATER in a BRAVE NEW WORLD—Jim Stiles (ZX#53)

He once said, “ If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule. That was the American Dream.”

Many of the older New Westerners love Ed Abbey but have no idea what that means. They’ve read all his books and they follow and “LIKE” his quotes on Facebook, but they understand far less than they realize. Many of the younger New Westerners are too busy recreating to care. Solitude isn’t even a priority (And please note, in the spirit of Abbey, I’m generalizing here and judging a generation who I know has its own shining stars. If there is any hope to be found, it is in those young people.)

What Abbey always hoped we’d take away from his writing and from his life was a sense of ourselves as individuals, as men and women who could take control of our own lives and our own destinies. Abbey spoke disapprovingly of a “nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses.” He longed for a people with dignity and courage and he loathed the mindless “bleating” that he found even in his own readers

The August/September Issue of the Zephyr!

Take it or Leave it: IN SEARCH OF DOCUMENTS—MY BLM/FOIA “RECAPTURE CANYON” REQUEST …by Jim Stiles Edward Abbey Needs No Defense: A Response to Amy Irvine’s “Desert Cabal”… by Tonya Audyn Stiles The Slovenly Wilderness… by Stacy Young The Open…