Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey: A Revolutionary, a Rebel, and a Riot!

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record the truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

- E.Abbey

Filling out the form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal anarchy. Hobbies? Survival with honor.

- E.Abbey

“Resist much, obey little!” This quote by Walt Whitman becomes Edward Abbey’s (1927-1989) personal mantra and successfully defines his short, but wild life of political radicalism, outrageous humor, and fierce defense and loyalty to the Southwest. From his humble beginnings in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to his last days defending the West, Edward Abbey continued to be a man of robust presence, both in person and in his 20 + works that created controversy among readers, his contemporaries, and even the FBI, who kept a close watch on him for the majority of his adult life. In this paper, I want to discuss the life and works of Cactus Ed, as his readers affectionately call him, as well as how and why he mocks and rebels against the bureaucratic and industrial forces that threaten his beloved Southwest. As I have read pieces of his various works, studied his extensive biographies, and watched videos in celebration of this extraordinary curmudgeon, I have grown to feel his outrage, to understand his caustic humor, and to consistently feel offended at least once from one of his 30 novels.

Edward Paul Abbey was born around 10:30 pm on January 27th, 1927 weighing in at approximately nine pounds and three ounces as noted on both his birth certificate and from his mother, Mildred Abbey’s, documentation in his baby book (Cahalan 3) Edward Abbey was the first of five children, and would later have three brothers and a sister all who referred to him as ‘Ned’ in his youth. When Abbey was born, his family lived in a small rented house on North Third Street in an overpopulated area of Indiana, PA about 55 miles outside of Pittsburgh. Though Abbey himself knows that he was born in Indiana, PA, most of his novels assert in the book jackets that he originated from Home, Pennsylvania (Cahalan 3-4). While he did live the majority of his young life in a small house in Home (about 14 years), the Abbeys did not actually live there until he was around 4 ½ (Cahalan 4). Though this fact seems to be slightly insignificant, I think that it actually is indicative of the humor and self-created mythology that Abbey created throughout his life. His last wife, Clarke Cartwright Abbey, thinks that he simply referred to Home, Pennsylvania as his birthplace because “he liked the way it sounded, the humor of being from Home” (Cahalan 4). Ultimately, Abbey felt displaced for much of his childhood, “living in at least eight different places during the first fifteen years of his life-not counting the numerous campsites that were his family’s temporary homes in 1931” (Cahalan 10). Edward Abbey created many myths that ultimately were not entirely factual, but aided in adequately representing himself and his experiences. This theme of self-made myths is consistent throughout his fictional and non-fictional works, as well as his many journals later in Abbey’s life.

Even as a child, “Ned” portrayed many of the characteristic rebelliousness and independence that the adult Ed was known for. This can be seen in short excerpts from his baby book that Mildred kept, as she once described an instance where he would “fall out of bed at 3 months” or “goes everywhere at thirteen months” (Cahalan 20). Another instance that Mildred documented was when Ed at age four yelled, “I’m a big man and don’t cry when I get my head washed but I don’t know why you have to do these dumb things to me!” (Cahalan 20). Not only did he demonstrate his outspoken attitude at a young age, but young Ed showed signs of his later interest in nature writing, when at 15 years old, he requested Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, stating that “you can always depend on a book” (Cahalan 26). Little did Abbey know that he would later be compared to Thoreau himself, even being named the Thoreau of modern times! These pieces of Abbey’s childhood-self are essential to seeing the evolution of his assertive and outspoken personality that was shaped by his parent’s attitudes and ideologies while growing up. To understand Edward Abbey and his evolution as a writer and environmentalist, it is extremely important to look at his parents, for they were enormous influences on his love of nature, his writing, and his ideologies.

Mildred Abbey (1905-1988) was a very active women and participated in many volunteer opportunities at the local Presbyterian church including choir leader, organist, pianist, while still raising five children and teaching first grade (Cahalan 5). Ed Abbey discovered his love of music from his mother who would often play old church hymns to he and his siblings as they fell asleep at night (Cahalan 5). Abbey also developed a love and preference for the rolling hills and mountains over flat plains just like his mother. Both despised flat terrain as Mildred herself even documented in her journal when traveling with the family, “to me there isn’t anything even interesting on a road on which one can see for a mile ahead what is coming. But these is something stimulating, even thrilling in a new scene that is revealed suddenly by a turn in the road or by reaching the crest of a hill” (Cahalan 5). Abbey said almost the same thing in his high school newspaper years later describing his dislike by stating, “I hate the flat plains, or as the inhabitants call them, ‘the wide open spaces’. In my opinion, a land is not civilized unless the ground is tilted at an angle” (Cahalan 5). In part, Mildred Abbey undoubtedly contributed to her son’s later love of the rocky, almost other-worldly beauty of the Southwest. Mildred Abbey was vivacious, active, and enjoyed learning and the outdoors, characteristics which Ed inherited from her.

Paul Abbey (1901-1992) was born closer to Pittsburgh in Donora, Pennsylvania and he moved to Creekside when he was 7 (Cahalan 7). As a young man, Paul pursued many different occupations, much like his son would later in life. Some of Paul Abbey’s jobs included working on a ranch, in various mills in Ohio and Michigan, and worked in a mine in Pennsylvania (cite). When he was about 16, he worked in first mill and then at 26 he declared that he “went on strike and I’m still on strike. I never went back” (Cahalan 7). From these mills and other factories, Paul discovered his affinity with labor radicalism (Cahalan 7). Paul left school at an early age but continued to self-educate himself throughout his life. He quotes Walt Whitman by heart and he was described by his son Howard Abbey as “anti-capitalistic, anti-religion, anti-prevailing opinion, anti-booze, and anti-anyone who didn’t agree with him” (Cahalan 7). He was a devout Marxist and his opposition to the political and social norms are very similar to what we see in Ed Abbey later in his life, as he also developed extremely radical political and social ideologies. Paul Abbey was also a family man, a loving and loyal father and husband, and a hard worker. He would often tell his children of his experiences in the west, for he had acquired many stories and mementos there. These stories about adventure incited in his oldest son a desire to also journey out west to experience the beauty and solitude that the wilderness had offered his father years before. As the Abbey’s were finally regaining their financial footing after the Great Depression, Paul Abbey made 30 dollars daily by selling the Pennsylvania Farmer and finally in 1941, after years of their migratory lifestyle, the Abbey’s purchased a house for the first time in Home (Cahalan 13). Ed Abbey was about 14 then and he named their home “the Old Lonesome Briar Patch” (Cahalan 13). Although they had rented in Home for years, this marked the first time the family had ever settled down.

Abbey’s formal education finally started when he was about seven. He began first grade with his younger brother Howard and the two attended Rayne Township Consolidated School in 1934 where Ed was promptly moved up to the second grade (Cahalan 20). It was at this point that he first established a sense of superiority and elevated intelligence that can be seen laced in and out of his later novels as well as his journals (Cahalan 20). As a student, most would imagine that the school boy Ed would be both boisterous and mischievous, yet he was quite the opposite. He described himself as “a shy, very timid fellow, obviously. Somewhat of a recluse, emerging rarely from his fictional den…” (Cahalan 20). After finishing grade school, Abbey attended Marion Center High from 1941-1942 and he was again described as the same reclusive and isolated student as he had been previously (Cahalan 21). In 1942, Abbey switched schools and attended Indiana High for greater intellectual and “cultural stimulation” (Cahalan 21) with hopes to enroll in more writing courses. His classmates often discussed that no one “ever really got to know Ed Abbey really well. And I think it’s because, intellectually, he was on a plane above us” (Cahalan 22). In one of his early journals, Ed himself described high school as both a time of “intellectual adventure” and “social misery” (Cahalan 22). Also at this time, Abbey obtained his first jobs as a delivery boy for magazines and newspapers as well as a stock boy at a local shoe store (Cahalan 21). During his high school years, Ed Abbey first became truly interested in writing and his earliest publications “appeared when he was fourteen or fifteen years old: an anti-Hitler editorial, “America and the Future,” in the in December 1941, and “Another Patriot,” a short story in a spring 1942 Marion Center High compendium of student writing and news” (Cahalan 22). These first few publications started Abbey’s life long love of writing and his struggle to find ways to publish his works.

Throughout his educational career, Abbey’s transcripts revealed that though he received high marks in his English classes, he had “spottier performances in other areas such as math and science, including C’s in botany and zoology” (Cahalan 23). He graduated from high school in 1945, spent a brief period of time in the military from 1945-1947, and then returned to Home to start college and pursue a string of unsuccessful jobs, a theme that lasted throughout his life (Cahalan 27). However, before graduating from high school and joining the military, Abbey took his first attempt at hitchhiking across the U.S.

He “went west as a rambling teenage hobo” (Cahalan 28) and followed in his father’s footsteps, a kind of initiation process that became a tradition among the Abbey men. Ed’s first journey took place between his junior and senior year of high school and this marked a pivotal turning point in his life (Cahalan 28). He himself describes later that he “became a Westerner at the age of 17, in the summer of 1944, while hitchhiking around the USA. For me it was love at first sight- a total passion which has never left me” (Cahalan 28). In a boxcar, Abbey relished his first look at the Rocky Mountains which to him was “a magical vision, a legend come true” (Cahalan 28). Abbey never fully completed this journey due to complications and an arrest for “vagrancy” in Flagstaff from which point he decided to return home to complete school (Cahalan 28). However, his visions of the West never left him and he would always find comfort, beauty, and awe in the sublime landscape that incited his imagination from boyhood.

After his journey West in 1944, Abbey returned home to finish high school and then enlist in the military where he was stationed in Naples, Italy (Cahalan 33). He spent three brief years as a motorcycle officer and described the whole experience in the military by briefly stating, “two years of misery, frustration, exploration, physical adventure” (Cahalan 34). In many ways, the military changed his life, for not only did he gain experience, but “the army made an anarchist out of me and what with one thing and another I’ve been living off the government ever since” (Cahalan 34). After Abbey returned home from the military, he enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College for two semesters while commuting from his house in Home. (Cahalan 35). And true to Ed Abbey’s form, he published a letter against the draft “which caused the FBI to begin the file that they would keep on him for many years” (Cahalan 35). Abbey would continue his “antimilitary attitudes throughout his life, opposing the military hierarchy” (Cahalan 35). Eventually, Abbey transferred to the University of New Mexico (UNM) in January of 1948 in Albuquerque (Cahalan 37) and “like many other young, male GI Bill students, he took up residence in barracks at Kirtland Air Force base that the military had turn over to the university” (Cahalan 37).

At UNM, Abbey continued to thrive in philosophy and English courses and became involved in the school’s newspaper while also juggling financial deficits which eventually led him to return to Home in the summer of 1948 to work with his brother (Cahalan 39). After making enough money, he returned to the West and enrolled in more writing and philosophy classes. He began experiencing the Western wilderness with the help of park rangers in the Grand Canyon and spent many days exploring the land. Also around this time, Ed met Jean Schmechel who also attended UNM, and they began a serious relationship, the first that Abbey had ever had. In 1950, the two were married, but destined for failure seeing as Ed was still completely wrapped up in his writing, his education, and the West while Jean was working as a secretary. The two faced hardship almost immediately as Ed recollects in his journal, “live in mountains in Tijeras; fights begin almost at once” (Cahalan 44). Even in the early days of their marriage, Abbey began a love affair with a woman name Rita Deanin whom he would later marry. The two had a passionate romance that lasted even throughout Abbey’s Fullbright Fellowship to Edinburgh University in Scotland from 1951-52 (Cahalan 45). Jean, sensing the failing marriage, attempted to rectify the relationship by accompanying Ed to Scotland. Yet this ultimately caused the couple to divorce once Jean recognized the deep attachment that Ed had developed for Rita. Jean went back to the United States and divorced Ed who began to feel lonely and out of place in Scotland. He desired not Jean, but Rita, the Southwest, the sun, and the desert. Thus, he returned home in 1952 and pursued a relationship with Rita with whom he married later that same year and continued to write.

After their marriage, the two lived in squalor and endured extremely dismal economic times, for neither was capable of making an income that could support a stable lifestyle. Most of Abbey’s works were not being accepted for publishing, besides the brief success of The Brave Cowboy in 1956 (Cahalan 52) and thus he and Rita were constantly moving around in order to find suitable employment opportunities. They lived with their friends Malcolm and Rachel Brown in an adobe hut in Albuquerque for a short time until Rita became pregnant with Abbey’s first child, Joshua Abbey who was born in 1956 (Cahalan 64).

Abbey had been working on Jonathon Troy, a work which was published in 1954 that Abbey “had become disgusted with” and he belittled his work describing that it was too “juvenile, naïve, clumsy, pretentious” (Cahalan 59). Jonathon Troy was more of an autobiographical work unlike The Brave Cowboy and Abbey felt that his best work was produced when he wrote non-fiction which incorporated true events that were only slightly exaggerated. Despite his fleeting period of success with his publication of The Brave Cowboy, Ed, Rita, and their son were shuttled around and often separated by Ed’s restlessness and inability to maintain a steady job. Rita began to feel neglected and grew increasingly frustrated with Ed’s inability to provide for the family especially when she became pregnant with their second child. “Sometimes his job was over, sometimes he was restless. He was a runner,” she reflects (Cahalan 65). Abbey worked at various national parks as a ranger while attempting to work on his thesis at UNM which was called “Anarchism and the Morality of Violence” (Cahalan 62). Abbey enjoyed the work he was doing both in his educational career as well as his monetary one, but recognized that his marriage with Rita was failing.

Ed Abbey had many rough years after this, fretting over his imminent divorce with Rita, and worrying about his books that remained unpublished. From 1960-1965, Abbey “increased his determination to live permanently in the Southwest” (Cahalan 79). He stated in his journal that “as usual, no home, no job, no income, no book.” (80) Abbey got an agent, Don Congdon who published Fire on the Mountain, Abbey’s second success, in 1961 to Dial Press and Congdon remained Abbey’s agent throughout his career. (Cahalan 83) However, in the fall of 1962, “Abbey did receive positive credit” (Cahalan 85) for Fire on the Mountain from the Chicago Sunday Tribune or the New York Herald Tribune (Cahalan 85). Though his writing career was displaying small hints of his later success, his personal affairs became utterly dismantled. Abbey knew that he had one last chance at making amends with Rita, recording in his journal that the future seems “bright gray. So much for that. Love? We need each other. One more try.” (Abbey 175). Eventually the relationship fell apart in August of 1965 and Abbey married a young woman named Judy Pepper with whom he had an affair with in October of the same year (Cahalan 95). This point marked an upswing in Abbey’s career in writing and marital life, if only briefly.

Edward Abbey enjoyed a happy marriage with Judy Pepper, a young woman from New Jersey, with whom he had his first daughter Susannah Abbey with. Ed published his widely acclaimed novel Desert Solitaire that was celebrated and sold to a much more diverse group of readers and “firmly established his persona as a spunky, independent outdoorsman and thinker, later called Cactus Ed” (Advameg Inc). Desert Solitaire was read by other acclaimed nature writers and activists including Annie Dillard and Dave Foreman, president of Earth First! (Cahalan 96). Abbey’s family also called it a success, a well-written work that they attributed to the happy marriage that he shared with Judy. From this moment on, Abbey was requested to make speeches at colleges and universities and at environmental festivals. In between writing his next successful work, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey taught at a UNM to bring in a steady income to support Judy and his new daughter. To say the least this was a chaotic time due to the political outrage that both the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement caused. Times were turbulent and the thirst for radical change was almost palpable around the United States. This time also marked the beginning of an increased awareness in environmental issues which were now becoming an important subject due to the “National Environmental Policy Act which was signed into law by President Nixon, requiring federal agencies to take into account the environmental effects of their actions” (Cahalan 123). Abbey as well joined into the new movement and attended “the first Earth Day [which] drew twenty million people at numerous locations around the United States” in 1970 (Cahalan 123).

Cactus Ed was asked to speak on this momentous day, and he agreed, discussing the importance of environmental action and preservation, as well as outlining the harm that corporations are doing to the wild (Cahalan 123). Because of this activism coupled with the recent publication of his novels, Abbey became associated with environmentalism and nature writing, two genres of writing he would adamantly reject throughout the rest of his career. Because of his Earth Day speech, the paperback version of Desert Solitaire began to sell to even larger audience. The Sierra Club and the Audubon Society “began lobbying for such legislation as the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Cahalan 125). Yet instead of joining these groups, Abbey “characteristically continued to live an write way out on the fringe, though he did publish in Audubon and write Slickrock (1971) fir the Sierra Club” (Cahalan 125). Also during this time Abbey became involved with yet another woman around the same time that Judy was diagnosed with acute Leukemia. She died less than three weeks after being admitted into Mt. Sinai Hospital (Cahalan 124) and her death brought about an extremely difficult time for Abbey emotionally.

From this point on, Abbey was working on The Monkey Wrench Gang and attempted to distract himself from Judy’s untimely death which he could not reconcile. He suffered greatly from this, but also threw himself into his work. He was hired by the Defenders of Wildlife as a caretaker of the Whittell Nature Preserve at Aravaipa Canyon (Cahalan 144). This new job offered him a position as a federal ranger on top of allowing him to protect and spend his days among gorgeous landscapes. Abbey reflected, “ forty-thousand acres of rugged canyon and mountain country. I should be happy as a pig in shit. And I am” (Cahalan 144). He continued to have brief and unsuccessful love affairs and after he lost his job at Aravaipa Canyon, Abbey moved in 1974 to Moab where he would continue to move back and forth between cactus country and canyon country for the rest of his life.

In 1974, Abbey finished and published The Monkey Wrench Gang “in which he successfully synthesized his serious politics, his comic fiction-writing abilities, and his friendships” (Advameg Inc). This novel made Abbey a cult icon, for he was praised as an outrageous and wildly sarcastic political figure. The Monkey Wrench Gang was “a comic novel drawing on Abbey's development-sabotage activities. Not strongly promoted by its publisher, Lippincott, the book was reported to have sold 500,000 copies thanks mostly to word-of-mouth publicity” (Advameg Inc). This new novel was “something of a rant, inspired by anger over such events as the inundation of a spectacular stretch of Colorado River scenery after the river was impounded by the Glen Canyon Dam in the 1960s” (Advameg Inc). Through his writing and sarcastic outrage, Abbey even inspired others to become more involved with conservational issues, including Dave Foreman who, inspired by MWG, resigned his job as a member of Wilderness Society and began Earth First! (Cahalan 151).

At this point in Abbey’s writing career, he was steadily growing in popularity, albeit not all of it positive acknowledgment. He was an outspoken man who adhered to no one’s labels, opinions, or laws. Therefore, because of his wild ways, he also repelled some of his audience as well. For example, Abbey often endured criticism that he was a misogynist and anti-feminist because his works often portrayed women as less important characters; or objects that were essentially powerless. In his journal on September 16th, 1979, Abbey reflects on this critique stating that, “everything I write is in praise of women, that for love, sex, companionship, I find women infinitely preferable to men” (Abbey 265). As Abbey continued to endure both positive and negative feedback from his works and an increased popularity, he also received news of his dwindling health due to the rapid spread of terminal cancer in 1980 that the doctors assumed would take his life in approximately six months.

In 1981, Abbey married his final wife, Clarke Cartwright. He continued to work on his writing, giving lectures at various universities and environmental gatherings to promote conservation of the West. Yet in October, Cactus Ed became preoccupied with thoughts of his death and in his journal he left Clarke funeral instructions stating that, “my body to be transported in the bed of a pickup truck and buried as soon as possible after death, in a hole dug on our private property somewhere (along Green River, up in the LaSals, or at Cliff Dwellers). No undertakes wanted; no embalming (for godsake!); no coffin. Just a plain pine box hammered together by a friend; or an old sleeping bag or tarp will do” (Abbey, 276). Despite Abbey’s health weakening health, he and Clarke welcomed their daughter Rebecca, born in 1983 and then their second child in 1987 named Benjamin (Abbey).

Abbey continued to be active in preserving and defending the land from the industrial forces that he had been waging a constant war for the majority of his life. He also recorded “to long solo walks in Cabeza Prieta, a Sonoran Desert wildlife preserve”. (Abbey 289). This first walk was on December 1981 and the second in March 1984, though it ultimately was never complete due to medical issues (Abbey 289). From his notes about these walks, Abbey organized a reading at the fourth annual Belkin Lecture at the University of California. Yet, Ed Abbey’s health continued to prevent him from participating in daily actuates such as seeing his children and writing more about the sacred and beautiful West that had continued to be his only lifelong long affair.

In March of 1989, Cactus Ed fainted at home and was rushed to the hospital where the doctors attempted to conduct surgical procedures to revive him. However, the surgeries were ineffective and so, true to Edward Abbey’s rebellious and feisty attitude, he “had himself kidnapped from the hated institutional environment and carried out into the warm springtime desert to die peacefully” (Abbey 355) as his close friend David Petersen reflected. On March 14, 1989, among his family and friends, Ed Abbey passed away at 62 years of age and like his journal instructed, he was buried “in his favorite sleeping bag and transported in the back of Jack Loeffler’s (a close friend of Abbey’s) pickup into the burning heat of a distant and remote desert wilderness” (Abbey 356).

Edward Abbey was not a typical “nature writer”, nor would he identify as an environmentalist or any other labels that people attempted to classify him under. He himself said, “I am not an environmentalist. I am an earthiest” (Cahalan 8). His works were about the preservation of the wild because he felt “obliged, morally obliged, to defend these things against the Enemy” (Abbey 252-253). He was completely unique in every way, from his attitude and sarcastic humor to his and political and social ideologies. He questioned the accepted values, spoke out in disagreement when he felt it necessary (which was often), and challenged the bureaucratic forces, through his authentic and unmistakable satirical voice. Abbey felt the necessity to write as a profession “not so much to please, soothe or console, as to challenge, provoke, stimulate, even anger if necessary-whatever’s required to force the reader to think, feel, react, make choices….and, of course to entertain. To generate tears and laughter” (Abbey 282). He conformed to no one, and undoubtedly he lived up to the that mantra he and his father shared, to “resist much, obey little”. Even today, Ed Abbey continues to make an impact on environmental preservation and his rambunctious, biting wit that fills up his journals and novels, truly giving an unparalleled insight into the man himself and his love of the West.

Benedicto: "May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.

May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl,

through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock,

blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone,

and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,

where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags,

where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you --- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

-Edward Abbey

Gallery

-This stone marks the site of Abbey's illegal burial in the desert that he loved so much.

He requested that his gravestone state "no comment", a sarcastic and humorous gesture

that is extremely indicative of "Cactus Ed's" eccentric and outrageous personality.

Work Cited

Abbey, Edward. Confessions of a barbarian selections from the journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

Advameg Inc. "Edward Abbey Biography - Family Suffered Hard Times, Published First Novel, Inspired Radical Environmentalists." Encyclopedia of

World Biography. 2008. 09 May 2009 <http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-A-Bu-and-Obituaries/Abbey-Edward.html>.

Cahalan, James M. Edward Abbey A Life. New York: University of Arizona P, 2003.

Edward Abbey. Ed. Christer Lindh. 09 May 2009 <http://www.abbeyweb.net/>.