Dust On My Boots Part 3: Findin’ Ed Abbey by Nazel Pickens
“Finally a word of caution:
Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the canyon country hoping to see some of
that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can’t see anything from a car;
you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl on hands and knees, over
the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll
see something, maybe. Probably not. In the second place most of what I write about in this book is
already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. Your holding a
tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot—throw it at anything big and glassy.
What do you have to lose?” - Edward Abbey
I finished rereading the last paragraph (for the fifth or sixth time) of Ed Abbey’s preface to Desert
Solitaire, a provocative and poetic account of the couple years he spent working for the U.S. Forest
Service at Arches National Monument in the late 1950s (compiled, amended, revisited, and published in
the mid 1960s). I put down my tattered copy of the book that had inspired me decades ago and that I had
somehow forgotten about along the way. It moved me to go on a pilgrimage of sorts, a misanthropic and
heretical hadj, a circumforaneous expedition, a (hopefully) epiphany-inducing journey through the deserts
of southern Utah and northern Arizona and the one rapidly growing within myself.
I rarely leave our mountain. When I do, it is usually just to dip down into the lowlands for very brief and
strategic in-and-outs. I was about to embark, however, on a longer and very different sort of mission, one
that would take me to unfamiliar and potentially dangerous territories. I needed to go find Ed Abbey.
I was well aware that he was long dead, but I had reached a point in my conflictual relationship with the
degraded human condition (I suppose human affliction or infestation would be more accurate) that I
needed to soak in what inspired Ed, what filled him with passion, not hope, but passion, a more raw and
honest motivation. I needed to feel what Abbey felt, smell what he smelled, taste what he tasted, hear
what he heard, and see what he saw. I needed to mingle with the ghost of a kindred spirit. It could have
been Bukowski, I suppose, or maybe Townes van Zandt, but Los Angeles and Texas were certainly not
on my very short “places to go” list (in fact, if I never saw either of those locales ever again my eyes and
heart would thank me profusely), and besides, the canyons were a-callin’ and ol’ Ed seemed to be
howlin’ to me from the wilderness.
It was a long-shot that I would come back home inspired, invigorated, more patient, or fulfilled, but one I
needed to take, for everyone’s sake. Humans, in general, and specifically the current crop of hyper-
domesticated cyber-slaves, had reached an all-time low that was fillin’ me with a contempt and disgust
that I had not previously thought possible. I know Ed Abbey felt this same feelin’, and yet, he went on
with a stoic solitude, rebellious rudeness, cantankerous coyote laughter, and a deep sensitivity only
rivaled by his robust bouts of insensitivity (depending on what and who he was confronted with). I have
long admired the stream-lined and profound space Ed claimed in this world. So now I would go and ask
him how he did it.
To be clear, I am a forest dwellin’ mountain man who tinkers with things in the woods and rustles ‘round
in my garden. I am not a desert rat like Abbey. The desert and the canyonlands are not my home and are
somewhat intimidating to me, but that is what I needed, a challenge, an unfamiliar terrain, a place of
solitude. So, I packed up my truck with a bedroll, backpack, couple layers of clothes, two five-gallon jugs
of my mountain swamp water, canteen, cookstove, frying pan and pot, knife, axe, lots of jerky, dried fruit,
bag of tortillas, some cans of beans, two handles each of rye whisky and tequila, cooler filled with beer
and a bunch of veggies from the garden, some weed, a long chunk of the cactus, .38 revolver and .22
rifle, some maps, my journal, and a few other assorted items I suspected I might require. I gave my
family some hugs and kisses and headed down the mountain for southern Utah. I would stop at a store
along the way for a giant slab of smoked bacon, couple dozen eggs, and big bag of coffee. It was early-
June, everything was startin’ to heat up, and I was off.
I never really cared all that much for some swaths of eastern Oregon and most of Nevada, so I drove
through the long stretches of stark and seemingly barren land all night long, only stoping to piss, fill-up
with gas, and grab another cup of thin and burnt truck stop coffee. I was hopin’ to reach the canyons of
Zion and bathe in the Virgin River by daybreak. I passed through the epic canyons thirty years prior with
my sweet honey back when our journey was just really gettin’ goin’, and while we, and the world, have
changed so much since then, I was not prepared for what was there when I arrived. Humans had done
what they seem to almost always do, make things so much worse.
I arrived in the canyon before first light, so I did not notice most of the changes which had occurred since
my last visit. I smelled the junipers, sages, cliffrose, and pinyon pines. I heard the ravens, the river, and
the wind. I felt the arid air and dust. From my sprawled out bedroll deep in the canyon, I watched the light
peek over the cliffs to the east, glowing in oranges, reds, yellows, blues, purples, browns, and whites on
the west wall. I felt an immense calm and breathed in deep over and over, filling my lungs with the
canyon and its ancient wisdom, power, and solitude.
Then they came. By bus loads. Speaking German, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi, French, Spanish, Italian,
and all sorts of variations, versions, and attempts of English. Most carried mass-produced walking sticks
and wore matching water-proof boots (both likely made in China), rented at the local outfitters who were
raking it in. They smelled of soaps, deodorant, perfumes, powders, fried food, and sugar. They walked in
hurried paces and made insignificant chatter while endlessly swiping and clicking their hand-held master.
Most annoying, they took endless pictures of their boring and unworthy faces in front of the majestic
canyon walls for posting online to attempt to prove to themselves and their virtual “friends” that they were
actually alive.
I was bumped into and obstructed, physically and emotionally, again and again, by people
wanting to check off lists, not be a part of or attempt to understand this dynamic and yet motionless,
timeless and ever-changing place.
By mid-morning I had had enough and set off down the road. But each place I stopped was the same,
from the yellow and orange sand castle hoodoos of Bryce Canyon to the dramatic Grand Staircase of
Escalante to the sheer cliffs and epic vistas of Capital Reef and Canyonlands. While the landscape was
awe-inspiring and spoke profoundly to me, humans kept getting in my head and invading my space. By
evening I had reached Arches National Park and found an unauthorized back way in from the west. It
was the same hard-packed red dirt route Abbey took the first time he entered Arches almost seventy
years ago, the old main entrance before development, progress, industrial tourism, and asphalt scarred
the land in order to allow humans to sit in their mechanical wheelchairs with motors and screens and
venture into the heart of the park and all around it. I passed through some tricky sand pits, squeezed
around sketchy drop-off curves, and went over a couple nerve-racking hogbacks before setting up camp
near a rocky outcropping that looked like something from Easter Island or Mars. It was here that I hoped
to converse with Ed.
After eating a large meal and drinking a good amount of rye whiskey and beer, I slept deeply. But, I was
abruptly awoken around sunrise with the grinding, bellowing, and buzzing of ATVs and dirt bikes whizzin’
past my head. I jumped up and looked all around at the pestilence which so rudely encroached my reality
as I ate their dust. All that day, at every turn, in every canyon and trail, I was met with similar groupings of
these alien beings, riding, walking, driving. Creatures so not of this place that it seemed beyond obvious,
and certainly worse than ridiculous. Why were they here? What did they want? How could I get rid of
them?
Whenever the herd tried to engage with me, I grumbled under my breath and turned away. I had nothing
to say. We were not fellow travelers. They were an oversize-brained, bi-pedal, and opposable-thumbed
plague of pandemic proportion. I moved on again and again, but each place I went, from Valley of the
Gods and Monument Valley to Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend to the North Rim of the Grand
Canyon, places of deep inspiration and timeless meaning, they were there to ruin it. It seems to be what
they do best.
I had had a rough day, so when I finally reached a place off in the desert where I could park my truck and
not be disturbed, I chomped a big chunk of cactus and downed half my tequila. I don’t remember much
after that, after the black moonless sky with endless sparkin’ white specks became a swirling
kaleidoscope of multidimensional chaos...
When I awoke, I found this poem written in a melty version of my handwriting in my journal next to
doodles of a howlin’ coyote, strange faces, turtles, spirals, a black sun, and other undecipherable things
(sorry, no kokopelli):
On The Other Side Of The Sky
Lookin’ inside my dreamin’ eyes
A foreign world is familiar too
Where rage cools to a paler blue
My sorrows burn fire-flamed red
And the frenetic spirals of life
Turn toward the eternal flowin’ dead
On The Other Side Of The Sky
On soft carpets of clover I lie
Circles straighten and mind a-bendin’
While each song is forever endin’
But the tune never really stops
The turtle’s runnin’ backwards
And I have to throw up.
On The Other Side Of The Sky
Where I am once again born to die
Walkin’ out the door to get back home
Under the sky of a fluffy livin’ loam
Rememberin’ everything to forget it all
My hands spin in all directions
While the clock is fallin’ off the wall
On The Other Side Of The Sky
With no answers but a certain WHY
The Old Black Sun shines from below
And creative disintegrations grow
Mother moths return to darkened flame
Jaguars dance the endless wheel
Returnin’ from where they never came
On The Other Side Of The Sky
Cool water turns to spirited rye
My mule walks sideways on two legs
And coyote lays more copper eggs
Backwards the buffalo forever roam
As the rainbow shatters into black
I understand the illusions of the starry dome
I sensed that this particular journey had reached the point where I would now do a one-eighty and head
back to the lush and familiar sanctuary of home. I would unpack this experience for a while, attempt to
understand the lessons, and try to integrate them into my life. The problem was that I didn’t have enough
money for the gas I would need. After considering my options, I settled on a very unconventional solution,
one that even surprised me. I would drive to Las Vegas, the land of the losers, the epitome of all I
despise, and try to win enough, triple the money in my sorry wallet in fact, to raise the gas money I
needed. This made no real sense since I was not that great a gambler (to be generous), the desperate
ludicrousness of the habit annoys the hell outta me, and, have I mentioned how much I hate Las Vegas?
Even as a teenager, I understood it for what it was: post-modern, hyper-domesticated, both decadent and
filthy, and a gross homage to commodification, superficiality, greed, and stupidity. I had been there once,
thirty years ago, for one night, and left in complete disgust. What it has become since then, even some AI
projection on electro-algarhythmic-steroids could not have predicted. It was a vacuum of soulless
emptiness whose only goal was to provide fleeting moments of delusional hope followed by layer-upon-
layer of misery and alienation, promising bliss and glitter, offering less than nothing, and taking every last
penny in the process, the perfect temple of civilization.
Needless to say, my plan didn’t work. A few ups and downs at a blackjack table in a seedy dive
downtown, some extremely watered-down drinks, and a few unsolicited nasty proposals of fleshy
fornication, left me very eager to move on and rid myself of this pathetic place. If only I could rid this
atrocity from the planet. Now that would be a jackpot ol’ Abbey might enjoy.
So, that night I set up camp out past the ever-glow of Sin City, finished off my booze, laid on my back and
gazed at the cosmos pondering tomorrow’s move. Would I abandon my now gas-less truck and hitchhike
back, dejected, disheveled, but alive and at home; or find a bunch of fertilizer and fuses and take Ol’
Hoover down, washing the desert of this scum, cleansing it of the hyper-human synthetic stain and
disappear into the desert?
W.W.E.A.D.?
I thought of one of my favorite quotes in Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire:
“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear—the earth remains,
slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I
sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock
is real. Rock and sun.”
I would figure out my next move in the morning, as I was still very undecided. Before closing my eyes for
the night, I rolled a joint from the remaining weed in my bag. I took long, deep, and serious pulls from the
fat stinky bone and looked off into the darkness. Then, I jotted this song in my journal:
i stare down at this paper
broken pencil in my hand
look out across this valley
tortured and twisted land
i gather final thoughts
a eulogy to another day
but my heart is so weary
there’s nothin’, nothin’ left to say
nothin’ left to say these days
nothin’ left at all
as it all crumbles down
i just sit and watch it fall
yipee-i-o
yipee-i-a
yipee-i-you who who
nothin, nothin’ left to say
i tried so many goddamn times
with shouts and tears and pleas
to wake the dead back into life
empty cries lost in the breeze
retreat to the woods
to scrape just a little more time
share my life with the livin’
for our own reasons and rhymes
nothin’ left to say these days
nothin’ left at all
as it all crumbles down
i just sit and watch it fall
yipee-i-o
yipee-i-a
yipee-i-you who who
nothin, nothin’ left to say
yipee-i-o
yipee-i-a
yipee-i-you who who
nothin, nothin’ left to say
I yip’d and howled the chorus again and again as I lay myself down in the darkness, and I swear, Ed
sang it back to me, just slightly outta tune. I could not get the sweet smell of pipe smoke and burnt
juniper out of my nose as I drifted off into the other side of things.
*Note: This story was somewhat fictional, although based on very real experiences, events, situations,
and feelings.
—————
Nazel Pickens, a cosmic-anarchist-cowboy with backwoods, home-spun, divergent, deviant, rebellious, sorrowful, cynical, silly,
and celestial commentary on the world at large and his forever cluttered and dusty lil' place in it. Ol’ Nazel doesn’t have a
cellphone (they’re gonna pry his rotary landline outta his cold dead hand) or internet connection, but he sure does have opinions
about this psychotically alienated technophilic postmodern mess of a world and of his perpetual pursuit of authentic anarchic
freedom, and loves to pound them out on his typewriter, some of which is available as the somewhat regularly reoccurring
column “Dust On My Boots” from The Rogue Writers Guild’s online magazine (www.roguewritersguild.com). From essays to
poems to rants to short stories to songs, Mr. Pickens emotes with words in the dust, and lets the wind take it all away. He
sometimes joins forces with another voice in his head, Invecchiare Selvatico, who writes from a more sophisticated, sometimes
more analytical, voice. They teamed up to put out a book, Black Blossoms At The End Of The World, available from
littleblackcart.com or underworldamusements.com. Messages to be passed on to Nazel (and requests for a free catalog of his
own distro) can be sent to nazelpickens@gmail.com. Nazel also puts out music with his (probably now defunct) cosmic-outlaw-
country band, which can be heard at distilledspiritrebellion.bandcamp.com
