Silence, the desert, and an apology to Edward Abbey

This post is composed of two journal entries and some current thoughts.

March 2015:
"The smell of manure spread on fields
Will always, always remind me of home
Spring peepers singing from dusk 'til dawn
Silent night, holy night

I am about to leave this behind
These sacred moments become all the more so
Ah! But the earth has more to offer!
Soon I shall discover the sacred places of the deserts and mountains
The wild places of solitude
The great silence of sand and stone
Silent night, holy night"

-

At the time I wrote this, I had just recently read "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey. He spent several years as a park ranger at Arches National Park in Utah. He loved the place, and wished for people to experience it, but on its own terms. It was a hard place to spend time in back then: few amenities, difficult dirt roads, and far from much civilization. He fought the Park Service as best he could to keep them from making it easily accessible. One of his greatest fears was that someday you could drive through the park and see everything without even leaving your car.

This summer, a bunch of my co-workers organized a weekend trip to that same park, among other places. I initially expressed my concern that we wouldn't be able to spend enough time in each place in one weekend, and I was told, "Oh, it's ok, we can drive all the way through Arches and it only takes an hour and a half!"

Oh Edward, what have we done!

I admit I was a bit of a downer while we were in the park, as it truly hurt me to see all the things he feared had come to pass. Even some of my best friends were confused by my actions.

"You're reading a book about wilderness right now, why aren't you coming out here to enjoy this?"

Well, it's no longer wilderness when you can drive right up to the damned rock.

Here is the journal entry I wrote in the park:

7-26-15, Arches:
"For a while I felt as though Edward Abbey understood me. Being here at Arches, I finally understand him. There is no wilderness here. You can drive anywhere you want to go, and see everything without leaving the car. His worst fears confirmed. There's barely a difference between such a drive and staring at a painting (or even worse, glossing over someone's Facebook pictures!).

I almost had a moment of real silence today. I told a couple of others if we stopped talking, it would be one of the few moments in life where everything could be truly, truly silent. They laughed at me as if I was joking. It wasn't hurtful, but it was eye-opening.

Through these things, I'm also starting to understand Thoreau a bit better."

-

Silence and true wilderness are things I am starting to really embrace, and the more I do, the more I have realized how very little of them exist in our world today. I can't even climb a mountain in the heart of a designated wilderness area without hearing airplanes pass overhead. True wilderness is not something you can drive to, and it's not something you can be entertained with for a moment and then leave behind quickly. The Wilderness Act of 1964 actually has a beautiful definition:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

It doesn't stop there, but I'll let you go read it yourself if you want a better idea.

I urge you to enjoy the silence you can get. Get away from the sounds of computers humming, fans whirring, televisions blaring, and find a true moment of silence. Sunrise is a wonderful silence when you can find it, sunset as well. Find a park and spend some time there and listen for silence. It is beautiful, but usually brief.

I'm starting to get preachy. I'll leave you with this quote from Abbey:

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."

Peace.