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Edward Abbey
Newcomb is a friend of Edward Abbey’s; he’s a former cowboy who now studies Eastern philosophy. Despite being disabled in one leg, Newcomb accompanies Abbey on a life-affirming, week-long boat trip through Glen Canyon—the central adventure of Desert Solitaire. As the character who spends the most time with Abbey, Newcomb cements the book’s main social lesson: that prolonged, solitary exposure to nature can rejuvenate people’s respect for one another. This is exactly what Abbey discovers when, after months alone in his desert post, he embarks on his trip with a heart full of affection and trust. Abbey and Newcomb yoke their rafts together, symbolically making the journey as one entity. From this pivotal moment, readers understand Abbey’s wider argument that escaping alone into nature conversely enables people to coexist happily in society. Newcomb is notably stoic and level-headed, facing each obstacle the men come up against with a calm resourcefulness rather than panicking. This imperturbable behavior reinforces three of Abbey’s arguments: first, it gives readers a living example of Abbey’s conviction that wilderness—rather than the corrosive excess of city life—can calm people, make them more reasonable, and support their basic needs. Second, Newcomb’s calmness also helps suggest that humans are one with Earth. That he is “tranquil as the sky overhead” suggests Newcomb and the earth share an equal attitude—an idea that Abbey echoes during their trip in Glen Canyon and elaborates upon throughout the book. Third, the fact that Newcomb studies the Indian mystic thinker Sri Aurobindo suggests that Newcomb’s happy stoicism comes from his rejection of Western, capitalist ways of thinking. This is exactly the rejection that Abbey, the enemy of commercial ambition and American politics, wants his readers to partake in.
Ralph Newcomb Quotes in Desert Solitaire
The Desert Solitaire quotes below are all either spoken by Ralph Newcomb or refer to Ralph Newcomb. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Down the River Quotes
In these hours and days of dual solitude on the river we hope to discover something quite different, to renew our affection for ourselves and the human kind in general by a temporary, legal separation from the mass. […] Cutting the bloody cord, that’s what we feel, the delirious exhilaration of independence, a rebirth backward in time and into primeval liberty, into freedom in the most simple, literal, primitive meaning of the world, the only meaning that really counts. I look at my old comrade Newcomb in a new light and feel a wave of love for him.
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Wilderness. The word itself is music.
Wilderness, wilderness….We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.
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Ralph Newcomb Character Timeline in Desert Solitaire
The timeline below shows where the character Ralph Newcomb appears in Desert Solitaire. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Cowboys and Indians, Part II
...by tourist culture. Most authentic cowboys have given up herding cattle. Abbey’s cowboy friend Ralph Newcomb, for instance, now studies Sri Aurobindo. Leslie McKee, a rancher like Roy Scobie, had to...
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Water
...midway—an entanglement that only worsens when one begins to struggle. Once, Abbey’s disabled friend Ralph Newcomb got stuck in quicksand as he and Abbey traversed Glen Canyon. Abbey had been walking...
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Down the River
Years ago, Abbey and Ralph Newcomb took a trip to Glen Canyon to see it before it was spoiled. They spend...
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Abbey and Newcomb set off in their rafts, though Abbey finds his unstable. As they drift, they soon...
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...lost in nature is to find independence, a primitive feeling. Out here, one could do anything—Newcomb could murder Abbey, and no one would ever know. But it’s love, not murderousness, that...
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As the current picks up, Newcomb notes it calmly while Abbey starts to worry, pulling out his useless map. They hit...
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...glockenspiel, or like lorelei. Basking in the sight of the trees and birds, Abbey asks Newcomb if he believes in God. “Who?” Newcomb asks, to which Abbey agrees.
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Eventually, Abbey and Newcomb pull off on the beach for the night. Feeling joy, Abbey quotes a line about...
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...museums or cathedrals, but nature contains everything one actually needs physically and spiritually. He and Newcomb both agree that they could live here, away from civilization. The silence is the only...
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...dream, it seems foolish to exert any effort. The river takes over for Abbey and Newcomb, sending them down its current. The canyon rim overhead is as big as Hollywood Bowl,...
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Overwhelmed by nature, Abbey demands of Newcomb where human beings come from and where they are going. Newcomb replies with a short,...
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At breakfast, the sand in the air bonds with Abbey and Newcomb’s food and with their bodies; dealing with the grit in the air becomes as easy...
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Plenty of great explorers have come before Abbey and Newcomb—mainly John Wesley Powell, the Civil War veteran who first charted Glen Canyon in a three-month...
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...the earth and numbed of feeling, people will finally realize this tragedy. As Abbey and Newcomb pass by a 50-mile-long ridge of warped sandstone, they imagine it littered with paved roads,...
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Abbey and Newcomb pull over for a rest, and while Newcomb naps, Abbey explores the abandoned ruin of...
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Back in the boat, Newcomb and Abbey have abandoned all maps and wish to explore with no guidance. As the...
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Leaving Newcomb to fry the fish, Abbey climbs the nearby ridge, removing his boots to cross quicksand...
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...as it was earlier—it is strange, menacing, and endless. He finally makes it down to Newcomb, and they fry up fish until dawn, as the wind blows as if through a...
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In the morning, as Abbey and Newcomb float naked in the river, they debate whether they ought to return to civilization at...
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Abbey and Newcomb camp for the night at Hole in the Rock, a former Mormon settlement established in...
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...and the world, obscuring their vision, like the Eastern concept of Maya. The river and Newcomb’s fishing is where God can really be found. When Abbey returns from his meditation, he...
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Taking off again, Abbey and Newcomb pass a feature that Wesley called Music Temple on his expedition, a cave that’s full...
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With the climactic Rainbow Bridge as their destination, Abbey and Newcomb continue on, stopping occasionally to admire the canyon. On one such stop, Abbey accidentally sets...
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After a bright red dawn, Abbey and Newcomb continue through Navajo Point and spot telltale signs of tourists: trash and discarded clothes. Having...
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...the formation, and it neither surpasses nor disappoints his expectations. He does feel guilty about Newcomb’s inability to come with him due to his disability; Abbey daydreams about hauling his friend...
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On the last day of their “dreamlike voyage,” Abbey and Newcomb take photos, light their pipes, and become lost in thought as they glide through the...
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Terra Incognita: Into the Maze
Like Ralph Newman back in Glen Canyon, Waterman confesses that he doesn’t want to return to civilization. America...
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