Desert Solitaire

There are times when Abbey gets lonesome in the desert, when “solitaire becomes solitary” like prison. To escape this feeling, Abbey spends more time outside his trailer than inside. This alleviates his loneliness because the trailer, the smell of butane, and the electric lights—all human-made things—remind him of Albuquerque and of other people. Avoiding these appliances altogether helps Abbey focus on himself.

Abbey likes to dig his toes in the sand during these moments and to contemplate “a far larger world” as the juniper fire burns. This gives him calmness and a sense that all of humanity blends with the distant mountains. Focusing on nature also convinces Abbey that an external world probably exists, despite the good arguments of idealist philosophers. If he threw a rock at these philosophers’ heads, they would duck, proving that to feel the world is a convincing enough experience.

As the sun sets, the noise of an owl draws Abbey’s attention. It’s a hunting call, and Abbey tries to interpret it. The predator must feel “affection” and “fondness” for its prey, and probably vice versa—by being eaten, rabbits and mice take part in a greater cycle of nature. As Abbey imagines the emotion in the owl’s call, he notices Venus in the dusk sky and quotes four lines of verse about it, which ask that it “[s]mile on our loves.” Abbey notes that every last aspect of the landscape—from grass blades to flowers to mountains—forms a “unity” with him and his solitude.

Changing the subject, Abbey contemplates Native Americans: one can find evidence of their ancient culture in this landscape and in petroglyphs (rock drawings), but the people are mostly gone. Their drawing style is remarkably in line with contemporary Western taste. The mystifying men on horseback and animal figures are hard to interpret: possibly doodles, or community notices, or religious rituals. Whatever they once meant, they now attest to the undeniable existence of the pre-Columbian indigenous people.

Owing to advancements in medicine, for the first time in centuries, the Native American population is back on the rise. But this is bad for them: for instance, the Navajos are 10 times more populous than they were a century ago, meaning that they’re not only disenfranchised but also overcrowded on their reservations. Abbey thinks that they are the “Negroes of the Southwest,” constantly downtrodden by white culture. Their lack of English or capitalist instincts sink them deeper into poverty, demoralization, alcoholism, and “various forms of mental illness, including evangelical Protestantism.”

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) has helped some Native communities, but the effect of this government assistance has been to whitewash indigenous ways of life and to overpopulate Native communities by improving medicine. Overpopulation is the greatest source of the Navajo’s troubles, as it has exhausted the land on their small reservations.

While their population skyrockets, capitalism forces the overcrowded and desperate Navajo to participate in middle-class America, a mode that is alien to “the liberty and dignity of his old way of life.” The Navajo are individual human beings, not group “personnel,” and the Navajos who do wish to join American capitalism have difficulty getting ahead in industry because the idea of private property is foreign to their culture. Their society rewards “sharing and mutual aid,” not the “private interest” required by capitalism.

However, some Navajos do benefit from the influx of money brought by industrial park tourism. But more highways—however lucrative they may be—ultimately demean the people further, forcing Navajos to perform for the hordes of white tourists passing through their reservations. Not all Navajos submit to this performance, however, as Abbey recalls one Navajo elder spitting at a couple of tourists who were trying to photograph him.

Abbey thinks that the only way to end this vicious cycle of overpopulation, poverty, and cultural destruction is to make birth control mandatory in America. This is difficult for many readers to agree with, but all political revolutions require radical means. Until this is done, Navajos will have to forget their native culture—bringing their traditions out only for the amusement of tourists—and to absorb American crew cuts and industrial economy. This can be potentially disastrous, as with the two young Native Americans north of Moab who recently drunk-drove a Plymouth full of American commodities straight into the ditch.

According to Abbey, cowboys are a similar victim of industrialization in the West. Since cattle farming is largely mechanized now, what’s left of their self-sufficient way of life has been commoditized 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 start a makeshift bus service and act as an extra in cowboy movies. Others have sunken into poverty like the Navajos. In their place, fake cowboys now strut all over the country in the signature costume. Cowboy hats and boots once signified a real and thriving way of life, but they’re now barely kept alive by people like Scobie and Viviano Jacquez. To lament this loss, Abbey quotes a song about “little rains” weeping. Cowboys and Indians, once legendary enemies, are now equally endangered by industry.