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Water
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Desert Solitaire, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Wilderness, Society, and Liberty
Nature, Wonder, and Religion
Language and Reality
Humanity, the Environment, and Arrogance
Summary
Analysis
By July, the desert heat is overwhelming. Despite the temperature, 110ºF, and constant dehydration, Abbey weathers the discomfort by sitting under the juniper outside his trailer. He sticks his feet in the sand, achieving a relaxed, “animal” satisfaction. The sight of the distant mountains comforts him, as they remind him that he can escape the heat if he wanted, by taking refuge of their cold peaks. The mere knowledge that he can escape helps him go on.
As usual, Abbey’s favorite juniper helps him achieve an “animal” connection to the earth that would otherwise be unavailable to human beings. With the sight of a distant mountain, he introduces another important idea: that certain ideas (such as this snowy mountain’s mere existence) can have a material psychological relief from hardship (in Abbey’s case, heat and dehydration).
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More broadly, all of America’s wilderness serves the same purpose for the country’s civilization as these mountains do for Abbey. Just to know that nature exists provides city dwellers with the hope they need to live their lives. For this reason, the wilderness must be preserved for the good of civilization.
By comparing a personal idea (a cold mountain refuge) to a universal idea (human hope), Abbey reveals a critical logical maneuver in his coming argument about democracy and wilderness. His example shows that people can make justifiable conclusions about all of humanity based on their private experiences. Just as Abbey feels relieved by the mere existence of a mountain, so, too, can all of humanity find hope in nature.
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Abbey argues that there is another reason to preserve nature: in case American citizens need to escape an authoritarian government takeover, wild parks like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone are the perfect places to flee and stage a rebellion. Americans should take this warning seriously, as the whole world is slowly drifting toward totalitarianism. It’s no coincidence that tyranny thrives in the most industrialized societies—such as modern Germany—where governments can easily control their citizens. By contrast, rural insurrections in Cuba and Vietnam have recently been successful in fighting totalitarianism.
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In order to overpower its citizens and become a dictatorship, America would need to accomplish eight things: pack people into cities, mechanize agriculture, restrict gun ownership, encourage population growth, continue the draft, wage war overseas to distract from conflicts at home, erect highways to connect the country, and destroy wilderness. These developments are already occurring. It may, in fact, be too late. Abbey quotes a Robinson Jeffers poem: “Shine, perishing republic.”
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Despite these thoughts on “my all-too-perishable republic,” Abbey’s solitude helps him cope as the sun “reigns” in his boiling summer landscape. Like him, the lizards and snakes seek shade to conserve energy. Even flowers and plants curl up in defense. Birds are scarce. Insects disappear—though the crickets, like a Bach partita, chirp their sad music. Rather than following these restful survival tactics, however, human beings are unique in that they slave away at work during such miserable heat, “chained” to the clock and denying the “elemental fire.”
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Abbey watches the circling buzzards against the “blue dome of heaven,” imagining that they dream of their former lives as other animals. In the powerful sunlight, the horizon shimmers and refracts as if viewed through a veil of water. Balanced Rock seems to bend in the heat, while the junipers and pines seem to wave. Though rare, mirages can occur in California, where optical illusions trick people into seeing lakes on the horizon—“Palestinian miracles.”
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In the bright sun, every detail of the landscape appears so clear that Abbey thinks there cannot be another realm beyond reality. He stares at the half-dead juniper and prays for a vision of truth, but he gets no response. He listens intently for sun signals, but its music is too pure for human ears. Abbey scrapes his feet against the sandy rock and feels comforted by its solidity.
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