Desert Solecisms: the Revitalization of Self and Community Through Edward Abbey, the Cold War, and the Sacred Fire Circle
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Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 12-2009 Desert Solecisms: The Revitalization of Self and Community through Edward Abbey, the Cold War, and the Sacred Fire Circle Lyra Hilliard Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hilliard, Lyra, "Desert Solecisms: The Revitalization of Self and Community through Edward Abbey, the Cold War, and the Sacred Fire Circle" (2009). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 481. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/481 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DESERT SOLECISMS: THE REVITALIZATION OF SELF AND COMMUNITY THROUGH EDWARD ABBEY, THE COLD WAR, AND THE SACRED FIRE CIRCLE by Lyra Hilliard A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in American Studies Approved: ________________________ _____________________ Chris Cokinos Michael Sowder Major Professor Committee Member ________________________ _____________________ Lawrence Culver Byron R. Burnham Committee Member Dean of Graduate Studies UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY Logan, Utah 2009 ii Copyright © Lyra Hilliard 2009 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Desert Solecisms: The Revitalization of Individual and Community Through Edward Abbey, the Cold War, and the Sacred Fire Circle by Lyra Hilliard, Master of Arts Utah State University, 2009 Major Professor: Christopher Cokinos Program: American Studies This creative thesis is a braided narrative in which I explore the promised lands of Utah through my travels in the summer of 2008, the Cold War defense industry, and the early career of writer Edward Abbey. America‘s domestic and foreign policy shifts in the first decade of the Cold War contributed to the rise of modern environmentalism and to the creation of countless new religious movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. To illustrate the cataclysmic upheavals of this era, each chapter of this thesis has been organized according to anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace‘s schema of revitalization movements. In both an historical and personal context, I investigate the tensions between freedom and preservation, between defense and vulnerability, and, ultimately, between solitude and community. (152 pages) iv To Bill McKee v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I was repeatedly humbled by the kindness and generosity of several National Park Service employees: Matthew Greuel of Dinosaur NM, the rangers and staff of Arches NP, and particularly to Vicky Webster and her meticulous archival records at Arches. Special thanks to Laurie Collins and Andy Nettle‘s work for Moab‘s Confluence, where I also received invaluable insight from Wendell Withrow, Jack Loeffler, and Amy Irvine. The English Department at USU is filled with kind colleagues who have seen me through some of my most difficult moments; I cannot begin to name them all. Special thanks to Jennifer Sinor, Brock Dethier, Star Coulbrooke, Russ Winn, Nate Whipple, Dan Nyikos, and Chelsi Sutton-Linderman. I am indebted to my committee: Lawrence Culver, for saving me from my early ambitions; Michael Sowder, for encouraging me to retain the spiritual aspects; and Chris Cokinos, for believing in me from day one. Specific members of the ―fire tribe‖ greatly inspired this project in the early stages: Duncan Eagleson, Jimi and Morwen Two Feathers, Joss Price, Jeff and Abigail McBride, Michael Wall, ALisa Starkweather, Billy Woods, and Mz. imani. I am blessed with friends who leant their academic and professional insights through countless conversations: Jace Collins, Jim Tolisano, and Steve Trombulek. Thank you, Steve, for generously reading and editing chapter 5. Finally, to my beloveds: Libby Wilson, Brighid Murphy, Owen White, and Carl Asch. Lyra Hilliard vi CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT…….………………….………………….……..………………………… iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………….. v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….. 1 II. THE STEADY STATE…………………………………………………. 16 III. PERIOD OF INCREASED INDIVIDUAL STRESS…………………...49 IV. CULTURAL DISTORTION…………………………………………… 70 V. REVITALIZATION……………………………………………………. 94 VI. CONCLUSION……………………………………………………….. 124 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………….………………………………………… 136 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On May 2, 2008 I am driving south on I-15 at 75 miles an hour. I have just entered the highway from Brigham City, leaving UT-89 behind me. I have been sequestered for four long, brutal months in Logan, Utah, a city in which the winter does not end. It snowed two inches yesterday, enough to coat the grass for most of the morning. My 2001 Jeep Cherokee is packed with two duffel bags, a suitcase, a crate full of books, my Nikon D70 and its multiple lenses, blankets, a pillow, and a variety of clothes and shoes ranging from hiking gear, ritual wear for dancing around an all-night fire, and nicer clothes for parental visits, a funeral, and a wedding. I will transform myself countless times over the next six weeks. I will drive south, to Salt Lake City, then east to Dinosaur National Monument (NM), then south to Moab and its surrounding Red Rock Country. I will continue south through Navajo Nation, over to Page, Arizona, back through Utah, and finally south to Vegas. I will spend five days with friends there, most of them at Mayfire, a festival devoted to the all-night fire circle in a park forty-five minutes north of the city. I will then fly to Massachusetts and return to Rites of Spring, a large, annual pagan gathering in Massachusetts and to what many of us ―fire tribe‖ consider the ―original‖ all-night fire. I don‘t know all of this yet, though. I know only where I am going today: Ken Sanders‘ bookstore in Salt Lake City, the salve to the abysmal selection at the used 2 bookstore here in Logan. From there I will head over to Uintah County because there is a national park there that I have not yet seen. I only know what I am leaving behind, albeit temporarily. As I slow slightly for the apparently permanent construction zone in the 344 exit range, my head is spinning with questions about myself, Utah, isolation and community, my extended spiritual community—and Edward Abbey. Born in 1927 to socialist Paul Revere Abbey and Mildred Abbey in the western hills of Pennsylvania, Edward Abbey had first seen the American southwest at seventeen from a railroad boxcar he had hitched a ride on in 1944. Less than four years later, after high school, the army, and a year at the local college in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Abbey transferred to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. There he would prove himself to be enough of a writer to earn a Fulbright in 1951-1952 and write the first of his 22 full-length publications, the latter 21 having never gone out of print.1 His two most famous works, Desert Solitaire (1968) and The Monkeywrench Gang (1975) would establish his fame, or infamy, depending on the judge. I first read Desert Solitaire two and a half years ago from the lush tropics of Florida and came away from the book with a rather simple view of Abbey: a passionate, obstinate, difficult man whose criticisms of ―the rape of the West‖ seemed, for the most part, over the top. Then I moved here. Ken Sanders joins a clan of booksellers who mark Edward Abbey‘s shelves of books with large, rusty wrenches. When I get to the store, I see that the one in front of me guards several copies of Down the River, Good News, and Hayduke Lives! Scanning the 1 James M. Cahalan, Edward Abbey: A Life (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), 8–10, 45–6. 3 five shelves of Abbey titles, I look in vain for a used copy of Confessions of a Barbarian or The Journey Home or, for that matter, for any of Abbey‘s books. They‘re all new. The wrench and the new copies are a tribute not to Abbey the writer, but to Abbey the legend. Abbey is credited with inspiring thousands of Americans to journey West to the desert, the landscape long thought of as wasteland, or Promised Land, or both.2 To some who viewed the wilderness as the latter, Abbey is the veritable prophet of monkeywrenching, or eco-sabotage: defending the wilderness by damaging the machines that would otherwise destroy the earth. Abbey hardly invented the practice, but The Monkeywrench Gang (1975) certainly popularized it.3 I am not one of these latter idealistic—or idol-worshipping, depending on my mood—ecodefenders. Far from it. I am suspicious of fringe groups and the damage that can be levied on the broader movement: in this case, environmentalism. And I‘m not sure where I come down on violence against machines, anyway. In theory, I think it‘s commendable, to an extent. In practice, however, every machine damaged or destroyed is private property—someone owns that bulldozer. Someone owns those new SUVs at a car dealership, and someone owns the huge houses in that subdivision outside of Seattle. Burning down houses and destroying new vehicles?4 That repulses me. 2 Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 3. 3 Jack Loeffler, Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 71–2. 4 For a recent example, see Debera Carlton Harrell, Aubrey Cohen, and Paul Shukovsky, ―‗Street of Dreams‘ Houses Torched; Eco-terrorists Suspected,‖ SeattlePI.com, 4 March 2008, 8 February 2009, available at <http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/353498_arson04.html>. 4 But maybe I just write all of the above to avoid writing that, at the end of the day, I am too much of a coward to engage in such activities.