Edward Abbey and Ecoterrorism

“The desert will still be here in the spring. And then comes another thought. When I return will it be the same? Will I be the same? Will anything ever quite be the same again? If I return.”

Another depressing moment, courtesy of Abbey.

Once again, the idea of ecoromantotragedy comes to mind. This time, Abbey is the brave soldier, leaving his young bride for the battlefield.

Okay, that might not be quite accurate. But that image certainly comes to mind.

I wonder what it would be like to say goodbye to a place you loved, knowing that when you come back, it’ll be totally different. I wonder what it was like for Abbey to leave his desert, and then to come back and see roads stretching out and through the horizon, crawling with tourists with cameras and RVs. I can’t imagine him. Was he heartbroken? Did he cry?

I can imagine Abbey walking up to the old juniper tree, putting his hand on the trunk and sighing. This is what happens to the last secret places: they’re ruined. And seeing it from Abbey’s point of view, I guess I can’t really blame him when he says that we should burn billboards and tractors.

Before, I’d never really thought that using violence and vandalism was a valid way to try and make things different. It seemed so pointless, so reckless and counterproductive. What are those people trying to accomplish? Didn’t they realize that what they were doing was actually hurting the environmental movement more than it was helping it?

But now, I sort of understand that maybe it’s not the point to help the environment. Maybe the environment, in Abbey’s eyes, is beyond help; there’s really no chance at saving it, no hope. And then, the burning of billboards and SUVs are not constructive actions, but are purposefully destructive. There is no point except to release the anger, the rage, the hopeless and fear and misery you feel onto those things that make the land the way it is.

In that sense, it’s not a fight or struggle against Detroit or Norwegian whalers, it’s not even about Kyoto, either; it’s about dealing with the fact that the things we love are dying, and no matter what we do, there’s not much of a chance we can really save them.

It’s sad.

It reminds me of Muir at Hetch Hetchy. I can imagine him there, sitting one last time in his valley, gazing at the place he loved so much and realizing that he’d never see it again. A year later, he’d die of heartbreak. But I can’t possibly imagine how Muir felt being there, at that moment, or when, leaving the valley, how he must have felt as he looked over his shoulder to see Hetch Hetchy for the final time. Isn’t that heartbreak?

So, can I really blame Abbey for wanting to destroy the system that most of us take for granted? I can’t, not anymore.

It reminds me of an article I read in MotherJones magazine about China. The journalist was traveling with a man who lived in Beijing, and all along the way, he showed her the damage done to the various rivers flowing in and out of China. At one point in the story, the man says that he stopped taking showers for a month and a half because he felt it was his duty in order to help protect the river.

Why must we be driven to such desperate measures? Why can’t everyone understand the vitality in nature? When I was hiking once in the Selkirk Mountains, I turned to a friend and said that I thought the mountain we were walking on was beautiful. He asked me if I’d ever seen a mountain that wasn’t beautiful, and I realized he was right. But is that true for everyone? And if it’s not, what is it about them (or what is it about me) that makes everything so different?