flipping through

edward abbey's "desert solitaire" ironically shares a themed title - i just notice now in typing it. but this book feels like embracing brisk air and the harsh scrape of redrocks under my knees. a different sense of being alone. actually, he writes about aloneness somewhere in the middle of the book.

apparently his method of coping with occasional pangs of missing friendly human companionship, is by recreating his home outside of his state-supplied trailer in the middle of arches national park, ut, and thereby... well, what does he say...

"inside the trailer, surrounded by the artifacture of America, I was reminded insistently of all that i had, for a season, left behind; the plywood walls and the dusty venetian blinds and the light bulbs and the smell of butane made me think of albuquerque. By taking my meal outside by the burning juniper in the fireplace with more desert and mountains that i could explore in a lifetime open to view, I was invited to contemplate a far larger world, one which extends into a past and into a future without any limits known to the human kind.... All that is human melted with the sky and faded out beyond the mountains...."

perhaps it is that i contemplate the desert often these days.
or maybe i'm just after the romance of being with my own self, in a space unclouded by noise, and full of respectful humility.

it could also be that i'm drawn to abbey's writing because of a most remarkable bookmark, found already in its pages. it's a photo of my old roomie's ex b.f. standing tall in green umbros, closed eyelids, an acoustic guitar, and valentines stuck to his belly. i daily resist scanning it.