“There are lonely hours. How can I deny it? There are times when solitaire becomes solitary, an entirely different game, a prison term, and the inside of the skull as confining and unbearable as the interior of house trailer on a hot day” (119) A mistaken assumption can be made about Edward Abbey’s philosophy towards

It is difficult to feel disconnected from something that is no longer tangible or seen.  Lying in my warm bed at night, I didn’t know I could be closer to the stars.  They had been hidden from me by the false comfort of a man-made roof.  Tonight however, I am closer to the sky than

The passing of time in this wild, rugged desert is not dictated by the seconds, minutes, and hours that invade human perception. Rather, it is witnessed in the stimulus and interactions between the climate, weather, geology, and biota as the tilt of the earth revolves in its global cycle around the sun. As paradoxical as

According to Fleischner, an Environmental Studies professor at Prescott University, there are 8 main concepts of natural history that he lists in his short article “The Spiral of Offering”.  These concepts are attentiveness, receptivity, expression, vision, accuracy, humility, affirmation, and gratitude.  At first glance these concepts, or traits if you will, seem easy enough to

Man has been controlling the west’s arid landscape ever since the white mans arrival 160 years ago. As I stare upwards in my sleeping bag, I see the star-lit sky. I do not see the moon, but rather the bright planet of Venus, the red planet of Mars, the Big Dipper, and the constellation of

If the arid lands of the Colorado Plateau have offered me a single lesson, it is that an unconditional gratitude for occurrences and opportunities, both simple and profound, is necessary for complete fulfillment. Serendipity waits around every bend in the canyon and is drenched in every shallow slickrock pothole, it just requires gratitude to recognize