41 pages • 1 hour read
Edward AbbeyDesert Solitaire
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 17-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Terra Icognita: Into the Maze”
This could be described as the final “expedition” chapter of the book. Together with his friend Bob Waterman (whom we have not seen previously), Abbey sets out for the Maze, a remote stretch of canyonland that, as far as Abbey is aware, no humans have accessed for centuries. Only one man in nearby Moab claims to have even been to the Maze overlook, and it is from him that Abbey and Waterman get directions.
The drive to the overlook in Waterman’s Land Rover is an expedition in itself, involving dubious roads and mountain switchbacks. They do not arrive at the overlook in a day; instead, they must camp at points along the way. As always, Abbey meticulously details the natural sights and sounds he encounters on his journey.
The men’s actual descent into the Maze, the morning after they reach the overlook, is nearly a thousand feet, and requires much tenuous hooking into and roping down canyon walls. This is by far the most perilous physical terrain we have seen Abbey traverse in the book. But the remarkable hitherto unnamed rock formations, arches and natural bridges that the men are greeted by apparently compensate for the danger, and Abbey expresses no fear. There is a good deal of jesting between Abbey and Waterman as to what they should name the formations they see and the trails they utilize, as they believe themselves to be, in a sense, discoverers of these phenomena, or at least the first humans to lay eyes on them in the better part of a millennium.
Finally inside the Maze, on the canyon floor, the men find cottonwood trees, damp sand and wild cane. Abbey digs a hole in the ground, quickly finds water, and hollows out a cane stalk to create a siphon, so the two men can drink. The men explore the Maze until late afternoon, and then climb back to their Land Rover to camp before dark.
They intend to descend again the next morning, but judging by the clouds and the texture of the air, they realize that a big storm is brewing. If they are caught in the storm, the Land Rover will not be able to negotiate the switchbacks on their return trip. So, sadly and reluctantly, the men depart the Maze that evening.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Bedrock and Paradox”
The brief final chapter of the book reads like an elegy to Abbey’s six months in the Arches. In a melancholy spirit, he contemplates the disappearance of the tourists and makes a final tour of the park himself in his government truck. Everything is packed, the trailer house is cleaned out, and he admits to himself that he is, after all, looking forward to re-engaging with human society after twenty-six weeks away: “I want to hear once more the crackle of clamshells on the floor of the bar in the Clam Broth House in Hoboken […] the happy laughter of Greater New York’s one million illegitimate children” (331). He is “almost prepared to believe that this sweet virginal primitive land will be grateful for [his] departure,” (334) but then chides himself for such an anthropomorphic projection onto the dispassionate and timeless serenity of the wild.
The desert will be fine, Abbey thinks; it will remain as it is with or without him. This is Abbey’s final insight.
Chapters 17-18 Analysis
The last two chapters provide a kind of ultimate contrast: the most daring and risky of all Abbey’s adventures in the former, and his resigned return not only to civilization but to what he now calls “culture” in the latter.
After all, Abbey is a creature of his time and society, his upbringing, his place within the continuum of human history.
Abbey’s departure from the park is inevitable, his return questionable. In the end, perhaps it could be said that he must respond to a natural call of his own, the call to re-enter the sea of modern human commerce, much as he might disapprove of it, and (perhaps) of himself, for needing it.
