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Roads signify the choice between an authentic, liberated life and an artificial, oppressed life. Edward Abbey is careful to note whether each road he mentions in the memoir is a dirt road or a paved one. For Abbey, to drive on bumpy, uncomfortable, even dangerous dirt roads puts him in touch with reality, whereas paved roads and highways are for lazy, comfort-seeking tourists who can’t be bothered to leave their air-conditioned cars or discover the earth. Abbey uses his preference for dirt over paved roads in order to illustrate two important arguments: that undefiled wilderness gives people a necessary sense of liberation, and that people should strive for the most direct, unmediated experience of reality. For Abbey, paved roads are a clear sign of the government’s attempt to rob individuals of their liberty. When engineers appear at his trailer one day, staking out an enormous highway project, Abbey realizes that this will destroy the untamed nature of Arches National Monument. In this way, paved roads symbolize artificiality and the perils of industrial tourism.
In contrast to pavement, Abbey uses dirt roads to signal an embrace of the most authentic possible life. In calling for an end to paved roads, Abbey promises that tourists, “liberated” from their cars and forced to hike on dirt paths, will rediscover joy and improvisation. While driving to Tukuhnikivats Mountain, Abbey speeds in his truck through the thrilling obstacle course of his desert path: the rocks, potholes, and quicksand challenge his every “nerve and skill,” providing brilliant scenery and empowering the driver. These feelings are echoed in Abbey’s hazardous drive to The Maze with Bob Waterman. In passages like these, dirt roads put people in touch with the earth, with themselves, and with reality—a far cry from paved roads, which separate people from these things.
Roads Quotes in Desert Solitaire
The Desert Solitaire quotes below all refer to the symbol of Roads. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Polemic
Quotes
It will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. This is true. Unless a way is found to stabilize the nation’s population, the parks cannot be saved. Or anything else worth a damn. Wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment.
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Get LitCharts A+No more new roads in national parks. […] Once people are liberated from the confines of automobiles there will be a greatly increased interest in hiking, exploring, and back-country packtrips.
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Cowboys and Indians, Part II
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Caught in a no-man’s-land between two worlds the Navajo takes what advantage he can of the white man’s system—the radio, the pickup truck, the welfare—while clinging to the liberty and dignity of his old way of life.
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Surely it is no accident that the most thorough of tyrannies appeared in Europe’s most thoroughly scientific and industrialized nation. If we allow our own country to become as densely populated, overdeveloped and technically unified as modern Germany we may face a similar fate.
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The Heat of Noon
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A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we many never need to go there. I may never in my life get to Alaska, for example, but I’m grateful that it’s there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.
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Roads Symbol Timeline in Desert Solitaire
The timeline below shows where the symbol Roads appears in Desert Solitaire. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The First Morning
...headquarters in Moab after dark. After asking for directions, Abbey drives 20 miles of unpaved road past various wild animals, strange rock formations, and a warning sign for quicksand. Finally, he...
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Cliffrose and Bayonets
...rounds, beginning with Balanced Rock, a huge, dangling, 3,500-ton formation that may fall onto the road at any time. Passing deer tracks, Abbey laments the fact that human endangerment of the...
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Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks
...something threatens this happy routine of desert solitude and occasional socializing: progress. Though the unpaved roads have kept the desert serene until now, as Merle McRae and Floyd Bence warned, development...
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Abbey jumps ahead in time, 10 years after these events, to confirm that the planned road indeed appeared and overpopulated the desert with tourists. Cars, motorcycles, house trailers, pavement, and electricity...
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...Park are accessible by foot, but the Park Service plans to connect them with paved highways. The rim of the Grand Canyon has been defaced with asphalt parking lots. At Navajo...
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The major contention between the two factions is accessibility: roads, highways, and so on. Developers say that roads will ensure future enjoyment, while Preservers argue...
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...on their dependence: because tourists think they need cars, people will say that parks need roads. And because roads require lots of money, commerce, in turn, thrives on the exploitation of...
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Second, Abbey believes there should be no new construction of highways into national parks. The Park Service should repurpose existing paved roads for the proposed bicycles...
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...they try. Millions of Americans secretly want such an adventure, and the money saved on roads could finance this. Since banning cars would violently clash with the current addiction to technology...
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Cowboys and Indians, Part II
...Navajos do benefit from the influx of money brought by industrial park tourism. But more highways—however lucrative they may be—ultimately demean the people further, forcing Navajos to perform for the hordes...
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The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud
...population growth, continue the draft, wage war overseas to distract from conflicts at home, erect highways to connect the country, and destroy wilderness. These developments are already occurring. It may, in...
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Down the River
...Newcomb pass by a 50-mile-long ridge of warped sandstone, they imagine it littered with paved roads, Coke machines, and modern bathrooms.
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Havasu
...Natives have denied a lucrative offer from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to blast a highway into their village.
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The Dead Man at Grandview Point
...some policemen, to search for the man: a photographer who left his car on the road three days ago. Though the man’s nephew describes him with hope, everyone else is sure...
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...sickened-looking Johnny, Abbey realizes that his brother has found the corpse. A mile from the road, under the cover of a juniper on a ridge, the dead photographer is bloated like...
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Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert
...asks the buzzard to watch over his trailer. He takes the rough and unpaved wagon road—loved by him, hated by tourists—out to the highway. The road requires skill and attention, as...
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Once at the road, Abbey speeds past a favorite hiding spot of the highway patrolman. A billboard once stood...
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As the roadside cafés and shops grow sparser, Abbey passes familiar roads and turnoffs into dense woods by...
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Episodes and Visions
...the reader to imagine a new scheme to develop the national parks: pave all the roads and flatlands in the name of democratic parking, charge huge admission fees, advertise everywhere, replace...
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Terra Incognita: Into the Maze
...get directions to The Maze. In their jeep, they follow Bundy’s directions, turning off the highway onto a dirt road and camping overnight in the Green River Desert. The next day,...
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...small clusters. The females grow berries that taste of gin. At a fork in the road, Abbey and Waterman take the older path, figuring that the newer is an oil exploration...
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...Abbey’s sake,” signing it “God.” They race back through the 40 miles of unpaved desert road to the highway, which they follow back to Arches National Monument in time for cocktails.
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Bedrock and Paradox
...cancelled. A new ranger, Bob Ferris, drives him there instead. As they speed on the highway, the sight of the huge amber sunset possesses Abbey. He demands that Ferris turn the...
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