Synopses & Reviews
"Be of good cheer," the war-horse Edward Abbey advises, "the military-industrial state will soon collapse." This sparkling book, which takes us up and down rivers and across mountains and deserts, is the perfect antidote to despair.
Along the way, Abbey makes time for Thoreau while he takes a hard look at the MX missile system, slated for the American West. "For 23 years now I've been floating rivers. Always downstream, the easy and natural way. The way Huck Finn and Jim did it, LaSalle and Marquette, the mountain men, and Major Powell."
Synopsis
Down the River is a collection of essays both timeless and timely. It is an exploration of the abiding beauty of some of the last great stretches of American wilderness on voyages down rivers where the body and mind float free, and the grandeur of nature gives rise to meditations on everything from the life of Henry David Thoreau to the militarization of the open range. At the same time, it is an impassioned condemnation of what is being done to our natural heritage in the name of progress, profit, and security. Filled with fiery dawns, wild and shining rivers, and radiant sandstone canyons, it is charged as well with heartfelt, rampageous rage at human greed, blindness, and folly. It is, in short, Edward Abbey at his best, where and when we need him most.
Table of Contents
Preliminary Notes
PART I: Thoreau and Other Friends
1 Down the River with Henry Thoreau
2 Watching the Birds: The Windhover
3 Meeting the Bear
4 Planting a Tree
PART II: Politicks and Rivers
5 Notes from a Cold River
6 MX
7 Of Protest
8 Thus I Reply to Rene Dubos
PART III: Places and Rivers
9 Running the San Juan
10 In the Canyon
11 Down There in Sonora
12 Aravaipa Canyon
13 Fool's Treasure
PART IV: People, Books, and Rivers
14 River Rats
15 Footrace in the Desert
16 Reviewing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
17 Paul Horgan's Josiah Gregg
18 My Friend Debris
19 Floating
Postscript