“Resist much. Obey little.”
That’s the Walt Whitman quote printed in the opening pages of The Monkey Wrench Gang, a copy of which I now own courtesy of my friend Dan Miller. Dan read my post “That Book is Not Approved” on the day Jill and I visited him and his wife, Diane, in Richmond, Utah.
It’s fitting that Dan should fulfill this particular reading request, because he is filled with the rebellious spirit of Ed Abbey — and, by extension, Abbey’s Monkey Wrench alter ego, Seldom Seen Smith. If I were a ranger at Glen Canyon Dam, I wouldn’t let Dan anywhere near the place.
Dan being Dan, he didn’t just give me any copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang, but the Tenth Anniversary Edition with illustrations by R. Crumb. The book’s dust jacket is creased and weathered, its edges ragged, but it still brims with pulp-fiction color — not unlike Dan himself, who has spent a lifetime wandering beneath the Utah sun in boots, ski bindings and rowboats but still has the wild eyes and devilish grin of a teenaged rabble-rouser.
I don’t think Dan would ever plot to blow up Glen Canyon Dam (would you, Dan?), but, as executive director of the Bear River Watershed Council, he’s not done rabble-rousing for worthy wilderness causes. He’s also the co-author of High in Utah, a hiking guidebook that details the ascents of the highest peaks in our 45th state.
High in Utah, too, contains a quote in its opening pages: “Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.”
The source of that one? Edward Abbey. So I guess we’ve come full circle.
Thanks, Dan. For sharing your well-loved copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang and your passion for Utah’s wild places. I’m already a few chapters into the former, and Jill and I can’t wait to explore the latter in all its un-ironed-out glory.
—Scott
To do Utah right, you need to include a trip down to Moab. Just north of there, heading west off US 191, is state route 313 which, on the map, runs about 30 miles to a dead end and a spot labeled “view point.” Any place on a map so labeled and served by a 30-mile dead-end road is worth checking out. But when you do, you must plan to be there well before dawn. Park at the dead end and walk about 200 yards south to the edge of the cliff. There will be no machines there, no animals, no insects, and no other people. Sit there, preferably alone, and wait while the sun comes up. Then you will understand part of why this land is sacred to it’s earliest inhabitants. If you don’t breathe too hard and your heart doesn’t pound, the only sound you’ll hear is the wind blowing past your ears.