I’ve really enjoyed the recent stories about your father. Thanks for sharing them with your readership. He was obviously a thoughtful, caring man who deeply loved his kids and the place he chose to spend his life.
Thanks too for the reference to Jim Harrison’s novel. It’s always a treat to find out about another Harrison novella, novel or book of poetry! His audacity as a writer is, to me, breathtaking and inspiring.
Just recently I started reading a multi-layered, not easily defined, monkey-wrenching satire by William Eastlake that is, in many ways, even more audacious than Harrison and Abbey. Dancing in the Scalp House, 1975 (Or possibly some of it published in 1972, it’s a little cryptic.) I haven’t finished it yet, so if you’ve read it, please don’t give away the ending!
Yeah...I could not agree more with the useless, merely performative, annoying “protest”. A bunch of liberals thinking they are actually doing something when all they are doing is turning people against the entire progressive agenda and movement. I find it especially annoying at a bicycle event. Yes, putting on the tour de France creates a gigantic carbon footprint without a doubt. But still… any bike, bicyclist, or bike race makes me think of the famous quote by the famous fiction author HG Wells. "Every Time I See an Adult on a Bicycle, I No Longer Despair for the Future of the Human Race”...even tho I do continue to despair, I do also get a momentary good feeling.
Your excellent account raised memories of my own. My friend Ken Sanders, rare book dealer in Salt Lake City, drove his flatbed truck to the Glen Canyon Dam where some of the Earth First people rolled a crack down the damn. Ed Abbey spoke to the gathering from the back of Ken's truck. Ken later commissioned R. Crumb to illustrate the special edition of The Monkey Wrench Gang he published for his Dream Garden Press. For our book The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire, Lyn and I wrote about barbed wire in Abbey's The Brave Cowboy and The MWGang and included one of Crumb's drawings (you can't never go wrong cuttin' fence) and also the frontispiece of Ecodefense with its monkey wrenching superhero.
Another memory: Sam Rushforth and I riding our mountain bikes up the Great Western Trail in Provo Canyon (an incident retold in our Wild Rides & Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes) came across a good sized drilling rig drilling right in the middle of our (our!) trail. Bureau of Wrecklamation at work. We confronted the drillers who weren't much impressed by a couple of guys wearing bike shorts. The next weekend, finding the rig unattended, I screwed the heavy brass cap off the fuel tank to signal our displeasure. It's on my shelf right here right now. Seldom Seen Smith would have dumped sand or sugar into the tank. But as you note, we later monkey wrenchers were not all that interested in being arrested as eco-terrorists.
Sure glad for the work you do, for the good writing and critical information.
I’ve really enjoyed the recent stories about your father. Thanks for sharing them with your readership. He was obviously a thoughtful, caring man who deeply loved his kids and the place he chose to spend his life.
Thanks too for the reference to Jim Harrison’s novel. It’s always a treat to find out about another Harrison novella, novel or book of poetry! His audacity as a writer is, to me, breathtaking and inspiring.
Just recently I started reading a multi-layered, not easily defined, monkey-wrenching satire by William Eastlake that is, in many ways, even more audacious than Harrison and Abbey. Dancing in the Scalp House, 1975 (Or possibly some of it published in 1972, it’s a little cryptic.) I haven’t finished it yet, so if you’ve read it, please don’t give away the ending!
Yeah...I could not agree more with the useless, merely performative, annoying “protest”. A bunch of liberals thinking they are actually doing something when all they are doing is turning people against the entire progressive agenda and movement. I find it especially annoying at a bicycle event. Yes, putting on the tour de France creates a gigantic carbon footprint without a doubt. But still… any bike, bicyclist, or bike race makes me think of the famous quote by the famous fiction author HG Wells. "Every Time I See an Adult on a Bicycle, I No Longer Despair for the Future of the Human Race”...even tho I do continue to despair, I do also get a momentary good feeling.
Lead, follow, or just get out of the way. Kinda the motto of https://www.thecivilconversationsproject.org.
Your excellent account raised memories of my own. My friend Ken Sanders, rare book dealer in Salt Lake City, drove his flatbed truck to the Glen Canyon Dam where some of the Earth First people rolled a crack down the damn. Ed Abbey spoke to the gathering from the back of Ken's truck. Ken later commissioned R. Crumb to illustrate the special edition of The Monkey Wrench Gang he published for his Dream Garden Press. For our book The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire, Lyn and I wrote about barbed wire in Abbey's The Brave Cowboy and The MWGang and included one of Crumb's drawings (you can't never go wrong cuttin' fence) and also the frontispiece of Ecodefense with its monkey wrenching superhero.
Another memory: Sam Rushforth and I riding our mountain bikes up the Great Western Trail in Provo Canyon (an incident retold in our Wild Rides & Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes) came across a good sized drilling rig drilling right in the middle of our (our!) trail. Bureau of Wrecklamation at work. We confronted the drillers who weren't much impressed by a couple of guys wearing bike shorts. The next weekend, finding the rig unattended, I screwed the heavy brass cap off the fuel tank to signal our displeasure. It's on my shelf right here right now. Seldom Seen Smith would have dumped sand or sugar into the tank. But as you note, we later monkey wrenchers were not all that interested in being arrested as eco-terrorists.
Sure glad for the work you do, for the good writing and critical information.
Water……