Research Paper on:
Change in Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Edward Abbeys "Desert Solitaire" was written in a much simpler time, a time before Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam, a time before  the rampant development which now characterizes the American West. Abbey was a seasonal park ranger at the Arches National Monument almost forty-five years ago. He was noted for  his philosophies for self reliance and independence, for his preference for the simpler things in life and for his love of nature. He would also become noted for his  nature writings and back-to-the land philosophy. He would inspire thousands to look for the beauty of the desert, to fight to preserve it, and to lament its passing once  that fight was lost. Abbeys book allows us to look at the desert in a time before development had taken hold. It allows us to look past the  contemporary theme of developmental and managerial change to a time of complexity, beauty, and ecological interrelationship. In many ways the dry desert characterized  Abbey himself. Abbey was a loner, just like the lone lizard in popularized artistic renditions of the desert. Just like that lizard, however, he was integrally bound to  the desert environment and was much more complex that that solitary image might lead one to believe. Abbey saw before him a tremendously valuable ecologically complex land, a land  which would soon be exposed to tremendous developmental pressure and, consequently, a land which would change before our very eyes both in its ecological role and in mans perception of  the role. Abbeys role in this perpetual theme of change which faced his beloved desert was to write a beautiful elegy to the