Like a handful of times before, my car pointed towards the Four Corners. I can’t explain how the place makes me feel and I won’t try–anyone who has been there understands.

I wrote an essay/story about my relationship to Edward Abbey and the Southeastern Utah landscape when I was a student at Hampshire College called “Finding Abbey in the Sierra la Sal”.  At time the writing is wordy, aimless and disgustingly romantic, but after two years, my feelings about Moab haven’t changed. Here it is,

It is midsummer and my car’s thermometer reads seventy-three degrees in the cool summer refuge of Silverton, Colorado. If all goes as planned, in four hours and twohundred miles I will enter the redrock country of southeastern Utah—Abbey’s country. Where the Abajo Mountains end, a savage desert landscape will open all around US 191. After many days of work in the high alpine of the San Juan’s, I need a change of scenery—desert, Moab. Company? No one but myself and my car. If there was anything I’ve learned from Abbey, I am going to have to go at it alone.

Methodically, I organize the trunk of my car—everything in its place, I quietly repeat to myself. My mantra is efficiency. Tent and hammock, tarp, blankets, and sleeping bag equally accessible, so I can grab whatever one I need when I need it. Same goes for my books—thirty new and beaten spines face upwards, conveniently located behind the passenger seat of my car. I have the books I think I should read, but usually make it to around thirty pages and give up—Moby Dick, Huck Finn, and On the Origin of Species—and then a few personal favorites—Travels with Charley, The Motorcycle Diaries, Into the Wild—the ones I read over and over. Of the latter category, a copy of Abbey’s Desert Solitaire is particularly roughed-up—its spine’s words illegible, the cover is missing, pages falling out. The book’s the right companion for this brief desert sojourn—it would feel wrong not to carry it. Behind the driver’s seat, I keep a six gallon water jug filled to capacity for getting stranded. When I get to Moab, I will empty the water and refill it with fresh spring water at Matrimony Spring. I scan the trunk and when I am satisfied with how it looks, I extend my palms to the spoiler and shut it. With a road 34 map, Ray Ban’s, and a bottle of water in reach, I slide the key into the ignition, and begin heading down Main Street. But first thing’s first, a full tank of gas at the local Sinclair.

Click here to read on (warning, it’s pretty long)