A Voice Crying in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey

 

The fear of death follows from fear of life. The man who lives fully is prepared to die at anytime.

This is Abbey’s last work.

Albeit not fiction, this author of a few mighty fine Westerns, The Brave Cowboy and The Monkey-Wrench Gang among them, he was also a fearlessly insightful chronicler of nature and man-in-nature as we find in Desert Solitaire.

The subtitle of this work is “Notes From a Secret Journal.”

It is said Abbey offered this manuscript two weeks before his demise.

Broken into sections we find Abbey at his “worst” in places—the curmudgeonly quasi-misanthrope. Debatable if this is true.

And we find him at his absolute best.

The section titled, “Life, Death and All That” is golden.

We have thoughts from a man looking down the barrel of the mortality gun and giving his rawest, honest, life-affirming thoughts.

I absolutely adored this section.

In closing I will offer a few crumbs from this fine table.

We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; Without courage, the other virtues are useless.

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth 1000 books.

In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.