Down the River was published by E.P. Dutton in 1982 and collects Abbey’s river essays — pieces written over the previous decade about journeys by raft, canoe, and kayak through the great river systems of the American West. Rivers were Abbey’s preferred means of entering landscape: the current does the work, the canyon walls enforce attention, and the progressive revelation of country around each bend provides natural narrative structure.
The Essays
“Down the River with Henry David Thoreau” — originally published in The Journey Home but included here in expanded form. A Colorado River trip through Glen Canyon intercut with readings from Thoreau’s journals. The essay’s emotional center is the knowledge that Glen Canyon no longer exists — drowned beneath Lake Powell by the Glen Canyon Dam. Abbey is writing an elegy for a place that has been murdered.
“The Damnation of a Canyon” — Abbey’s most famous polemic against the Glen Canyon Dam: “To grasp the nature of the crime… imagine the Taj Mahal or Chartres Cathedral buried in mud until only the tips of the spires remain visible.” The essay’s rhetoric is deliberately excessive — comparing a dam to the destruction of civilization’s greatest buildings — and deliberately effective.
“Running the San Juan” — a more relaxed trip through southern Utah’s canyon country, with friends, beer, and the particular joy of moving through landscape at water speed.
“Floating” — philosophical meditation on the river as metaphor and as literal reality: what it means to be carried by forces larger than yourself, to give up control, to accept the current’s direction.
Method
Abbey’s river essays work because rivers provide natural structure: beginning (put-in), middle (the journey), end (take-out). Within this frame, Abbey is free to range — observing wildlife, describing geology, arguing politics, remembering past trips, and generally being himself: cantankerous, lyrical, irreverent, and deeply serious about the fate of the natural world.
The essays also document a particular era of river running — before the permit systems, before the commercialization, when river trips were adventures rather than scheduled activities. Abbey’s rivers are wild in ways that may no longer be possible.
Collecting Down the River
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1982): Cloth binding with dust jacket featuring river/canyon photograph.
Identification points:
- E.P. Dutton imprint
- “First Edition” stated
- 242 pages
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $100–$250. Standard Abbey collecting.
Signed copies: $300–$600.
The book’s focus on rivers gives it particular appeal to the river-running community — rafters, kayakers, and river guides who revere Abbey as the literary voice of their experience.