The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West was published by E.P. Dutton in 1977 and collects Abbey’s best essays from the early and mid-1970s — the period between Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang when he was producing some of the finest nature writing in the American tradition. The essays range from lyrical descriptions of landscape to polemical attacks on development, from personal memoir to philosophical meditation, all unified by Abbey’s conviction that the American West is being destroyed and that resistance is a moral obligation.
The Essays
“The Great American Desert” — Abbey’s most famous short essay, a warning to would-be desert visitors: “Do not drink the water. Do not eat the food. Do not breathe the air.” Behind the comic misanthropy is genuine ecological argument: the desert is not a vacation destination but a fragile ecosystem that human presence degrades.
“Down the River with Henry Thoreau” — a river trip through Glen Canyon (before and after its destruction by dam) combined with a reading of Thoreau’s journals. Abbey finds in Thoreau a kindred spirit: both writers insist that wildness is not recreational luxury but existential necessity.
“The Second Rape of the West” — on the energy industry’s destruction of western landscapes for coal, uranium, and oil shale. Written in 1975, it reads as prophecy.
“Shadows from the Big Woods” — Abbey’s memoir of growing up in Appalachian Pennsylvania, the woods that formed his consciousness before he ever saw the West.
“Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom” — the philosophical essay that connects Abbey’s political anarchism to his environmental ethic: wilderness is the physical basis of freedom; its destruction is the destruction of the possibility of genuine human liberty.
Context
Abbey published The Journey Home at the midpoint of his career — after the underground success of Desert Solitaire (1968) and the mainstream success of The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). He was now recognized as the West’s foremost literary voice, a position he occupied with deliberate provocation: insulting tourists, cattle ranchers, the Park Service, and the federal government with equal enthusiasm.
The essays demonstrate that Abbey was not merely an entertainer or a provocateur but a serious writer — capable of lyrical beauty, philosophical depth, and moral seriousness alongside the famous comedy. The collection proves that Desert Solitaire was not a one-off achievement but the expression of a sustained literary intelligence.
Collecting The Journey Home
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1977): Cloth binding with dust jacket featuring desert landscape photograph.
Identification points:
- E.P. Dutton imprint
- “First Edition” stated
- 242 pages
- Drawings by Jim Stiles
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $150–$400. Abbey’s growing reputation and the environmental movement’s expansion have steadily increased demand.
Signed copies: $400–$1,000. Abbey signed at readings and environmental events.
The collection is often recommended as the essential Abbey alongside Desert Solitaire — the two books together constitute the core of his achievement as a nature writer.