Edward Abbey: Wilderness Voice from Indiana County

The writer who would become America's most provocative defender of the American Southwest was born right here in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in nineteen twenty-seven. Edward Abbey grew up wandering the woods and hollows of Indiana County, and those early years in the Appalachian hills shaped his belief that wild land deserved protection not as scenery, but as a moral necessity.

Abbey first headed west in nineteen forty-five and found his subject in the desert landscapes of Utah and Arizona. His memoir Desert Solitaire, published in nineteen sixty-eight, described a season alone as a park ranger at Arches National Monument and became a foundational text of the modern environmental movement. His novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of activists. Yet he never fully left Pennsylvania behind. Books like The Journey Home and Appalachian Wilderness return to the green country where he learned to love nature. Abbey died in Tucson in nineteen eighty-nine.