The cactus-spined font which serves as the title for this web site aptly suits the prickly American author to whom it is dedicated. Writing about nature and the American West that he loved and cherished, Edward Abbey's prose gave voice to the sublime or cantankerous subject. The best-known works of this "twentieth-century polemicist and desert anarchist" include Desert Solitaire and The Monkey...

When Edward Abbey's best-known book Desert Solitaire was published in 1968, Arches National Park was merely a national monument and was as yet largely undiscovered by the public. In the decades since, Arches has grown exponentially in popularity with nearly two million visitors per year - compared to the approximately 25,000 visitors it saw annually in Abbey's day - and the solitude that Abbey...