This is the most beautiful place on earth.
The author is talking about Moab, Utah - or, as he is quick to point out, the land in the canyons surrounding the actual city of Moab. His decision that this is the most beautiful place on earth resulted from the first time he witnesses a sunrise over the hoodoo stone inside Arches National Monument. Much of the rest of the book is devoted to providing much greater detail as to why he considers this to be so beautiful.
much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive—even frankly antisocial in its point of view.
On the other hand, a goodly portion of the book is written in response to human interaction with those aspects he considers so beautiful. Categorizing Desert Solitaire is no easy task. Some of it reads like travel literature while others are lean closer toward history or even anthropology. And yet there is a good deal in this book that will read to some—as the author reveals he expects in this passage from the Introduction—as a political polemic. Still others might those passages more harshly: as a political screed espousing liberal propaganda ignoring the fundamental principles of economics. At the same time, others will read those very passages today as the thoughtful and wise and even prescient warning about the potential for disaster should a political ideology of a particularly toxic sort ever somehow make it into the Oval Office.
While the actual working cowboy disappears, along with the genuine nonworking Indian, the make-believe cowboys flourish and multiply like flies on a pecan pie. Everywhere you see them now, from California to Florida, from Texas to Times Square, crowding the streets in their big white hats, tight pants, flowered shirts and high-heeled fruity boots. From the rear many of them look like women; many of them are woman.
Speaking of passages that might seem prejudiced, unconstructive and antisocial. Part of the author’s experience in getting down into the dirt of reality making up what remains of the western frontier is peeling away the myth from the authenticity. The historical associations made in the text often force the reader to confront hardworn myths which have so burrowed into the consciousness that they have become true. The stripping away of the essential reality of the cowboy from the consumerist mythologizing is just one pertinent example.
There are mountain men, there are men of the sea, and there are desert rats. I am a desert rat.
Near the end of the text, the author considers the literature of authors like Melville and Conrad and how so many men have felt so strongly the siren call to the sea. He also ponders those who feel urged to explore the mountains as a means of exploring the height and depth of human consciousness. After much consideration and the experiences of his own detailed in the narrative, he rejects them both and equates himself with Lawrence of Arabia as being among that small literary group whose siren has called them to the desert.
