Books like Confessions of a Barbarian

Although Edward Abbey warns you right off the bat not to visit the places in this book—they don’t exist anymore, not the way they were when he was there—twenty pages in, I wanted to go.

I wanted to risk my car’s axles crossing boulder-strewn washes. I wanted to rip my jeans, shoving through canyon-bottom scrub. I wanted to rise early and sit, steaming coffee in hand, to watch the sun break through the pinyon pine.  I wanted to hang out and shoot the shit with Edward Abbey.

Whenever I pick up this book, I feel a genuine longing for the American Southwest in the ’60s. And a longing like that, even one that can never be satisfied, is a pleasure all unto itself.

I learned a lot about our damaged environment from Earth Day, first observed in 1970, and the mostly peaceful efforts it catalyzed. 

This novel, published in 1975, made me picture a different, militant green activism. Its characters go around torching billboards and smashing machinery. They're also endearingly ridiculous individuals. The book is a laugh-out-loud farce, which seemed to render their violence harmless and fun.

Violent action seemed appealingly bold to me back then. But—inspired by Abbey?—in the decades since, there has been a fair amount of what's called ecoterrorism. It's been a long time since I've cheered that on. I still find the book a romp, but it's fiction, not a template for saving the planet.

Abbey wrote twenty-one books. While others considered him a “nature writer,” he roiled at that idea.

Instead, he considered himself a novelist, and he spent his entire career trying to write “the great American novel.” Published in 1988, a year before his death, Abbey called The Fool’s Progress his “fat masterpiece.” And I agree.

This might be his most intimate and emotional book. To me, this book aches with heart. This semi-autobiographical novel is about Henry Holyoak Lightcap’s journey home from the Desert Southwest to die in West Virginia.

The book is filled with reflection on death, which was what Abbey was experiencing in his own life.

For decades, Jack Loeffler and Ed Abbey were best friends. Nearly fifteen years after Abbey’s death, Loeffler wrote about their friendship and their time exploring the Desert Southwest in this beautiful biographical memoir.

Loeffler takes us on some of the countless backpacking trips the two men went on while also revealing the many complexities of Abbey. This beautiful book lets us lean in and listen to Loeffler and Abbey talking about anarchism and environmentalism around so many campfires. I had the pleasure of interviewing Loeffler, and this book sounds so authentic to him.

It is smart, passionate, and kind, just like Loeffler is. 

Like Edward Abbey, Sid Marty is from the old guard and it’s one of his greatest strengths – he was one of the last park ranger cowboys, literally spending part of his career working for Parks Canada as a mounted, backcountry patrolman alone deep in the bush. That’s when he wasn’t climbing. Switchbacks is a paean to high places, a love song to the Canadian Rockies. In it, Marty notes that his faithful rucksack has been dragged up cliff faces with climbing rope, fallen down couloirs, banged around in helicopters, and washed down rivers. Just like he has. Just the kind of life I wanted.

This beautifully told tale of an adoptee searching for her original family is set against her ongoing relationship to the Southwest’s most awe-inspiring terrain, and the people who bring her there. I loved this book because it showed her evolution as a wilderness lover, romantic partner, and mother as she navigated fitting into various incarnations of family, which felt just as perilous, frustrating, and rewarding as finding the right footholds in the natural world. While we are all from Mother Earth, our earthly parents can be critical to a deeper understanding of who we are as people.

The Trope: The Home Invasion

I love vacation-themed stories when I’m on vacation. I read this one while camping, and it kept me up at night. Nevada Barr does a brilliant job twisting the home invasion trope into a wilderness survival story. Her protagonist, a park ranger, goes on a canoe trip with a group of friends. Their vacation is waylaid by men bent on murder and mayhem.

Nothing is scarier than having your happy place invaded by evil, and nothing more inspiring than watching the underdog use her superior knowledge of the surroundings to defeat it. 

The Last Season recounts the disappearance of ranger Randy Morgenstern in California’s High Sierra. A legend in the NPS for his devotion to wild places, Morgenson spent more than 25 seasons as a backcountry ranger in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks before disappearing without a trace in 1996. An introspective sort who knew every corner of the territory he patrolled, Morgenson left behind a tantalizing mystery that writer Eric Blehm turns into a page-turning, psychological thriller. Did he fall off a cliff? Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? As a young ranger, I read this book late into the night under the hissing gas light of my duty station. We’ve had campers vanish in our wilderness—and a ranger die in the line of duty—so every page rang true. 

Nevada Barr worked as a ranger in the National Park Service, and if you yearn to explore more national parks as much as I do, she’s definitely the mystery author to read, with 19 mysteries set in a variety of national parks. It’s difficult for me to choose a favorite, but this novel, the second in the Anna Pigeon series, features Isle Royale National Park, a little-visited treasure in the Great Lakes that I hope to explore one day. I’m also a scuba diver, so I especially appreciate the tense underwater scenes, as well as all the eccentric NPS characters that Barr portrays so well. You’ll enjoy this book even if you’re not a diver, as well as all the other national park settings in the series. Nevada Barr has a true gift for describing natural places and interesting people. 

Last month, descending on the tour again of Lehman Caves at Great Basin National Park, I immediately felt the terror in Blind Descent creep into my head. Then, the park naturalist turned off the lights so we could experience utter black darkness—and my own dread grew larger. Barr’s mystery-thriller digs into the real fear in the cave depths, not like controlled spookiness on a tour. A fun read, Barr’s book captures what caving is all about…and the hidden dangers. If you plan on visiting Carlsbad Caverns, where this story is set, it’s a must-read. But it’s also equally good if you plan on touring caves at Mammoth, Great Basin, Sequoia, or Wind Cave National Parks. Once you’ve read it, the story will haunt you on every underground exploration.