The Monkey Wrench Gang

by Edward Abbey

Dr. Sarvis with his bald mottled dome and savage visage, grim and noble as Sibelius, was out night-riding on a routine neighborhood beautification project, burning billboards along the highway—U.S. 66, later to be devoured by the superstate’s interstate autobahn. His procedure was simple, surgically deft. With a five-gallon can of gasoline he sloshed about the legs and support members of the selected target, then applied a match. Everyone should have a hobby.

Dehydrated by months, sometimes years of desert winds and thirsty desert air, the pine and paper of the noblest most magnificent of billboards yearned in every molecule for quick combustion, wrapped itself in fire with the mad lust, the rapt intensity, of lovers fecundating. All-cleansing fire, all-purifying flame, before which the asbestos-hearted plutonic pyromaniac can only genuflect and pray.

A few miles to the southeast stood the eight-hundred-foot smokestacks of the coal-burning Navajo Power Plant, named in honor of the Indians whose lungs the plant was treating with sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, sulfuric acid, fly ash and other forms of particulate matter.

With an intelligence too fine to be violated by ideas, she had learned that she was searching not for self-transformation (she liked herself) but for something good to do.

“The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life,” the doctor said. “Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness.” He sipped at his bourbon and ice. “Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal.” Another thought. “And the universe goes mad.”

“I thought I was wrong once,” Seldom said, “but I found out later I was mistaken.”

The old dream of total independence, beholden to no man and no woman, floated above his days like smoke from a pipe dream, like a silver cloud with a dark lining. For even Hayduke sensed, when he faced the thing directly, that the total loner would go insane. Was insane. Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wildness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

“Fuck off.” He tossed the little metal tab out the window. “That’s a brilliant retort you’ve worked out, Hayduke,” she said. “Really brilliant. A real flash of wit for all occasions.” “Fuck off.” “Touché. Doc, are you going to sit there like a lump of lard and let that hairy swine insult me?” “Well… yes,” Doc said, after due consideration. “You better. I’m a full-grown woman, and I can take care of myself.”

Though the way is hard, the hard is the way.

“Okay. Here’s one for you. A real conundrum. What is the difference between the Lone Ranger and God?” Bonnie thought about it as they rattled through the woods. She rolled a little cigarette and thought and thought. At last she said, “What a stupid conundrum. I give up.” Hayduke said, “There really is a Lone Ranger.”

Can’t set up an ambush without a proper bush.

Eyes blurred, she drove away. Alone, buzzing down the asphalt trail to Kayenta, heart beating, her pistons leaping madly up and down, Bonnie Abbzug relapsed into the sweet luxury of tears. Hard to see the road. She turned on the windshield wipers but that didn’t help much.

Hayduke thought of Our Lord’s words to the waiter at the Last Supper: “Separate checks, please.”

Hell of a place to lose a cow. Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place, thought Seldom Seen, to lose. Period.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.”

Doc rented an office in town, ten miles away, where he and Bonnie practiced medicine. He did the medicine; she practiced.