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Ed Abbey's Trailer

A Journey, Kinda

By David Feela

I never had the chance to meet Ed Abbey before he died in1989. I did, however, recently talk with a woman who knew a woman who'd met with a guy who'd advised another woman on purchasing a travel trailer for sale in Bluff, originally owned by a John DePuy, alias Doc of Ed Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang, who'd actually had Abbey over on a number of occasions. Just to be clear, it wasn't Abbey's trailer, but Ed had definitely been inside it several times. It sold for $3,200 back in '96 without any commemorative plaque what-so-ever, and today it's parked behind a Cortez home where it doubles as a guest house when the owner's mother comes to town.

Since I missed meeting Ed in this lifetime, I wondered if I could sit for a few minutes in a trailer where he'd been a guest. Maybe commune with the great Abbey spirit, or find a spot on the couch where his great behind might have created a lasting impression. So I wrote the current owner's name down when it came around in a conversation and called her up.

We met on a Monday afternoon. The sun reflected off the chrome skin of a 24-foot vintage Airstream International. Inside the trailer the '70s still reigned, with gray and red linoleum tiles on the floor (a recent addition), blonde cabinetry, and even a screen insert within the aluminum door frame that sported a fancy (albeit tarnished) scroll work across its surface. I asked this caretaker of the Abbey legacy if she had any intellectual memorabilia to share - namely, stories of the man himself.

"Actually," she replied, "I started reading Desert Solitaire a long time ago and I have to admit it didn't appeal to me."

I pressed her for something else.

"Something interesting happened when the trailer was towed all the way from McElmo Canyon" she offered.

"Yes?" I waited anxiously for the good news.

"A chicken had laid an egg in the trailer's drain and despite the rough towing, dozens of miles, and parking it here in this cramped back yard space, the egg made it all the way."

She suggested I go to the source, the guy who knew the man who actually knew Abbey. He'd have more to tell and even if he didn't, he'd make up a good story.

After I lodged my message on his answering machine, I waited. When he returned my call the next day, my wife answered the phone but he didn't want to talk about the trailer. I could understand his hesitation. Maybe there were details he just couldn't talk about, sensitive matters that, if revealed, could undermine the Abbey tradition. Ed was, after all, a colorful character.

"You don't work for the CIA, do you?" my wife asked him.

"If I did," he replied, "I'd be obliged to kill you."

But he left a phone number for a guy who knows a guy who probably knows quite a bit about the trailer.

I thought about calling, but then a coincidence fell out of the sky: an invitation to attend the 16th annual Ed Abbey party in Durango. Someone out there must have heard I'd been asking questions.

I'd never been to an Ed Abbey party; actually, I didn't know disciples still gathered in the dark recesses of neighborhood garages where shrines were lit and alcohol was consumed. It sounded like a cult, but it also sounded like fun. I weighed my research options: I could make another phone call and talk with another faceless voice, or I could drink beer while eavesdropping among a crowd of Abbey enthusiasts who might inadvertently let anecdotes about Abbey slip. I opted for the beer.

With my usual awkwardness, I showed up first - the host still eating a sandwich, the hostess whipping up an artichoke dip. I felt a little like a dip myself, but someone handed me a glass of something and things got started. A few people trickled in, a fashionable half-hour late, and I noticed how they instinctively made their way toward the garage. I got off my stool and followed them.

The garage was no trailer but it qualified as a place where Abbey might have been happy. A keg of beer sat on the floor, and behind the keg I found an array of shot glasses, slices of lime, and various brands of tequila. Cigars wrapped in cellophane sparkled nearby. But the centerpiece (literally in the center of the garage) turned out to be another table with a few candles and an odd assortment of knick-knacks - creative offerings brought by the invited guests to be set on the Edward Abbey altar. The host, with an Abbeyesque flourish, lit the candle and officially the festivities had begun.

I wandered over to the food to sample the cuisine when I spotted a corner where the host had set out copies of many books written by Abbey. A "Hayduke Lives" sticker had been plastered to the wall and an old Mother Earth News cover had been mounted to a pillar. The cover (under plastic) showed Ed himself, sporting a shotgun and a mischievous smile, with a mortally wounded portable television screen on the ground beside him. Watch this, he seemed to be saying with his eyes. Later, after the tequila had been passed around and the keg drained closer to dry, these books would serve as Abbey's own voice while celebrants paged through passages and read them to the crowd.

"Listen to this one about farting," the host announced and the air filled with a hilarious combination of perfectly formed descriptions, a literary manifesto on how gas gets passed from one level of society to the other. People read more sober passages too, descriptions of the desert Southwest, the rivers, canyons, and even the sky. When it started to rain the crowd listened to that too. And the rain against the garage roof sounded good. Against the earth it sounded better.

By midnight most people had said their goodbyes and six of us remained.

By 2 a.m. even Ed had run out of things to say.

I slept that night in my host's brand-new travel trailer. His family was planning a trip to Alaska in the summer, so he'd parked it on the street, beside the curb, in front of the house. There were no lights, no electricity, no water. The rain was still coming down. He offered to let me stay in the house, but I had made up my mind. I started with a trailer and I was going to end up in one, even if it wasn't Ed Abbey's.