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The Monkey Wrench Dad: Dispatches from the Backyard Frontline
Over 30 years have passed since the publication of The Monkey Wrench Gang, and nearly 20 since its author, Edward Abbey, died. The generation of eco-warriors who were Abbey's contemporaries have passed on or are fading fast. In the '70s and '80s, a second generation, inspired by Abbey's books, took up the "monkey wrenching" cause and continued to resist wilderness exploitation. But this next generation are now in their middle years. Have they kept Abbey's flame of activism alive? Are they still a voice for wilderness preservation? Or have they turned their backs on the struggle and drifted into sedate, bourgeois lives? And perhaps most importantly, are they passing the cause along to their children?
Inside/Outside Southwest columnist and former editor Ken Wright answers these questions in his new book of essays, The Monkey Wrench Dad: Dispatches from the Backyard Frontline. As the title implies, Wright, like many activists from his generation, has managed to balance family and career with a continued defense of wilderness. And, yes, he is definitely bringing his children into the fold.
In the book's first essay, "Down the River with Edward Abbey," Wright explains how Abbey inspired him to leave a high-paying position in the urban east and settle on the Colorado Plateau. While living as a mountain vagabond, Wright met his wife, Sarah, had two kids, and is raising them to celebrate wilderness. "Hence," Wright states, "20 years later I am monkey wrenching by parenting."
Throughout The Monkey Wrench Dad, Wright charts how he is "passing on the culture" to his children. In "Powder Day," he encourages them to disregard regulations that deny them the freedom to indulge in harmless actions. For instance, he tells his son to skateboard at a place plastered with "No Skateboarding" signs: "?You've got to learn to break some rules,' I told him, fatherly. Lovingly. Concerned. Bestowing my great Elder wisdom."
Of course, Wright initiates his children into more than just rule breaking. He takes them skiing, hiking, cross-country travelling, and river running. He even watches Star Trek with them every Thursday. "Star Trek's model of the United Federation of Planets is a sort of civilized tribalism," Wright explains, "built on embracing an unlimited array of individuals and cultures . . . who work together to more richly engage the universe with the help of technology that is liberating rather than enslaving, creative rather than destructive."
Alongside these adventures of child raising, Wright includes plenty of Southwestern adventures - voyages up the Rocky Mountains, to hidden valleys in the San Juans, into Canyonlands' deep sandstone maze, and down the sinuous wilds of the San Juan River.
Wright's journeys inspire some of the book's finest essays, and amongst these is "On the Road to Faith," which opens one February with Wright experiencing a particularly bad "loss of faith." So, he "loaded the truck and pointed it west," encountering the most stunning landscape on earth - the heart of the Colorado Plateau. After leaving Durango, Wright passes through or near McElmo Creek Canyon, Comb Ridge, Grand Gulch, Natural Bridges, Sundial Butte, Mossback Cliffs, and Bears Ears, which he names his "personal spiritual epicenter."
At last, Wright reaches Lake Powell - the nemesis of every monkey wrench wielder everywhere since it buried Glen Canyon under hundreds of feet of water. He is thrilled to see that the reservoir is half empty due to the protracted drought. Walking down to the water's edge, he finds deer tracks in a newly exposed wash that in normal years would be underwater. This gives him heart, and his quest is a triumph: "Things are, once again, as they should be. Or are at least headed that way. Which was enough to give me faith."
To round out the book, Wright finishes with essays on eco-politics. One of the sharpest is "Among the Tribe," which describes the irony of attending "Ed Abbey Speaks," a commemoration near Moab of the 15th anniversary of Abbey's death, only to discover the survey markers and "freshly scraped building lots" for the "Desert Solitaire subdivision." Another strong piece in this section is "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," which calls upon those who love the West to get out and work to defend the land against those who would develop it beyond recognition, "because love and defense go hand in hand."
With The Monkey Wrench Dad, Wright demonstrates his strengths as a writer of environmental essays in the tradition of Edward Abbey, John Nichols, Terry Tempest Williams, and Ellen Meloy. After reading this book, one can only hope that there will be a western wilderness to pass along to the next generation, and that this new generation will produce defenders of that wilderness as eloquent as Ken Wright.
John Nizalowski is the author of Hooking the Sun.
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