In 1985, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Dream Garden Press founder, Ken Sanders (who we interviewed on CS a few years back), suggested that R. Crumb illustrate a special edition of the Edward Abbey classic. You can only buy the Crumb version here (along with t-shirts), so if you don’t have a copy, get up on it.
**Keep your eyes peeled for the Abbey/Crumb calendar on eBay. It’s a real humdinger.
Cold Splinters is heading to the southwest section of these United of States for Christmas, so there might be some crickets around these parts for the next week or so. Have a wonderful holiday and we’ll see you in 2013. It’s gonna be a real good one.
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I’ll meet you in the Organ Pipes
All alone on a winter’s night
You’ll say, “Come Home.”
I’ll stay.
You won’t.
The Western National Parks Association has published some pretty wonderful books since it was founded in 1938. (Back then they were called the Southwest Monuments Association.) They now operate bookstores at 66 NPS sites throughout the western United States with a flagship/headquarters in Tucson. I’ve found and bought a bunch of these while traveling these last few years - Flowers of the Southwest Mesas, Flowers of the Southwest Deserts, 70 Common Cacti, 100 Roadside Flowers – and they’re pretty darn easy on the eyes. You can see more old covers at the NPS’ website here and you can order books, patches and a whole lotta Prickly Pear Cactus Candy directly from the WNPA here.
Thanks WNPA.
One of my favorite and most unnecessary purchases in the history of having a CS eBay account. Though I suppose you can never have too many copies, right?
A few weeks back, I was held up in southwest Texas – Big Bend National Park, to be exact – with Mikael Kennedy, writing a story for the wonderful Garden and Gun. (It’ll be out later this summer, so stay tuned.) With work and travel and bla bla bla, this last Thursday was the first time that Mikael and I were able to get together since our little adventure. A winning combination of Guinness and Ful Medames.
We both had books for one another, each one slightly commemorative of the Great Big Dry Nothing that was home for a few nights. I gave him a copy of The Desert Is Theirs and he gave me Twelve Lessons Of The Desert. Mikeal met Sam Richardson, the book’s author, while down in Taos, NM two weeks ago, and after telling him about our time in Terlingua, Richardson directed him to the local book store.
Twelve Lessons is a “collection of aphorisms, nature notes and essays written over a period of 17 years by river guide, artist, writer and storyteller Sam Richardson.” I haven’t started it yet, but when I do, I’ll make sure to do a full report. In the meantime, learn more about Sam here.
Thanks Mikael.
If you’re in the area, head on over to Alpine, Texas this Friday and Saturday for the 26th Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Festival. Hells bells, there’s even a tribute to Marty Robbins on Friday morning! (Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs was a major part of the soundtrack for Cold Splinters’ Texas adventure. They even sold the album at the Panther Junction Visitor Center in BBNP.) Ima miss you Deep West Texas.
I imagine that many of you are getting away for the holidays: Whether that means going home to see ma and pa, going on a road trip to some far away place filled with cactus and cholla, or, hopefully, a combination of the two. Cold Splinters is off to the California desert for a couple days (Palm Springs + Joshua Tree National Park) then to to the foothills of Colorado (Boulder + Nederland), and in preparation fore the trip – at least the desert portion – we’ve been blasting Bombino’s Agadez over and over and over. (Thank you Justin Gage.) Sure, it’s the wrong desert (his is the Sahara), but the sentiment is the same. I guess the only real difference is an Ace Hotel, right?
I’ve posted this before, but I spent the better portion of yesterday listening to Freedom and Wilderness from Moab’s Back of Beyond Books. It’s just so so good. Enjoy it.
We need wilderness because we are wild animals. Every man needs a place where he can go to go crazy in peace. Every Boy Scout troop deserves a forest to get lost, miserable, and starving in. Even the maddest murderer of the sweetest wife should get a chance for a run to the sanctuary of the hills. If only for the sport of it. For the terror, freedom, and delirium. Because we need brutality and raw adventure, because men and women first learned to love in, under, and all around trees, because we need for every pair of feet and legs about ten leagues of naked nature, crags to leap from, mountains to measure by, deserts to finally die in when the heart fails.
MP3: Ed Abbey – Excerpt from “Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom”
While I was in Boulder over Thanksgiving weekend, I happened upon the new Matter Journal while roaming down Pearl Street. Matter is a semi-annual literary journal published by Wolverine Publications in Fort Collins, CO, and their newest issue, Numero 13, is dedicated to the life and times of Cactus Ed.
Wolverine was nice enough to send Cold Splinters a copy, and, trust us, it’s a humdinger. It’s huge, full of great stories, pictures and all that good stuff that, if you’re here and reading this, you’ll enjoy.
Buy it here and then read a much better review at the wonderful High Country News.
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