Edward Abbey's Car For Sale On Ebay

If you frequent this rag, you'll know that there are two things that I post about rather often: Edward Abbey and the Grateful Dead. So when I found out that Edward Abbey's 1975 Cadillac Eldorado convertible is being auctioned off on eBay and then saw that there was a Grateful Dead sticker on the back of the car, I was rather excited. It seems as though the car has seen a few owners (one of them being foolish enough to think that the license plate should read E ABBEY) and a few face lifts since Mr. Abbey passed, so who knows if the sticker was put on there by Ed himself. I highly doubt it, but holy hell would that have been cool.More info:

Ed purchased this car on March 8, 1984 just after his 61st birthday and owned it through the end of his life. After sitting for a while, Ernie Bulow, a book collector and author purchased the car from Abbey's widow and put on the New Mexico vanity plates "Hayduke". In 1995, another book dealer, Tony Delcavo purchased the caddie and began to restore it including the present day vanity plates "E. Abbey" from the state of Colorado. Since 2008 the car has resided in Moab, UT and is being sold by Andy Nettell, book dealer and owner of Back of Beyond Books, a store dedicated to Ed's memory.Purchaser will also receive numerous original signed documents (including the original signed application for title from the state of Arizona) relating to this car. Included is also the 8-track tape player that Ed purchased for the car, but alas it no longer works and has been replaced with a slightly newer radio.Proceeds from this sale will go to Confluence: A Celebration of Reading and Writing in Moab, now in its third year. See moabconfluence.org for more information on this festival whose first year was dedicated to Edward Abbey. We think Ed would appreciate his car funding a writers festival.Edward Abbey's 1975 Red Cadillac Eldorado Convertible can be yours! This 8 cylinder beast runs well and is sold as is. It has a new paint job and the previous owner replaced the ragtop and reupholstered the interior. New hood hinges are needed and various smaller items need some love, i.e. glove box knob has fallen off, interior aluminum strip is loose and back window is sticky. An issue in the electrical system sometimes drains the battery. The odomotor no longer works and the sun visors need attention. The top raises and lowers splendidly and I've had a hoot driving around Arches National Park with the top down. I'm sure Ed threw a few beer cans out while cruising.

MP3: Ed Abbey – Excerpt from “Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom”

Land Of The Free

"Here’s to the hearts of that cold, lonesome track,To the life of the wanderlust … free.To all who have gone and have never come back,Here’s a tribute to you and to me.With our feet in the dirt we’re the grit of the earth,Heads a-ridin’ the heavens o’erhead.And they won’t find a nickel of value or worth,When our fortunes are tallied and read.But no richer clan has there ever been known,Since the times of all ruin and wrack;Than those of us lost to the dust outward blown,Who have gone and have never come back."Watch: Nimblewill Nomad (M.J. “Eb” Eberhart)

Hacked

As many of you know, I've been hacked over the last couple of weeks and my posts in Google Reader are coming up as penis enlargement pill advertisements (!) and all that fun stuff. I'm not so wonderful at these kind of technical computer things, so myself and the Cold Splinters backend guru, Tim, are doing our best to get the problem fixed. Thanks for the emails and concerns, friends. Wish us (Tim) luck.MP3: John David Souther - Run Like A Thief

Take Pride In America

Take Pride In America is a 1987 video that seeks the American people's help in reducing litter, vandalism, etc., in and around the national parks and public lands. Even more interesting is the video's narrator, Lou Gossett Jr., who seems legitimately angry about the "bad people" who were, at the time, killing our bald eagles and filling our mountains with Diet Pepsi bottles. Watch it here.

Lesser Long-Nosed Bats

Although Organ Pipe Cactus has its share of insect-eating bats, it is the nectar-eating bats that are the true heroes of the night sky and the Sonoran Desert. They are the primary night pollinators of the saguaro and organ pipe cactus, which makes them very valuable to the Sonoran Desert Ecosystem.When the night-blooming saguaro and organ pipe flowers first open, they emit a sweet, musky perfume. The bats seek out the source of this highly attractive odor. They poke their long noses deep into the tubular cactus flower reaching for the sweet nectar. Their long tongues lick up the syrup. When the bats emerge from the flowers, their heads are covered with pollen. As these feeding bats fly from flower to flower, they also pollinate the flowers. After the bats have their fill, they often seek a night roost, a place where they can rest, digest their meal and groom themselves. Throughout the night, the bats will leave these night roosting spots to feed again and again, often returning to the colony to check up on their "pups."

Wendell Gilley

During the 1930s and 40s,Wendell Gilley produced primarily small-scale carvings of song and game birds, which he sold to the New York City store, Abercrombie and Fitch for $3.75 each. Larger, more details and animated bird carvings followed as Gilley’s talents emerged. At the age of 52, Gilley decided to make a career out of his hobby and sold his plumbing company, Gilley Plumbing, and devoted himself full-time to his "special calling."Look: Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor, ME

MARK

I got a text message from my old friend, Mark, yesterday inviting me up this winter for another go at ice climbing in the White Mountains. Mark and I were roommates while attending school in Colorado together, and after we graduated, he moved back to New Hampshire, got married to the girl that had lived next door to us, joined the Army (does the hair give it away?) and started studying the effects of extreme weather conditions on the human body. That basically means that around this time of year, Mark spends his days climbing and freezing his tail off, then taking his pulse. Or something like that. He was supposed to have spent the summer doing rescues on Denali, but the trip ended up getting postponed until next year. That meant me being able to spend time at his lakehouse in New Hampshire this summer, where he and his equally crazy family has set up a Fourth of July Triathlon for themselves. Yeah....Mark is, to say the least, an animal, more fit and strong and crazy than anyone I have ever met, or probably ever will meet. But there's no one that I trust more to take me ice climbing, and after last year's trip and a car that can easily get me to the Kancamagus, I can't wait...

ROCINANTE

Steinbeck's famous camper from Travels With Charley:

“I wanted a three-quarter ton pickup truck, and on this truck I wanted a little house, built like the cabin of small boat”.The truck, we know now, was a new model GMC, with a V6 engine, an automatic transmission, and an oversized generator. The camper was provided by the Wolverine Camper Company of Glaswin, Michigan.The truck was delivered in August, 1961, and, because of satiric remarks from friends was named Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse.After Steinbeck's Travels with Charley ended, Rocinante was put up for sale in New York where she was purchased by Mr. William Plate for light work on Maiden Point Farm on the Maryland coast.In February of 1990, the Plates donated Rocinante to the National Steinbeck Center in Steinbeck’s home town of Salinas California. The truck was shipped to Salinas and was “lovingly restored to its original glory by Gene Cochetti”.

And If Live At The Fillmore had been out while Mr. Steinbeck was driving around from coast to coast, I'm sure he would have had it on. Maybe.MP3: Allman Brothers - Done Somebody Wrong

Do It With Joy (1976)



Orca Productions:

British Columbia has a reforestation program to restock vast tracts of land stripped by logging companies. DO IT WITH JOY is about a unique community: a group of people from widely varying backgrounds who come together each spring to plant trees in the vast logged areas of northern British Columbia.
For all of them, tree planting is a source of income, but more importantly it is a chance to share in the building of a self-sufficient community for the few months of the planting season.British Columbia has a reforestation program to restock vast tracts of land stripped by logging companies. DO IT WITH JOY is about a unique community: a group of people from widely varying backgrounds who come together each spring to plant trees in the vast logged areas of northern British Columbia.For all of them, tree planting is a source of income, but more importantly it is a chance to share in the building of a self-sufficient community for the few months of the planting season.

(via BTBN)

Journey On The Wild Coast

Three summers ago, in June of 2007, Seldovia, AK residents, Bretwood Higman and Erin McKittrick, walked from Seattle, WA to the tip of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. It took the yurt-dwelling, jewelry-making married couple four months to cover the 4,000 miles, and en route, "Hig,"  who has a doctorate in geology, and Erin, who has a degree in molecular biology, only had two rules, one strict and one informal. The strict rule? No motorized transport. The informal rule? Don't resupply on food except where there are people with food anyway.Watch the trailer for the documentary about the trip, JOURNEY ON THE WILD COAST. (via The Adventure Journal)

And We're Back..

My belly is full of quinoa, avocado and ceviche. My body is covered with bone necklaces and alpaca wool. My feet live in a new pair of custom made boots and my nose is burned from the Andean sun. My head remembers Incan ruins and Swiss friends, my wallet remembers "AMIGO, AMIGO." My pack is jammed with gifts for loved ones and my journal is still in the plastic wrap. My ass hurts from the saddle of Apu and my lungs can now breath a bit easier.To quote Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia, "I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other God."It's never nice to be back from vacation, but the sun is a shining and that's okay by me.MP3: The Strokes - What Ever Happened

Finis Mitchell

Finis Mitchell (1901–1995) was an American mountaineer and forester based in Wyoming. During the Depression, he and his wife stocked lakes in the Wind River Range with over 2.5 million trout. He served in the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1955 to 1958. At the age of 67 he retired from his job as a railroad foreman and dedicated himself full-time to exploring and writing about the Wind River Range of mountains.Over the course of his life, Mitchell climbed all but 20 of the 300 peaks in the range. At the age of 73, while on a glacier, he twisted his knee in a snow-covered crevasse. He hacked crude crutches out of pine wood and hobbled 18 miles to find a doctor, and was able to resume climbing until the age of 84, when further injury to the knee from a fall put an end to his solo climbing career.In 1975, he published a guidebook to the range called Wind River Trails, and in 1977, the University of Wyoming gave him an honorary doctorate. Congress named the mountain Mitchell Peak after him — one of the few landforms to ever be named after a living American.Read: Finis Mitchell on the Forest Service website