The July/August 2006 edition of Orion Magazine features the lost letters of Edward Abbey. Lowbagger has reprinted a letter to Jon Krakauer in early 1987 that details what Abbey thought were the most significant events in the American West during the 1980’s.

Top Thirteen Environmentally Significant Events of 1980

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/06-4om/Abbey.html

Jon Krakauer
circa early 1987

Dear Mr Krakauer:
As requested, here is my list of the ten most significant events in the American West during the past decade:

1. Revolting Development: 487 literary exquisites, flycasters, coke sniffers, horse lovers, movie actors, hobby ranchers, Instant Rednecks and other jet-set androids from the world of Vanity Fair move into Santa Fe, Tucson and the Livingston, Montana area.

2. Hopeful Development: Congress finally passes an Immigration Control Act—but two hundred years too late.

3.  Revolting Development: Beef ranchers murder 155 grizzly bears in Montana and Wyoming.

4. Hopeful Development: Grizzlies harvest twenty-two tourists.

5. Revolting Development: US Forest Service lays plans and obtains funds to bulldoze a road to within at least one/quarter mile of every pine tree in our national forests.

6. Hopeful Development: Teton Dam collapses in Idaho.

7. Revolting Development: Hemlines go down on park ranger skirts.

8. Hopeful Development: Earth First! founded in the Pinacate Desert by Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Mike Roselle and Bart Kohler.

9. Revolting Development: Howie Wolke arrested for pulling up survey stakes in Little Granite Creek, Wyoming.

10. Hopeful Development: Chief Engineer killed by lightning at dam construction site on Dolores River in Colorado.

11. Hopeful Development: Drunken shotgunner killed by falling gutshot saguaro cactus near Phoenix.

12. Hopeful Development: 565 range cattle killed in Utah by little green men in UFOs (Unidentified Fucking Objects).

13. Hopeful Development: Benjamin Cartwright Abbey born March 19, 1987, vows eternal resistance against every form of tyranny over the soul of man (and woman).

Edward Abbey -- Tucson