Six Favourite Books: American Desert

Read time 4 mins

Do you dream of being in a vast empty landscape with no mobile signal? These books are for you.

Desert Notes
Reflections in the Eye of a Raven

Barry Lopez

The text on the back of the dust jacket to the first edition of Desert Notes (pictured) says this book is “like Carlos Castaneda but without the drugs”, which completely nails the appeal of Barry López for me. In this early collection of strange and sensuous narrative contemplations, Lopez uses the desert as a site for self-discovery. He invites us to walk along the edge of the desert with him – we would be wise to accept.

Desert Oracle

Ken Layne

A pocket-sized magazine that explores the stranger side of American desert life. The Desert Oracle’s weird tales from the Mojave Desert have proven a cult hit with readers worldwide. The Desert Oracle is an antidote to the algorithm: print only, deliberately old school, with the feel of a punk zine, and is sold in independent book and coffee shops across the USA. It is available on Amazon though. Phew.

Desert Solitaire
A Season in the Wilderness

Edward Abbey

Desert Solitare (1968) was written when Edward Abbey worked as a seasonal ranger at Arches National Monument, Utah. At times, Abbey sounds like a grumpy 20th-century Thoreau, ranting at "flabby tourists who want to view the landscape through the comfort of an RV window." Edward Abbey was also a thoughtful and sensitive man who wrestled with the problems of preserving nature amid the onslaught of industrial civilization: an essential read for anyone interested in the American Wilderness.

Desert Cabal
A new Season in the Wilderness

Amy Irvine

Amy Irvine penned Desert Cabal as a female response to Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey’s environmental classic. Speaking directly to Abbey, she pays tribute to him for inspiring generations of advocates on behalf of the American West. She also challenges the “lone male” narrative at the heart of the USA wilderness movement. Desert Cabal made me want to cast a fresh pair of eyes over Desert Solitaire.

Land of Little Rain

Mary Austin

Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain – first published in 1903 – is a collection of fourteen vignettes about the land and people of the region that today includes Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. Part travel journal, part fiction, part environmental text– Mary Austin’s lyrical observations resist classification. Austin’s writings have been compared to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, but her poetic sensibility is entirely original.

Virga & Bone
Essays from Dry Places

Craig Childs

A pocket-sized book of essays about the elemental nature of the desert. The book takes its title from Virga: rain which evaporates before ever hitting the ground. Craig Childs walks every metre of the arid lands that he describes, and it shows. Whether he was walking the routes of ancient shell traders in northern Mexico, or flying through a sheet of Virga over Monument Valley– I felt that I was his travelling companion.

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