Freedom and Wilderness

I suppose doing a post about Edward Abbey is becoming a weekly thing now, but this one is the toppermost of the poppermost. Moab, Utah's Back of Beyond Books sells a 4 CD collection of Abbey reading his own work that you can (and should) buy here. Each disc contains around 45 minutes of talking, which usually amounts to a chapter or two from one of his books. If you're an Abbey fan, which it seems as though some of you are, you need this. Immediately. And if you're not, listen below to an excerpt of "Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom" from The Journey Home. Who wouldn't want to hear the guy who wrote this repeat it into a microphone?

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"