Terrorists Blow up Navajo Bridge:Will Sedona Arizona Hotels Suffer?
Posted by Craig Phelan on Sat, Oct 22, 2011 @ 10:00 AM
And so goes the beginning of Edward Abbey's famous fiction work, The Monkey Wrench Gang, originally published in 1975. I first read The Monkey Wrench Gang, while on my way to the Southwest Inn at Sedona, for a vacation.
Wikipedia writes that the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkey wrench" has come to mean any form of sabotage, activism, law-making, or law-breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems.
The book's four main characters are: "Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Morman river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young sexualized female assistant; and George Heyduke, an eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran. Together, they set out to destroy what they see as the system of western pollution. As their attacks grow from cutting down billboards along Route 66, to de-railing coal cars, the law begins to close in.
The text of the book takes place in the Southwest, just north of Sedona, Arizona, along Lees Ferry, and up to Jacob Lake. If you are driveing down to Sedona, from the north you can either go through Page, or you can take the route where The Monkey Wrench Gang spent most of their time, along the Vermillion Cliffs Rim, between the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and the Glenn Canyon Dam.
Edward Abbey often describes the Southwest in a very colorful and illustrating tone. If you are headed to Sedona for a vacation, I recommend that you acquire a copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang to read, while you drive through the valleys of the ecologiclly-minded misfits that so many have come to love.
Pleas contact the Southwest Inn at Sedona, for directions: 800-483-7422!