Abbey arrives at Arches National Park after a long drive and moves into a mice-ridden government trailer.

Park superintendent McRae and chief ranger Bence arrive with supplies and give Abbey a tour of the park.

Abbey finds a rattlesnake inches from his heels while drinking coffee on the doorstep of his trailer.

Abbey captures a gopher snake and brings it to live in his trailer to control mice and rattlesnakes.

The gopher snake disappears, then returns weeks later with a mate, but the pair flees when Abbey approaches.

A Bureau of Public Roads survey crew visits Abbey's trailer to plan a new road through Arches.

Abbey joins rancher Roy Scobie and hired hand Viviano Jacquez on a grueling multi-day cattle drive.

Abbey rescues his friend Newcomb from quicksand by grasping his wrists after Newcomb falls forward within reach.

Abbey encounters the semi-wild horse Moon Eye in a canyon and tries for hours to coax him back to the ranch.

Abbey and Newcomb embark on a river journey through Glen Canyon in two small rubber boats.

Abbey makes a solo trek to the Rainbow Bridge, finding the trail littered with tourist garbage.

Abbey and Newcomb encounter the first billboard ever erected in Glen Canyon, warning of the dam construction zone.

Abbey joins a search party looking for a missing tourist whose car was abandoned near Grandview Point.

Abbey's brother Johnny discovers the dead tourist's body stretched out under a juniper tree.

Abbey completes a final tour of the park, then departs, concluding that the desert will endure without him.

Edward Abbey arrives at Arches National Park to serve as a seasonal ranger and immediately begins forging a solitary relationship with the desert. He has brief but meaningful contact with his park supervisors before settling into a remote existence shared with rattlesnakes and gopher snakes. His ranger duties pull him into adventures including a grueling multi-day cattle drive with neighboring rancher Roy Scobie. A survey crew's arrival to plan a new road through the park forces Abbey to confront the threat of industrial tourism to the wilderness he loves. Abbey and his friend Newcomb's river trip through Glen Canyon, ending at a dam construction billboard, deepens his grief over civilization's encroachment on wild places. The discovery of a dead tourist near Grandview Point closes his season, and Abbey ultimately departs the desert having concluded it will endure long after him.

The defining events of Abbey's six months in Arches National Park.

Abbey wakes before sunrise on his first morning and takes in a sweeping view of the desert landscape.

Abbey walks in the dark without a flashlight, then cranks up a generator to write a letter before shutting it off.

Abbey shepherds a rattlesnake away from his trailer doorstep by maneuvering it with a long-handled spade.

Abbey shoves his walking stick into a harvester ant nest during a leisurely survey of the park's plant life.

Abbey kills a rabbit with a thrown rock as an experiment, then leaves the carcass for vultures and maggots.

Albert Husk meets Charles Graham in a Moab tavern and pays half his savings to join a uranium mining partnership.

Graham seduces Husk's wife while Husk labors fruitlessly in the desert; both men eventually kill each other in a wilderness confrontation.

Husk's young son perishes in a flash flood while Mrs. Husk later sells the mining claims for a large fortune.

Abbey admits feeling lonely and reflects on the Navajo people whose ancestors' petroglyphs still mark the canyon walls.

Abbey witnesses a rare desert rainstorm and describes the creatures that emerge to drink from the temporary pools.

Abbey and temporary ranch hand Mackie spot Moon Eye's hoofprints while herding cattle; Mackie explains the horse's troubled history.

Abbey takes a solo hike through the Escalante gorge and discovers ancient petroglyphs and abandoned cliff dwellings.

Abbey hikes above Hole in the Rock without his canteen and must suck moisture from wet sand to survive thirst.

Young Abbey walks the fourteen-mile trail alone into the Indian village of Havasu, leaving his college friends behind.

Abbey and Bob Waterman descend nearly a thousand feet into the Maze and explore its previously unnamed rock formations.

Abbey's desert sojourn is shaped by smaller but equally vivid moments, from his first sunrise view of the landscape to his deliberate walk in total darkness and his unprovoked destruction of a harvester ant nest. The tragic story of uranium prospector Albert Husk and the scheming Charles Graham plays out as an episode of human predation, ending in violence, flood, and unlikely fortune for Husk's wife. Abbey's loneliness surfaces midway through the season as he reflects on the Navajo people whose ancestors left petroglyphs across the canyon walls, and a rare desert rainstorm reminds him of nature's sudden transformative power. His discovery of cliff dwellings in the Escalante gorge, his near-fatal thirst above Hole in the Rock, and his glimpse of Moon Eye's troubled history all deepen his reverence for the wilderness and its mysteries. Young Abbey's solo walk into the remote Indian village of Havasu years earlier mirrors his present solitary immersion in the wild. The season closes with Abbey and Bob Waterman making a daring descent into the Maze, a canyon untouched by humans for centuries.

The vivid secondary episodes and encounters that fill Abbey's desert season.

Abbey declares his intent to experience the desert without sentimentality and to resist personifying the natural world.

McRae and Bence depart after their visit, and Abbey discovers he feels profound loveliness rather than loneliness.

Abbey acknowledges a sense of symbiosis with the gopher snakes, directly contradicting his earlier vow against anthropomorphism.

Abbey reflects bitterly on the near-extinction of coyotes in the park, caused by livestock interests and government agents.

Abbey reports years later that the survey crew's new road was built and Arches visitors increased a hundredfold.

Roy Scobie dies of a heart attack while hanging a picture; Viviano Jacquez later disappears without explanation.

Moon Eye charges Abbey without warning, sending him scrambling and separating him from his canteen for dangerous hours.

Abbey finally retrieves his canteen, turns his back on the defiant horse Moon Eye, and walks home alone.

Abbey curses the planned Colorado River dam and fantasizes about an unknown hero who might dynamite it beforehand.

Abbey accidentally starts a brush fire during the river trip and barely escapes before the flames overtake him.

Young Abbey gets hopelessly lost near Havasu, believes he is about to die, sobs, and survives a stormy night in a cave.

Abbey contemplates the dead tourist's spectacular dying view and admits he envies the man's manner of passing.

Abbey debates an unnamed tourist long into the night and revises his thinking, distinguishing civilization from culture.

Abbey goes looking for the unnamed tourist the next morning and finds he has signed the register as 'J. Prometheus Birdsong.'

Abbey admits he is looking forward to rejoining human society after his six months of desert solitude.

From his very first day, Abbey sets out to strip away sentiment and experience the desert with clear eyes, but the desert continually pushes back against his rigid intentions. His admission of symbiosis with the gopher snakes, his fury at the decimation of coyote populations, and his fantasy of dynamiting the Colorado River dam all reveal a man whose detachment is increasingly strained by love and outrage. The semi-wild horse Moon Eye embodies the limits of human connection with nature — charging Abbey without warning, separating him from his canteen, and ultimately escaping all persuasion. A brush fire accidentally started during the river trip and young Abbey's desperate night lost near Havasu remind him how quickly the desert can turn lethal. A dead tourist's peaceful dying view provokes Abbey's unexpected envy, and a long debate with an unnamed visitor finally cracks his certainties, forcing him to distinguish civilization from culture. Abbey departs the Arches having admitted his longing for human society, and having arrived at the quiet conviction that the wilderness will outlast both his presence and his grief over its fate.

The key decisions, discoveries, and shifts that reshape Abbey's vision of the wild.