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Show THE ZEPHYR/ AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006 Che Guevara was her best man at the wedding. She fought at the Bay of Pigs as a militia Tell me more about your Grand Canyon trips . Well, we went down several times. We went not only when he was a fire lookout, but before that, when we hiked the Nankoweep Trail. But when he was at the tower, we went down the Thunder River trail and it was a bad time...with the deaths. We spent a couple of days and sat down there and sat in this cave, right by Thunder River and just literally wept on each other’s shoulder. It was a bad time. Was it that time? It might have been, either that time or the Nankoweep Trip that we vowed that we would paint and write the Southwest. It was cathartic going down, it was bloody hot and the place was full of rattlesnakes. So it was like a cleansing. woman, on the commandante, Cuban side of course. But her husband was, in spite of being a a pig---a chauvinist male pig. She divorced him, came back to Taos and that’s where she met Abbey. So, she went from the frying Revolutiony. And she and Ed used philosophy as opposed to the Marxist. and Renny were lovers. So, we kept it pan to the fire. Anyway, she remained a total to have these incredible fights over the anarchist Before I met Ed on that ill-fated day in Santa Fe, Ed in the family. You were involved with Renny as well?. And | was painting during that time. Some of my best work came out of that period in Moab. I don’t know how the hell we kept working. Yeah, I lived with her for a good five years. She was an incredible woman, one of the most passionate women I've ever met and she was built like a brick shit house. It was a real How do you do that? You were very prolific at that time. profound love affair...1 thought Marxism was a dead end, more government, more depression, more bureaucracy. Then of course, Ed agreed with me. I always thought the I don’t know, it beats me. Anger, angst. I think we fed on anger and angst. Of course we were married to nothing but self-pity. Huge chunks of time of just self pity. I remember one time, when Ed came up to the San Juan islands to visit me and he was on one of those Alaska journeys. He was in one of those periods of self-pity, moaning and pissing all over the place. Spent the whole time with me moaning and pissing. I wrote him a letter after I got back to, it must have been Tucson then. And I wrote him and said, "For Chrissake Abbey, stop feeling sorry for yourself and write. That’s what you're made for—to write. Stop this self pity and go back to work." He wouldn't speak to me for a year, he was so pissed off and then in the end he said, "You were right.” only hope for America was Jefferson Democracy. The yeoman farmer, the independent farmer. How do you have Jeffersonian Democracy with the way it is now? You can do it for yourself... Look at my neighbors, old Hispanic men that never gave up farming or small ranching. But aren't they almost like anachronisms? Are you an anachronism? Oh, I’m definitely an anachronism. How can 320 million people in this country go back to that kind of life? flu. Well, you know what my hope is 80 percent of us die out with either AIDS or the bird If 80 percent of American died out, there’d be hope. We could start all over again...muerte, land of the dead....... An enviable life, far far away from all Se Anger...angst. | think we fed on anger and angst....We were married to nothing but self-pity. Huge chunks of time of just self-pity. the crap What about your time in Utah? Thad about ten acres near Devil’s Canyon in Monticello and Ed had just broken up with in society. Renee. He was in sad shape and I had a good wife then, Ed liked Tina, he was delighted that I had found a wife who wasn’t a Marxist revolutionary, after a series of damn revolutionaries, who were trying to make me into a Marxist. Anyway, his wife left him.. He hung out with me there. He was camping for over a month after the breakup. He wa in bad shape. : But I enjoyed my time at Devil’s Canyon, I enjoyed it. I had a half a dozen Mormon friends. No one could understand it, but I enjoyed them---some of them, not all of them. There was an old lady there, she was in her eighties, she was a direct descendant of Brigham Young among the hundreds of his descendants he had and she was kind of the primo lady. : She was a Mormon all her life, but a feminist, she wanted to reconstruct it. She said the best thing that happened in the Mormon Church was when Brigham created the United Order. It was socialist, communal ownership of the land, a socialist experiment and she said that years later, they sold him out. The church sold out Brigham by becoming capitalistic.. In those days, she said it was communal---Bluff, of course Monticello and in those days St. George. Brigham wanted to establish a non-capitalistic society with small businesses, farmers. The church changed after he died, they I big +i pitali and they screwed him...at least that’s what this old lady told me. So some of these old Mormons - to me were great,I enjoyed them immensely. Speaking of socialism, tell me more about Renny Templeton., who you mentioned earlier in this conversation. Oh, boy jeez. The statute of limitations are over. Renny’s father was one of the wealthiest men in Chicago; he founded the Templeton-Franklin Group? She rebelled against all that crap. That was some kind of big brokerage firm. Yeah. She rebelled against the whole damn thing. Her sister married Marshal Fields III. She rebelled against that. She went to Cuba, not long after the Cuban revolution and married a Cuban Commandante--- Hdward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness New Director’s Cut Now on DVD. ‘Back of Beyond Books Ken Sanders Rare Books And yet, John DePuy, for all your pessimism about the future, your life has taken a rather optimistic turn. Yes. It has! At 78, Ihave a beautiful wife who is forty years younger than me, a beautiful 16-. month-old daughter who will be carrying my backpack in a few years. An enviable life far, far away from all the crap in society. We all love rattlesnakes and coyotes because they're. unpredictable. Anyway it’s a good life, I've got no complaints and I hope! can live another ° 30 years. Vaya con dios! i ... | remember waking from last night's restless dream. I pushed your biology books off the bed and, reaching out for your skin, I found that curve where your hips begin. As my eyes rolled back in my head, I caught a glimpse that the first, the very first, slimy sea creature must have noticed... and on the web westskydan@yahoo.com |