SOURCE: Lucas, Susan M. “Counter Frictions: Writing and Activism in the Work of Abbey and Thoreau.” In Thoreau's Sense of Place: Essays in American Environmental Writing, edited by Richard J. Schneider, pp. 266-79. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Lucas argues that the popular images of Abbey and Henry David Thoreau distort their importance as protest writers.

Words on a page do not accomplish anything by themselves; but words taken to heart, words carried in mind, may lead to action.

—Alison Hawthorne Deming, Richard Nelson, Scott Russell Sanders, “Letter to Orion Readers”

In American nature writing, two of the most vehement, influential voices to inspire environmental activism belong to Henry David Thoreau and Edward Abbey. Though writing a century apart and about different regions, Abbey and Thoreau openly advocate individual resistance to institutional oppression through jeremiadic rhetoric and acts of civil disobedience. Environmental groups...