Chapter 1 The First Morning Summary and Analysis

Edward Abbey drives 450 miles from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Moab, Utah. He has taken a job with the National Park Service and reports for duty at the headquarters building just north of Moab. He meets the park superintendent and chief ranger. They offer him coffee and give him directions to his work place, a small trailer house out in the wilderness of the Arches National Monument.

Darkness has already descended as he drives his pickup truck toward the trailer house. A small wooden sign guides him off the highway and onto a rough dirt track. A storm from the northwest builds with howling wind as he traverses the rocky, winding road upward to the trailer house about eight miles away. Abbey comes upon a dry wash crossing with a sign that warns not to cross...